It was definitely a shock when it was first announced that Sony had stuck an unprecedented agreement to share Spider-Man with Marvel Studios and reboot the web-slinger as part of Kevin Feige’s cinematic universe, but it wasn’t much of a surprise.
After all, both Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 suffered from many of the exact same problems; namely heavy-handed studio interference that ended up stuffing the narrative to breaking point, with the latter in particular creaking under all the weight of the world-building designed to expand the planned mythology.
The MCU’s Spider-Man movies have proven to be immensely popular, but it wasn’t all plain sailing behind the scenes. In new book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe via The Direct, it’s revealed that Sony’s Amy Pascal ended up in tears when she had her first disagreement with Feige.
“”At first, I was super resentful,” she admits. ‘I think I started crying and threw him out of my office, or threw a sandwich at him – I’m not sure which.’ Then she started to think it through. ‘By the fifth [Spider-Man] movie, we weren’t giving them anything new. And I have to be honest about it, we were trying so hard to be different, we even went into places to be different that we shouldn’t have. We weren’t fresh anymore.'”
You can bet there were plenty more heated discussions when it came to drawing up the plans to parachute Tom Holland’s Spider-Man into the MCU, especially with two major industry players like Sony and Marvel involved. After a brief hiccup in the summer of 2019, everyone’s best friends again, with No Way Home coming in December to draw Holland’s solo trilogy to a spectacular close.