I agree. I don’t see Sony severing their relationship with Disney/Marvel and going their own way with Spiderman. Simply, they make a hell of a lot more money when Marvel is involved and when Spiderman is tied into the MCU than going it alone. I actually see this broadening going forward, with Sony bringing in more of their properties into the MCU (Venom, Sinister 6, etc).
I guess we shall see, but I’ll be shocked if Sony pulls (or tries to pull like they did last time) Spiderman from the MCU.
ETA: As to the OP, I agree with others that you simply don’t need a huge marketing blitz for a Spiderman movie, as it’s a product that basically sells itself. You only need to keep it on a slow boil and occasionally remind folks it’s coming soon. I actually did see a trailer for this recently at a movie (I thought it was Eternals, but maybe it was in the Dune movie…I can’t recall, but it was basically the same trailer that’s up on YouTube, so nothing new). I recall telling my wife that I was really psyched for the new movie and where they seem to be going with the franchise.
In the latest Venom movie, there’s a post-credit scene
where Venom/Eddie Brock explicitly shift over from the Sony-verse to the MCU. Of course, they might just be “visiting” for a cameo in No Way Home, and Spidey could wind up shifting back with them to the Sony-verse, which would rather neatly excise Spidey from the MCU in-universe. But, I think it’s more likely that Sony is trying to more tightly integrate the Marvel properties it controls with the ridiculously successful MCU franchise.
The MCU is movies made by, or in collaboration with, Marvel/Disney. Sony is absolutely trying to align itself with that continuity, and to be perceived as part of it, but it’s making these Spider-verse movies completely independently, without Marvel’s participation. In these movies, they cannot use any Marvel characters except those they control in association with their Spider-Man rights. (And, conversely, Marvel/Disney likewise cannot use the Spider-people either.)
I am absolutely confident that, barring a renewal of some sort of co-production deal, MCU movies proper will make zero reference to the characters and/or events of the coming Sony slate.
I am also absolutely confident of that conditional. What I’m not at all confident about is that there won’t be some sort of co-production deal going forward. I mean, it’s certainly possible that some sort of ego-driven petty conflict or empire-building by a Sony exec torpedoes a deal.
But it makes way too much sense for Sony and for Disney/Marvel to work out a deal. There’s a lot of money sitting on the table, and at this point there is just overwhelming empirical evidence that a Spider-property that’s released as an official part of the MCU is going to make more money for Sony even splitting the proceeds with Marvel/Disney than any non-MCU movie will.
Well, yeah. “These heavily litigated characters won’t appear in films from a different studio without a contract expressly giving consent to do so,” is a pretty safe prediction, as predictions go.
I haven’t looked into the legal aspects of all this stuff, but the question this then brings up is how Dr. Strange made his way into this movie. Did Disney loan him out as a special one time thing?
The main Spider-Man movies are basically a joint project between Disney and Sony. Same reason why Iron Man was in the first one and Nick Fury was in the second.
The three Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, including the upcoming No Way Home, were produced under a co-production agreement between Marvel Studios/Disney and Sony, with Sony also “lending” Spider-Man to MS/D for Civil War, Infinity War, and End Game. As @Cervaise points out, that agreement has now expired, so going forward, any movie after this will require a new agreement. The previous agreement nearly fell apart a couple of times.
There seems to be a difference of opinion in this thread as to how likely it is that Marvel/Disney and Sony will renew the previous agreement or work out similar terms to keep Spider-Man in the MCU, or if Sony will return to the previous status quo (the Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies) which were independent of the MCU and in their own continuity.
All I’m saying is that Sony is working overtime to build a world of characters for its own mini Spiderverse. Yes, it’s possible they could pursue a renewed deal, but the point of all this effort is so they don’t have to. They want the best of both worlds: independent production (i.e. no revenue sharing) combined with the audience perception that the worlds are linked.
Thing is, Sony has a poor track record over the last several independent (pre MCU) movies. The third Raimi was studio-noted almost to death, and then following that, Garfield was a pretty good lead actor but the movies they had him in were terrible. Into the Spider-verse is literally exceptional, so it’s no wonder Sony pushed to go back to the same conceptual well for this new movie.
If Avi Arad and Amy Pascal drive the spider-car into the ditch again, Sony will probably go back to Marvel, and as long as the terms are reasonable, Marvel will probably play ball. But for the next little while, at least, Sony’s gonna try to avoid that.
I think it’s more that, for both parties, a deal is more profitable than no deal. So if they’re both rational actors, a deal will happen… but which deal? There are countless little details to work out, and the ideal deal isn’t the same for both parties, so they’ll both want negotiating leverage to pull it closer to the deal that they want. And Sony having their own cinematic universe gives them a little more negotiating leverage. Just because they want to be able to take their ball and go home, doesn’t mean they actually want to do that.
It seems to me that Sony Pictures is one bad year away from being bought by Disney and they (the execs) know it. They will have to walk the line between returning good, not great Sony revenue with a Disney partnership and fucking up bad enough Disney grabs them up. Past performance indicates the latter is more likely. All IMHO.