The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a well-oiled machine at this point, with the studio consistently releasing new titles in theaters and streaming with a Disney+ subscription. The latest big screen adventure was Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which broke records at the box office upon its release. Although despite how great the movies are, it sounds like trying to plan a new Spidey film with Sony is a brutal challenge
Fans who spent years watching the Marvel movies in order were thrilled when Spider-Man entered in Captain America: Civil War, and his solo movies have been wildly popular. During an interview with The Bulwark, writer Chris McKenna (who has worked on all of Holland’s solo films) got real about how hard i tis to nail down a villain. He spoke about nailing down Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey, offering:
I think I can say this now, because we did not begin with Jean Grey. So the way we got to her was… really, we were looking — we were just like, ‘Okay, we got this idea for the metamorphosis we really like. We need a villain. Who’s our villain?’ And we were thinking about, ‘God, are there any Spider-Man, like classic villains that we could try to use, that we have not used before?’ Obviously, No Way Home, you know, through the development process, during which we were already competing with the Spider-Verse movies and then the Sony standalones, which is just frustrating. We just got on eating each other’s lunches.
Honestly, my head is spinning. While making each new upcoming Marvel movie is a ton of work, the Spider-Man films have the added challenge of trying to please two different studios. After all, Marvel and Sony have a joint custody agreement with Holland’s hero that can complicate things. Landing on villains seems to be a particular challenge for McKenna and company.
While Spider-Man has a ton of beloved villains to chose from for each new movie, Sony has its own plans that can sometimes collide with the vision for the Marvel films. In the same interview, the writer spoke about this popping up during No Way Home, and how the original plans conflicted with the animated Spider-Verse movies. In his words:
We would break a story for two weeks, and we’d have Spot as our villain in No Way Home. And then we’d find out, ‘Oh, sorry, I just read the new outline for Across the Spider-Verse, and Spot’s in it. So you can’t have that.’
The Spot was a villain in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and because of this Chris McKenna and the team behind No Way Home had to pivot and find another villain. In the end they’d compile a huge list of antagonists from across three franchises. So I guess they landed in the right place.
The acclaimed writer spoke more about how difficult it was to find the right villain for No Way Home, and revealed another bad guy from the comics they were going to include. He said:
During that development process, when we lost Spot, it was like, ‘Well, at least we have Kraven. We know that Kraven, like, Sony’s never gonna — we were told they were never gonna make a standalone Kraven movie. So we always had Kraven, and we had fun ways to get into the Kraven character. Kraven, like, turning New York City into a Home Alone trap for Spider-Man, where he’s set up booby traps everywhere, and you get a big star, like, almost just a laconic character. Kraven, who’s just hunting down Peter Parker.
Talk about FOMO. We’ve yet to see Kraven and Spider-Man face off on the big screen, despite being one of the most iconic members of his rogues gallery. He seemed like a natural fit to go against Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, but those plans also got scrapped after Sony announced the ill-fated Kraven the Hunter movie. As the writer went on to share:
And then it was a joke. It was like, ‘Oh no, Sony’s making a standalone Kraven movie. You’ve got to be kidding me.’
Well, this must have been maddening. Despite all the behind the scenes shakeups, Spider-Man: No Way Home found its villains, and ended up being both a critical and box office success. The same can also be said for Brand New Day, which introduced a new Jean Grey to the shared universe. We’ll just have to wait and see what complications come out of Marvel’s ongoing partnership with Sony for the franchise.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is still in theaters now as part of the 2026 movie release list. We’ll just have to see when Spidey shows up next in the shared universe; the Brand New Day credits scene seemed to tease a role in Secret Wars.
