"For The Moment The Door Is Closed" For Spider-Man's Return To The MCU, Sony Pictures CEO Says

After Jon Favreau gave fans a little bit of hope about the possibility of Spider-Man maybe, perhaps, possibly, conceivably returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra has seemingly put the nail in the coffin on that thought – for now, anyway.

Speaking at Variety's Entertainment and Technology summit, Vinciquerra said, "for the moment the door is closed" regarding Spider-Man's reunion with his MCU pals, and he commented that it's been "an interesting couple of weeks" since word first surfaced about the character's split from Disney's Marvel Studios. Read several more of his Spidey-related comments below.

While Favreau hinted that there could be a glimmer of hope for a possible reconciliation between the two studios, Vinciquerra did not seem interested in keeping fans' hopes alive. (Although he did at one point say, "it's a long life," seemingly implying that maybe, perhaps, possibly, conceivably, one day, Spidey may swing back to the MCU. But such a vague, long-term chance dramatically lowers the chances that Tom Holland's version will ever be back.)

"We had a great run with [Kevin Feige] on Spider-Man movies. We tried to see if there's a way to work it out....the Marvel people are terrific people, we have great respect for them, but on the other hand we have some pretty terrific people of our own. Kevin didn't do all the work."

At the summit, he also repeated Sony's familiar talking point about why a deal couldn't be reached: it's partially due to Vinciquerra's opinion that Feige is "stretched incredibly thin" with his MCU duties as it is. While it's true that Phase 4 of the MCU includes an ambitious slate of films and TV shows, Feige himself has yet to comment about whether or not he could handle the workload of producing another Spider-Man film.

Sony has consistently tried to downplay Feige's contributions in making Spider-Man one of the most popular cinematic characters in the movie landscape right now. Vinciquerra seems to have a short memory about the cinematic history of this character, saying:

"Spider-Man was fine before the event movies, did better with the event movies, and now that we have our own universe, he will play off the other characters as well. I think we're pretty capable of doing what we have to do here."

You'll have to excuse Vinciquerra on this one: he joined Sony Pictures in 2017, so maybe he never saw The Amazing Spider-Man movies. Head over to Variety to read the rest of Vinciquerra's comments.