Disney held its massive D23 convention in Southern California this weekend, and part of that celebration was a sprawling panel covering all of the live-action films that the studio will be bringing to theaters in the coming months. Part of the fun of covering these panels – both on the ground (as our own Eric Eisenberg is doing) and from afar – is guessing what might pop up in footage presentations. Sometimes you guess right, though frequently we get it wrong.
Marvel fans following the footage shown during the Captain America: Civil War panel, for example, were really hoping that they’d get their first glimpse of Tom Holland’s new Spider-Man, who is reportedly making his MCU debut in Joe and Anthony Russo’s 2016 summer blockbuster. Alas, while a decent amount of Civil War footage was screened for those in attendance, Spider-Man was nowhere to be found. And Twitter lamented, as only Twitter can:
Harsh! Tony Stark isn’t stupid. He’s a genius. This is better:
Never? Sometimes they are. But it does beg the question: if Marvel didn’t reveal a glimpse of Spider-Man in the D23 footage for Captain America: Civil War, when might we actually see him?
The safest bet would be December. That’s when Disney has the year’s biggest film – if not the decade’s biggest film – in Star Wars: The Force Awakens coming to theaters. While there’s no need to necessarily push your marketing chips across the table for Civil War (as people are going to know a good deal about it by the time it opens), if the Mouse House wanted to turn Star Wars into an event of corporate and creative synergy, they could let it be known that a Civil War trailer attached to Star Wars would include the first look at Spider-Man. Or, in all honesty, they could sit on it, and not show him at all. At the moment, Spider-Man is the last remaining secret in Civil War (we think), and for now, Marvel’s deciding to keep him close to the vest.
