This news is no less exciting for how obvious it may be to us. In a new interview with AlloCine (via Slashfilm), Tom Holland made mention that there are two more Spider-Man movies coming up following next month’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. This comes in direct contrast to what Kevin Feige said about the possibility of more Marvel Studios/Sony team-ups, saying Homecoming would be “as far as it goes for now.” Curiouser and curiouser!
Holland said:
“There is still a lot of room for Peter Parker and Spider-Man especially to grow in the next two movies. Heâs definitely not the finished article by the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming and I really look forward to exploring the different ways he can grow up and go through puberty I guess. Itâs going to be an exciting couple of movies⦠Yeah, thereâll be Spider-Man 2 and 3, it won’t be Homecoming 2 and 3.”
This hadn’t been officially reported anywhere else (though sequel discussions have been going on for awhile), and Holland quickly went ducking for cover from the Marvel snipers the actors are always joking about. (Sidebar: the frequency with which actors in MCU movies talk about snipers taking them out if they share any spoilers makes me concerned that it’s true.) At any rate, it appears to be genuine, at least as far as Holland knows.
On the one hand, of course there are two more Spider-Man movies planned. Sony finally got some of that much-needed Spider-love back in Captain America: Civil War, considering their last three featuresâgoing from 2007’s Spider-Man 3 to 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2âwere underwhelming at best. If Homecoming can get people stoked for the webslinger again, then Sony’s definitely going to want to strike while the iron is hot.
The flipside of that, though, is that Sony seems fairly uneasy about the prospect of a continued relationship with Marvel Studios, and the fact that they pretty much needed the universally beloved Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. to give their new movie that franchise cred. The fact that they’re prepping a solo Venom film, and a Silver Sable/Black Cat team-up movie, evidently free of MCU control, means that they’re trying as much as possible to blaze their own trail, and not have to split the box office results. And even Holland’s words (“it wonât be Homecoming 2 and 3“) makes me think that the line of deviation is very important to Sony.
That said, there are plenty of awesome Spidey stories from the comics that would make excellent fodder for more Holland movies. One that I’d love to see is “Kraven’s Last Hunt” by J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck published in 1987. We’ve never seen Kraven the Hunter on the big screen and now’s the time. That storyline gave us Spidey’s ultimate showdown with the villain, but since baddies tend not to return in these movies (unless it’s Loki), it’s probably well worth introducing the character just to finish him off in grand style.
Another, a bit off the beaten path, would be the 2002-2003 limited series, “Spider-Man: Blue” written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Tim Sale. It’s much more of a romantic story about Spidey feeling sad about Gwen Stacey on Valentine’s Day, and implying that some of his most upsetting and traumatic events were actually the machinations of…Kraven the Hunter! So, actually, I’d love to see “Blue” be the second Holland film and “Last Hunt” be the third one.
What do you think? Is it time Kraven became a movie star? Will these movies have nothing to do with the MCU? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Images: Sony/Marvel
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!