The ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Sequel Faces A Unique Challenge
The ending of Marvel Studios’Avengers: Infinity Warhas everyone looking ahead toAvengers 4and speculating about how some of those events might be undone, but the marketing team at Sony Pictures is likely focused on an entirely different question. How the heck are they supposed to market theSpider-Man Homecomingsequel without spoiling the events ofAvengers 4?
Spoilersfollow.
Avengers: Infinity War Put Sony in a Bind
The fact thatSpider-Man: Homecoming 2is being planned at all is already a spoiler forAvengers 4, and savvy fans who knew the sequel was in the works may have felt slightly cheated whenTom Holland’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man blew away into dust in Tony Stark’s arms. The performances and the writing are good enough to allow that moment to work despite that outside knowledge, but it doesn’t take long before you realize there was no way Sony was going to let Marvel Studios erase one of its biggest moneymakers from existence for good.
TheHomecomingsequel hits theaters onJuly 5, 2019. That’s just a little more than two months afterAvengers 4debuts. Sony definitely wants audiences knowing that they have a new Spidey sequel coming soon. So how are they going to marketHomecoming 2?
The Difference a Few Minutes Make
Things may have been a bit easier had producerAmy Pascalnot previously revealed thatHomecoming 2begins"a few minutes" after the events ofAvengers 4. But Pascal wasn’t the only one who spilled the beans on this one: Marvel Studios presidentKevin Feigehas also explained how the next live-action Spidey movieis going to kick off the next phase of the MCUand will attempt to answer the question of “how the hell are the events ofInfinity WarandUntitled [Avengers]going to affect [Peter Parker] as he, yes, goes back to his junior year?” Without those quotes, audiences might have assumed that, like the planned Black Widow movie, the next live-action Spidey film could be a prequel. But now the cat’s out of the bag.
Here’s How It Might Work
The first teaser trailer forSpider-Man: Homecomingarrived more than six months beforeHomecominghit theaters. But if Sony adheres to that same strategy next time, they’ll be putting out their first trailer four months beforeAvengers 4arrives. As far as I can tell, there’s only one way for this to work. TheAvengers 4trailers have to include Peter Parker waking up in an alternate dimension or being brought back to life somehow. Those are things Marvel Studios would almost certainly rather have audiences learn about for the first time in the theater, but if Marvel doesn’t do something along those lines, Sony will have an impossible challenge on their hands.
Technically speaking, Sony may not care if they spoilAvengers 4because the deal they signed with Marvel Studios means thatSony and Marvel don’t share profits for movies involving Spider-Man. (In other words, Sony keeps the money from the Spidey-related films they produce, and Marvel Studios keeps the money from the team-up movies involving Spider-Man.) But I can’t imagine Sony would want to tank that relationship, so they’re probably crossing their fingers thatAvengers 4’s trailers reveal that Spidey survives.
Captain MarvelandAnt-Man and the Wasp, the two MCU films that premiere beforeAvengers 4, are easy to deal with because they’re both set before Thanos' reign of terror inInfinity War. But theSpider-Man Homecomingsequel showcases an unseen intricacy in this new age of interconnected blockbuster storytelling: when these movies dominate the cinematic landscape to such a degree that they don’t have enough breathing room, it sets up a game of chicken even among players on the same side. And in this case, someone’s going to have to blink.
