The raft of Marvel characters at Sony’s disposal haven’t been used to their fullest potential, and we’re even including the crown jewel of Spider-Man in that discussion.
Heavy-handed studio interference compromised Sam Raimi’s threequel and saw him walk away from a fourth installment, while any plans for a rapidly-expanding shared mythology built out from The Amazing Spider-Man were shelved when it became the lowest-grossing and worst-reviewed entry to date.
Teaming up with Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios has been a masterstroke, while the rebranded Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is off to a strong start after Venom and its successor combined to earn over $1.3 billion at the box office and counting, although the jury very much remains out on Morbius for now.
Then when you factor in the animated Spider-Verse series, which is also being designed with spinoffs in mind, Sony are attempting to wrangle a trio of comic book franchises at once. In an interview with Fandango, producer Amy Pascal explained how she’s planning to juggle all three.
“Well, there’s the Marvel Universe, which is one container and then there’s the Spider-Verse movies, which are different and then there’s the other universe where the Sony characters are in. We all are very respectful of each other and work together and make sure that we’re only being additive.”
We know that the MCU and the Sony-verse will be crossing over, with Venom: Let There Be Carnage‘s post-credits scene tying into the Spider-Man series while Morbius features Michael Keaton’s Vulture, but it’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for the animated arm of the saga, especially when Kevin Feige has his own 2D Freshman Year in development exclusively for Disney Plus.