The big Marvel news right now, seen as there is always something, is that Sony and Disney have decided to pull Spider-Man out of the MCU as negotiations on sharing the hero couldn’t be finalised. As you would expect, fans are beyond upset.
Unlike other heroes under the Marvel umbrella, Spider-Man was actually owned by Sony Pictures when he was sold to the company years ago. Disney, which owns Marvel never actually bought back Spider-Man, it is reached a co-financing deal with Sony for the two companies to work together on Spidey films.
When the time came to revise this co-financing deal, neither company would budge on how much Spidey they wanted to give or give up, which is unsurprising considering the most recent Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Far From Home raked in US $1.1 billion. Tensions grew so high that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has been kicked off the team as a producer for future Spider-Man movies. It could very possibly mean too that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man will be kicked out the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
We hope this might change in the future, but understand that the many new responsibilities that Disney has given him – including all their newly added Marvel properties – do not allow time for him to work on IP they do not own. (2/3)
— Sony Pictures (@SonyPictures) August 21, 2019
To absolutely nobody’s surprise, the internet is quite displeased.
#SaveSpiderman is blowing up on Twitter, with enraged fans quite literally tweeting about the loss every second of every minute. Chief among the grievances is the possible lack of resolution on the cliffhanger of the previous movie, as well as fans feeling the Tony Stark x Peter Parker relationship still had room to progress.
YOU CANT JUST LEAVE US ON A CLIFFHANGER AFTER THAT LAST MOVIE UH UH #SaveSpidermanFromSony #SaveSpidey #SaveSpiderMan
— kriz (@krizzle_hannah) August 22, 2019
Spider-Man became an Avenger, went through the blip , fought thanos and his army, lost his father figure, got blind sided from mysterio, fought mysterio, got a gf and then got exposed. YOU CANT JUST TAKE HIM OUT OF THE MCU AFTER ALL OF THIS #SaveSpidey #SaveSpiderMan pic.twitter.com/HQz9f7IbtX
— Al (@wafflesmalik) August 21, 2019
Tom Holland’s dad even tweeted
#SaveSpiderMan https://t.co/9gHHSQBsH7
— Dominic Holland (@domholland) August 21, 2019
Beyond just a trending Twitter tag, fans have also come together to sign petitions in the hope of clawing Spider-Man back into the MCU. At the time of writing there are three petitions on Change.org worth talking about. “Bring Spider-Man Back to MCU”, “Keep Spider-Man with Disney and the MCU” and “KEEP SPIDER-MAN IN THE MCU”. All three of these petitions were created less than 24 hours after the Sony Pictures and Disney news broke.
As it stands right now (August 22), these petitions have over 103,000 signatures combined and that’s in less than a day. You can check out all the Spider-Man related petitions here as well as the largest of the petitions here.
As Esquire Middle East previously wrote about, Holland is actually still slated for two more Spidey films regardless of this sour deal. The jury is out however what the plotline for Holland would be if he has to tiptoe around MCU lore.
