After Secret Wars, Marvel has big plans for Spider-Man
Kevin Feige has confirmed Marvel Studios has a major Spider-Man project in motion — though fans will be waiting until after the animated saga’s next chapter to see it.
So, Tom Holland is back for his fourth Spider-Man solo film, hitting the big screen on 31 July. Bit of an awkward crossroads for the character though, this one. Marvel and Sony are both counting on Peter Parker to buoy the late-summer box office, even as the MCU at large is winding up the so-called Multiverse Saga. If you’re keeping score: Avengers: Doomsday lands in December, with Avengers: Secret Wars wrapping things up on 17 December, 2027. Studio bosses have already suggested that whatever comes after will be a trimmer, pared-down Marvel universe—less bloat, fewer Easter eggs, or so they’d have us believe.
The new film is tracking for a $180 million to $190 million domestic opening weekend.
Enter: Miles Morales (Finally)
Now, for literal years, the elephant in the room has been whether Spider-Man’s world will ever expand to properly include Miles Morales—Sony’s other webslinger. The official line was always the same: Sony had Miles locked up, with Marvel quietly told to keep their mitts off. But that’s changed, apparently. This week, Marvel boss Kevin Feige finally confirmed to the Chinese outlet Watching Hollywood, during a Shanghai press tour, that a live-action Miles is not ‘if’, but ‘when’—and that timeline is now down to Sony’s animated Spider-Verse films wrapping up, not some Avengers crossover event.
Feige’s words (paraphrased, but not by much): the future ‘destiny’ of the live-action films is to bring in Miles Morales, but only ‘sometime after’ the Spider-Verse series ends. He even pointed out that Jamie Foxx’s quip about a ‘Black Spider-Man’ in No Way Home was a deliberate nudge. Not so subtle, in retrospect.
Spider-Verse and What Comes Next
This all centres around Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, which will finally open on 18 June, 2027, with Shameik Moore voicing Miles once again. That, in effect, blocks any live-action Miles film until, at absolute earliest, the back half of 2027—meaning Marvel couldn’t squeeze Miles into their own plans before Secret Wars, even if they were inclined to move fast. Spoiler: Marvel calendars are rarely that nimble.
It’s a contrast from last summer, when Feige was blunt: no live-action Miles, ‘nowhere,’ and all hands-off—Sony’s rules, with the animated trilogy still ticking along. Fast-forward a year, and Feige plus long-time Spider-producer Amy Pascal are openly charting out plotlines for two, three, even as many as five more Spider-Man movies, no matter whose logo shows up in the intro. It’s that confident, long-term thinking you only get from a studio convinced people will still be queuing up for spider-powers in the 2030s and beyond.
For now, Marvel is teeing up a one-hour panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, 25 July, where they’re likely to talk up Doomsday and—if history’s any guide—drop their more juicy details to a crowd hungry for clues.