When The Amazing Spider-Man 2 didn't work out as Sony Pictures hoped in 2014, the studio relented to fan pressure—the "Sony Hack" had revealed possible team-up discussions with Marvel Studios—and allowed Kevin Feige to bring Spidey into the MCU.
Call it greedy or an unwillingness to have a single Spider-Man franchise in theaters, but Sony eventually decided to launch its own Spider-Man-less Marvel Universe.
That started with Venom in 2018, and while reviews were largely negative, the movie was a box office hit. Venom: Let There Be Carnage followed and made significantly less, and the franchise expanded from there with poorly received titles like Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter. Those were all critical and commercial failures.
While those characters could work without Spider-Man, the execution of each was flawed, and we'd later hear that Sony had put its Marvel Universe on hiatus to focus on Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. However, with Spider-Noir drawing positive reviews, the studio is bound to return to its well of characters at some point.
In an interview with GamesRadar+, longtime Spider-Man franchise producer Amy Pascal opened up on the studio's approach moving forward.
"You don't want to just keep exploiting the same character," she started. "I think that would make it unspecial for the world. So there are other things in the Spider-Man universe that I think are really fun for us to explore, because the comics were so varied and so creative."
"I think Peter Parker should exist in live action, and I love what we're doing with Miles in the animated movies," Pascal continued. "We just have to be really careful that we're being smart about all this."
It's good that Sony has seemingly realised it needs to justify the existence of these projects. Pascal's comments are a little vague, and there are a few different ways to read into her mention of "exploiting the same character." It could mean Sony doesn't want to make a slate of projects about Spidey Variants, or that it plans to move on from Venom, for example.
As of now, the two Spider-Man movies mentioned above are the only ones officially in development. There's been talk of an R-rated animated Venom movie and some Spider-Verse spin-offs, but nothing has a confirmed release date. We also don't know when Spider-Man 5 will be released.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31.