#Kevin Feige Says There Was a Lot of Pressure to Get Spider-Man’s MCU Movies Right

“#Kevin Feige Says There Was a Lot of Pressure to Get Spider-Man’s MCU Movies Right”

In another universe, the world wouldn’t be watching Tom Holland’s Spider-Man become the first $1 billion movie in over two years, but perhaps speculating via social media on how a third solo Spider-Man movie may have been. Of course, that reality would only have existed if Sony and Disney had not managed to come to a new agreement in 2019 after parting ways for a short period when it looked like the whole deal between the two companies which allowed Spider-Man to be part of the MCU was about to be snapped away like half the universe in Avengers: Infinity War. However, a new deal was struck, but with great new deals comes great responsibility to deliver. While Spider-Man: No Way Home has delivered more than could ever have been expected, Kevin Feige recently revealed that the pressure to get Spider-Man right goes way back.

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“When I met with Amy Pascal and first approached her about joining forces to do a Spider-Man movie together and set him in the MCU and when we got her blessing and the blessing of Sony and Tom Rothman came on board and believed in it, there was a lot of pressure, right? It’s one thing getting people to say yes, it’s another thing now delivering on what the heck you were talking about,” Feige said in a new interview Sony released as part of their Spider-Man: No Way Home promotion. “And the first step on that is casting, and is saying ‘okay let’s find the youngest, Peter Parker who we can grow with and who can do scenes with these other Marvel heroes for the first time.'”

“We knew that Tony Stark was going to be a big part of that, and Civil War was already shooting at the time, and we weren’t sure we were going to be able to cast Peter Parker and include him in the initial round of photography on Civil War, but we wanted to make every effort to do that,” he added.

While previous Spider-Man movies have seemed to hit a particular stumbling block, whether it was the second time around in Andrew Garfield’s case, or third time with Tobey Maguire, Tom Holland’s incorporation into the MCU narrative is one that has grown with every appearance. There is just something about the actor and the way he plays Peter Parker and his superhero alter-ego that had endeared him to audiences in a way that previous Spider-Men didn’t quite manage on the same scale.

“We knew coming out of Far From Home that we didn’t want to shy away from the fact that his identity is now revealed, it’s out there, and that was certainly always the starting point, and with Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna and our director Jon Watts and Amy Pascal we sat and just started brainstorming, what happens next?” he continued. “What happens to him as he starts to- as he swings away from Madison Square Garden where that big TV screen outed his identity? And how does his life change and get turned upside down? And more importantly, how does it affect his friends? Peter Parker can handle a lot, but when he starts to see his friends being affected by his actions unfairly that really is emotionally draining for him. So that was always early on where it was, and we had a lot of fun discussions, it’s always, having a discussion of ‘You know what would be cool? It would be cool if we did this, it would be cool if we did that.’ As I said, I’d always been saying if we ever brought Ock back you’d have to bring Alfred Molina in, and how would you do that? We thought it might be fun someday.”

With Spider-Man: No Way Home becoming Sony’s biggest movie ever, and Spider-Man 4 and beyond already in discussion, it is safe to say that the initial pressures of bringing Peter Parker into the MCU has undoubtedly paid off in the long run, and it is a collaboration that doesn’t appear to in any danger of ending just yet.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently played exclusively in cinemas.