Mandatory Spider-Man Posting
Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 11:00AM 
Is Nicholas Hammond busy?As you undoubtedly have heard, Marvel/Disney closed a deal with Sony last night and now Spider-Man goes totally bi. He'll be splitting his time between two giant corporate overlords in Sony & Disney. Spider-Man's solo franchise will continue at Sony without Andrew Garfield who will finally be freed to make the movies he was meant to make after breaking through in The Social Network (2010). Cue: roughly 8 million extremely obnoxious internet articles about the casting of the new Spider-Man. I'm steeling myself: It will be so much worse than that hideous landfill phenomenon of infinite speculative Doctor Strange casting thinkpieces.
As for the new Spider-Man -- I swear to god if they start with the origin story again I will never stop puking web fluids. Everyone knows it, dumbasses. It'd be like demanding that each Biblical epic start with a two hour Adam & Eve prologue. Peter Parker will get his next solo film on July 28th, 2017 but first he'll debut over in Marvel's Cinematic Universe. The prevailing rumor is that that's within the context of Captain America: Civil War (due May 6th, 2016) which is also the film that will introduce Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther. That film is getting crowded so one hopes they don't lose the title character in a sea of universe-building agenda.
May 6th, 2016 is a tight turnaround. The ink is still drying on the contract and presumably Sony and Marvel and Disney (that's a lot of executives to please) will all have to agree on a new direction, and a new actor, and that actor's pay scale over multiple films in both supporting and leading roles for seven years (the longest you can book an actor for). And they'll have to do that this summer since Civil War will have to start filming soon to make its release date; visual effects pictures don't come together as quick as Clint Eastwood movies.
For presumably non-competitive corporate appeasement reasons, this Spider-Man deal is pushing most of the post Civil War movies previously slated back about four months.
Reader Comments (17)
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn
Thoughts: Sony will probably be desperate enough to go in for anything Marvel wants to do with Spider-Man. If that means doing Miles Morales or making him Asian-American (Melinda May as the off-screen "aunt" in that case?) or even gay, like Garfield said he'd have been on board for, they'll do it.
I agree about the origin story. In fact, that's why I didn't even bother to watch the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films. Meanwhile, I wonder which actor in his late 20s they'll cast next time to play this high-school student?
I think Nicholas Hammond has been living in Australia and presumably working there for many years. (I read that "home movie" book by the children from The Sound Of Music).
I saw the Julie Taymor version of Spider-Man on Broadway, and after that debacle, I can't really take it seriously any more. Sorry kids.
So how long until Ansel Elgort gets the phone call?
No, let's not star this.
This news is exhausting. I can't believe the studios seem so convinced that the bubble won't burst on this superhero thing at some point. Granted, it's easy to shut down pre-production on something if these films start underperforming, but these vast plans show almost no recognition of trend cycles or the concept of oversaturation.
Dave S -- i guess the billions earned by Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Avengers already are like general citizens buying lottery tickets only with better odds but the lottery tickets cost 200 million ;)
And to be clear, I'm not dissing superheroes specifically; I'm saying all things must pass. Westerns used to be top earners, too.
Marvel has said that they are moving away from origin stories going forward, which is why I presume they are introducing characters in other movies first and then giving them their solo films.
Dave S.: Well, maybe there'll be a time where DC Heroes start dominating, but if DC fumbled in 2013, they're going to crater themselves in 2016. Batman v. Superman is bad enough (I'd bet it'll flop and we're not getting the Wonder Woman movie AGAIN), but SUICIDE SQUAD!? Really?
While I understand your frustration, it's inspiring to see, after witnessing the Twilight and Taken and Alvin and the Chipmunks and Pirates of the Caribbean and Madagascar sequels make money hand over fist that, for once, a terrible film series actually got what it deserved.
I'm torn between total apathy towards superhero movie buzz; but loving Spider-Man like no other comic character.
A Spiderman/ Captain America movie team would be my idea of cinema heaven !
Dave S. - The fall of superheroes films has been predicted as far back as 2005 but yet it is 2015 and the sub-genre has only increased in size; so while the trend will definitely end at some point, it is (somewhat) understandable that Marvel Studios would feel comfortable planning big.
Nathaniel - My guess is that Black Panther and Spider-Man will have small supporting roles or cameos, so I don't think Captain America will get lost in Civil War... At least I hope not.
Anyway, I have mixed feelings on the Spidey news. I'm one of the few people that like TASM2 and though SONY could've built a decent third film off it, if they learned from some of their mistakes. In saying that, SONY made similar mistakes with SM3 and that didn't seem to stop them with TASM2, so maybe it's for the best that they'll have to answer to Marvel.
I guess my biggest problem with Spider-Man being apart of the MCU is that I just can't imagine Marvel letting any director have control over Spider-Man like Sam Raimi did for SM2, so what's the point of this new creative team if they can't reach those heights? Lastly, are they going to reboot Spider-Man ever five years? It's getting really annoying, lol.
Daniel Armour: Though they say not and he is going to be big, I wouldn't be surprised if Black Panther is mostly just background noise who's primarily just there for action scenes. Spider-Man, though, is probably going to wind up being the third biggest role in the movie with the drama boiling down to a more intimate vision of the battle over Spidey's allegiance as opposed to the entire universe super epic of the original comic.
Volvagia - Actually, I think Black Panther is taking the spot Spider-Man had in the Civil War comic book storyline. It makes sense considering they didn't have Spider-Man when they announced Captain America: Civil War. Besides, the film goes into production in two months and I think it'll be too late to make such a big change to the script.
I am very excited about this news because I miss watching a captivating Andrew Garfield performance.
(This is not a diss on his Spiderman performance. It is just not something I am interested in watching.)