Spider-Man: Homeless? - What's Next For Tom Holland's Peter Parker?

2. Sony's Spider-Man 3

First of all, it’s more a question of what it can’t look like. Taking Spider-Man out of the MCU definitely means that any future movies can’t use characters established as being from the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe. That means no references to the Avengers, Tony Stark, Nick Fury or Happy Hogan: all of which were major parts of the storytelling in Homecoming and Far From Home.

Slightly murkier is whether it could refer to MCU story points. If not, then Peter’s hi-tech Spider-Man suit may have to go the way of the dodo - after all, he may have assembled the latest model, but it’s still Stark technology.

How about that cliffhanger? Well, both Mysterio and J. Jonah Jameson are Spider-Man characters under licence by Sony - but this version of Mysterio is based entirely around his sordid history with Tony Stark and his theft and abuse of Stark’s technology, so there can’t be any mention of why Mysterio did what he did, or how his illusions worked.

This could paint a threequel into a corner. After all, Spider-Man’s been outed as Peter Parker and framed for Mysterio’s death - and Peter’s version of events depends on proving that Mysterio was a fraud.

To do that, he needs to be able to mention why Mysterio did what he did and how his illusions worked. And as a minor, he’ll need an adult to help him do that: but the only adults who could help are Hogan and Fury (either the Talos version or the OG), who Sony can’t use without Disney’s permission.

Sony are also unlikely to be able to mention the snap/the blip again, as it’s an Avengers plotline. Given that literally all of the teenage characters in the main cast were killed by Thanos and resurrected five years later, this could be a significant stumbling block for any solo Sony movie.

Finally, there’s that credibility factor. Sony may believe, following the success of Far From Home, Venom and Into The Spider-verse, that they don’t need the creative input of Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios to make another hit movie in this series, but their track record doesn’t support that kind of confidence.

Venom’s arrival in cinemas exploited a large gap in the superhero market, and that lack of competition helped it to its $856million box office haul. Most of that money was made overseas, however - in China, for example, where it made a cool $270million off the back of an innovative cutesy marketing campaign that didn’t run in any other country.

Meanwhile, Into The Spider-verse is an animated movie made by industry veterans in Sony Pictures Animation: made with low-to-med-level budgets, these titles rarely get poked around by high-up Sony executives. Far From Home, on the other hand, hit cinemas off the back of a genuine cinematic tsunami in which Spider-Man was front and centre. Infinity War and Endgame made nearly five billion dollars between them - around the same as the gross domestic product of Fiji.

No one really believes that, creatively, Sony has anything going on for Tom Holland or for Spider-Man. Remember, this is the studio that was so flummoxed over the direction of the franchise that they rebooted it twice in five years, the second time asking Marvel to take the reins. This has all the hallmarks of an almighty clusterf*ck.

NEXT: COULD SONY AND DISNEY STILL RESOLVE THE ISSUE?