A new Marvel Studios book chronicles the storied meeting that MCU boss Kevin Feige held with Sony chairperson Amy Pascal about Spider-Man's cinematic future.
The new book, The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Tara Bennett and Paul Terry, offers fans an all-access history to the creation of the MCU, covering everything from 2008's Iron Man through to 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home and how Marvel collaborated with Sony to forge a new creative direction for the web-slinger.
One section of the 512-page story, transcribed by The Direct, details a conversation between Marvel boss Kevin Feige and Sony Motion Picture Group chairperson Amy Pascal in which Feige proposed the idea of Spider-Man joining the MCU, as Marvel had already established "a good sense of how they would like to handle the character" if given the opportunity.
"Pascal wasted no time in expressing her strong desire to have Feige be more directly involved, creatively, in the making of Sony Pictures' The Amazing Spider-Man 3. Excited about the ideas her team currently had, Pascal said she would send Feige the latest draft." an excerpt from the book reads, revealing Sony's own stance on Spider-Man's future.
Feige, however, came straight out and told Pascal that Sony's plans for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 were not going to work. He instead offered a counter-proposal and suggested that Marvel handle the next Spider-Man movie. Initially, the idea of the crossover deal evoked an emotional reaction from Pascal who appeared reluctant to hand the responsibility over.
"The only way I know how to do anything is to just do it entirely," Feige is believed to have said in his pitch, which seemingly caught Pascal off-guard. "So why don't you let us do it? Don't think of it as two studios. And don't think of it as giving another studio back the rights. No change of hands of rights. No change of hands of money. Just engage us to produce it."
"At first, I was super resentful," Pascal admits in the book. "I think I started crying and threw him out of my office, or threw a sandwich at him – I'm not sure which… By the fifth 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."
Pascal's change of heart came when she realized that Sony's plans for Spider-Man were not fresh anymore. She noted that Feige had always shared a mutual love for the character and that he had presented some really smart ideas on what to do with Spider-Man in the MCU, having found a new direction to set up the next stage for Spider-Man's journey.
"Pascal called Feige back the next day after their lunch. The concept of a collaboration between Sony and Marvel Studios had not left her mind," the book recounts. "[Pascal] admits, 'The idea of putting him up against a world where everybody had everything and he had nothing was a whole new way of telling his story. I thought, 'Goddamn, that guy's smart.'"
As a result of that conversation, Tom Holland went on to make his Spider-Man debut in 2016's Captain America: Civil War before swinging into his first solo outing as a young Peter Parker/Spider-Man in 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming. He will be wall-crawling across our screens again in Spider-Man: No Way Home when that Phase 4 movie hits theaters this December.
No Way Home is expected to include some multiverse elements and may even converge the various Spider-Man universes together in such a way that it potentially allows Holland to make future appearances in both the MCU and the SPUMC (aka Sony Pictures' Universe of Marvel Characters) — depending on what the future has in store for the franchise.
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.