Spider-Man: Brand New Day looks set to break box office records this weekend, and despite Marvel Studios' struggles during the Multiverse Saga, there's no doubting its involvement in these movies is why they're so successful.
Despite that, in 2019, Sony Pictures decided it could go it alone with the wall-crawler. The plan was to follow Spider-Man: Far From Home with a movie not set in the MCU, but continuing the adventures of Tom Holland's web-slinger (while never confirmed, Kraven the Hunter was the rumoured villain).
In a lengthy interview with Josh Horowitz, Holland reflected on that tumultuous period for Spider-Man, admitting that it "confused" him.
"In my eyes, everything between the two studios was fantastic," he explained. "The first movie went really well. The borrowing of the character for Civil War seemed to be a big success. I love Tom Rothman. I love Amy Pascal. I love Rachel O' Connor. I still had a great sense of confidence that whatever we would do with that [third] movie would be great and would be really fun."
"It was made very clear to me that they weren't moving on from me. It was just that the relationship between mom and dad had fallen apart a little bit," Holland noted. "I think, you know, both of the studios chatted with each other and figured it out and recognised that the character would serve both."
At least part of the reason Marvel Studios and Sony clashed was the latter's desire to bring Spider-Man into its spin-off projects like Venom and Morbius. The taste of that we got—The Vulture's cameo in The Living Vampire's solo outing, for example—was not good, but for Holland, a crossover was never officially on the table.
"Rothman is a really smart guy, and I think that he was building this universe and they had this plan to kind of merge the worlds at some point. And I think that they just never found the right time to do so. I think it was on the cards," he revealed. "There were never any battles of, 'We want you to be in this movie, and 'I don't want to be in this movie.' That never happened."
What Sony was plotting isn't clear, but a meeting with Venom did look likely for a time. Asked about never getting to share the screen with Tom Hardy's Lethal Protector, Holland replied, "Anything could happen. Who knows what the future of my Spider-Man looks like. Just wait and see, bro. Just wait and see."
While we don't know what the plan is for the next Spider-Man movie, Holland has said repeatedly that he intends to pass the baton to a young actor playing Miles Morales. According to the actor, "a whole plan" has been in the works since Spider-Man: No Way Home.
"It's going to change for sure, but I have a really clear vision for the passing on of the baton," he teased, "and I think it's really exciting. I know I get really excited when we have these meetings and chat about it. That is the thing that I want to do most in this character."
Before we reach that point, the hope is that Holland will reprise the role in Avengers: Secret Wars and don the Symbiote costume. Promising that he has "no idea" what the movie is about, the actor shared his take on possibly wearing Peter Parker's black suit.
"I love the black suit in Tobey's movie. I think that's really cool. I think if we ever got to do a black suit in Spider-Man, I don't know how we would I don't know how we would tackle that challenge because they did it so well in the game, right?" he mused. "And I don't know how you make a suit that's similar to the one in the game without having a CG component."
You can hear more from Holland in the player below.