Spider-Man 4 Shouldn't Be Taking This Long

The MCU’s Spider-Man 4 is an inevitability, but it’s taking far longer to get off the ground than it should.

What’s Happening With Spider-Man 4?

2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home became a cross-generational superhero movie event for the ages, teaming up Tom Holland’s MCU Spider-Man with his two big-screen predecessors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, along with a quintet of villains from Maguire and Garfield’s respective Spider-Man franchises. To say Spider-Man: No Way Home was a phenomenon doesn’t even scratch the surface, with the earning a jaw-dropping $1.9 billion worldwide and standing as the sixth highest-grossing movie of all time. Despite that staggering level of success, the development on Spider-Man 4 has been surprisingly slow.

To be fair, there have been real-world factors that would inevitably cause some degree of delay with the MCU’s Spider-Man 4 actually heading in front of the cameras, not the least of which being Tom Holland’s rise to stardom. Already a household name entirely on his performance as the MCU’s Wall-Crawler, Holland has also ventured into other projects like Sony’s Uncharted and other movies in between his adventures as Spidey. With Holland becoming one of the biggest stars in the world by his mid-twenties, Holland has also shared his intention to “take a year off” in an interview with EW, a perfectly understandable (not to mention well-deserved) career choice after starring in a string of blockbusters that would be the envy of any of his peers. However, Holland hasn’t jumped ship from the Spider-Man role either, with he and Sony reportedly discussing where Spider-Man 4 could go in 2023 prior to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.

Naturally, the strikes themselves also would inevitably have halted any progress on Spider-Man 4 up to that point, but even so, the status of that progress appears remarkably casual for a sequel to one of the biggest and most universally beloved MCU box office hits of all time, and one which reached such incredible heights of success during the COVID-19 pandemic and without being released in China, no less. What makes the slow progress on Spider-Man 4 even more odd is that it should be an obvious priority for both Sony and Marvel Studios. In Sony’s case, the meme-ified flop of 2022’s Morbius (It’s Morbin Time!) coupled with the runaway success of 2023’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse shows just how valuable the Web-Head is to them.

Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield

Meanwhile, Marvel Studios has entered much rockier territory in the post-Avengers: Endgame world, with a mix of successes like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and failures like The Marvels. Marvel seems to be headed back to calmer waters with the upcoming Deadpool 3 and Daredevil: Born Again’s creative overhaul leading to the integration of all of Marvel’s Netflix shows into the MCU, but No Way Home’s blow-out success still gives Marvel Studios an extremely vested interest in the future of Tom Holland’s Spidey. For both studios, Spider-Man 4 belongs right at the top of their priority list, but No Way Home also shines a light on another lingering Spider-Man issue for Sony specifically – namely the futures of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

Maguire and Garfield’s returns in No Way Home were so anticipated that their involvement was effectively an open secret by the time of the movie’s release (also leading to an endless string of hilarious interviews in which Garfield had to deny his return in No Way Home.) With the extremely strong reception to both of their roles in No Way Home, and even their archival footage cameos in Across The Spider-Verse, mainstream interest in more adventures with Peter #2 and Peter #3 has shot through the roof. If the rumour mill is to be believed, Sony and Marvel are currently at an impasse on whether to bring Maguire and Garfield back in the MCU’s Spider-Man 4, but the ideal future for both would be Maguire’s Spider-Man 4 and Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man 3 giving each the loving send-off it seemed they would never get.

In any case, the cultural phenomenon of Spider-Man: No Way Home made further adventures with Holland, Maguire, and Garfield’s Spidey’s a no-brainer from both a business and creative standpoint. Hopefully, Sony and Marvel can finally dot the “i”’s and cross the “t”s for all three in the near future.

Do you think Sony should give the Spider-Man rights back to Marvel?