Well, whodathunkit? Well, if we're being honest almost everyone - first as a matter of common sense, secondly as a matter of finance. It was only a matter of WHEN.
Yes, it appears a deal has been done between SONY and Marvel/Disney to allow Spider-man to appear in both cinematic 'universes'. Most people know that until now that was impossible because even though Spider-man is a Marvel character in print, the rights to make any movies about the character were sold-off to SONY when the Marvel publishing empire was in severe financial trouble in the 1990s. At that point Marvel had very few realistic movie-making plans or abilities. But with the turnaround of the company and the creation of Marvel Studios leading to massive successes like Iron Man, Captain America and The Avengers films, there was frustration that Marvel's best-known character was absent from the shared universe of the Marvel films. SONY kept making Spider-man movies, but to diminishing returns - deciding to reboot their Tobey Maguire / Sam Raimi trilogy into an Andrew Garfield / Marc Webb retelling. The last movie didn't do well critically or financially and that may have been one of the main factors for the studios to find a way to work things out.
The recent hacking of SONY revealed that there HAD been talks about such but that they had appeared to have stalled. However the deal is now back on, though it's involved some caveats, twists and turns. It's NOT a sale of Spider-man back to Marvel, its a sharing. Spider-man will first appear in a Marvel Studios film, what may amount to something akin to an extended cameo - important but not necessarily the main focus. Smart money says this has to be the Captain America: Civil War film (which details a major fracture within the superhero community). Then the character will appear in a solo film again, made by SONY but with SONY's Amy Pascal AND Marvel's Kevin Feige in producing roles. Latest rumours suggest Andrew Garfield will not reprise the role in either film.
The news also means a shift in some of the previously announced release dates. The likes of the forthcoming Ant-Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron, due this year, are done and ready for release on their normal dates. Doctor Strange remains due on 6th November 2016 with Guardians of the Galaxy due 5th May 2017. At the moment, the new dates for other films now appear to be:
SONY's next Spider-man will websling into cinemas on 28th July, 2017 which would have collided with the release date for hammer-throwing Thor: Ragnarok so the latter now shifts to 3rd November. Black Panther, in turn, shifts off that November date and back eight months to 6th July 2018. The domino-effect continues with Captain Marvel now heading to 2nd November 2018. The Inhumans now looks set for 12th July, 2019. Sony's proposed Sinister Six movie, featuring a rogues' gallery of Spider-man villains is now off the schedule for the time being.
Marvel recently got the rights back to use Daredevil and their Netflix tv-based version starts this spring. FOX, unaffected by the new deal, still owns the separate rights to other Marvel characters such as Fantastic Four and the X-Men and. has films for both. The rebooted Fantastic Four opens on 7th August this year, directed by Josh Trank. X-Men: Age of Apocalypse opens 27th May 2016, once again directed by Bryan Singer.
