There’s no question that last year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home served as the end of an era for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, with the young hero requesting Doctor Strange erase all knowledge of his civilian self from everyone’s memory within his reality in order to save the multiverse. He’s now on his own and with limited resources, but arguably closer than ever to resembling the classic version of Spidey from the comics. Even ahead of No Way Home’s theatrical premiere, it was said that we’d be seeing more Holland’s Web-Slinger, but is Spider-Man 4 (not to be confused with the scrapped Tobey Maguire-led movie) still in the cards?
Officially speaking, Spider-Man 4 has been in development since shortly after Spider-Man: No Way Home started making waves at the box office, although this past July, it was reported that Tom Holland hadn’t signed a new deal to keep playing Peter Parker. Nevertheless, Tom Rothman, Sony’s movie studio chairman, is confident that a fourth Holland-led Spider-Man movie will come out (and then land on our ranking of the best Spider-Man movies), though a time table hasn’t been set. As he put it to THR:
You bet. When you can expect it, I don’t know. Serve no wine before it’s time.
Remember that although Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies take place within the MCU, these are still chiefly Sony productions, with the studio also making good use of the hero’s film rights by releasing movies like Venom and Morbius that are set within the separate Sony’s Spider-Man Universe continuity, as well as the animated Spider-Verse movies. In other words, Sony remains all on on Spider-Man, so why wouldn’t Tom Rothman and the other executives want to keep Holland’s run as Spidey going? So even if the specifics haven’t been worked out just yet (at least from the public’s perspective), this is a matter of when rather than if, provided there aren’t any major shakeups.
Given that the MCU’s Phase 5 slate already pretty packed on the film side of things, with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania kicking off this next era in February and Blade concluding it in September 2024, it’s looking like the earliest we’d see Spider-Man 4 is sometime in Phase 6, which has Deadpool 3, Fantastic Four and the next two Avengers movies slotted. Let’s also not forget that Tom Holland said in February that he was taking a break from acting, and we don’t know if this break is ending soon or if he’ll be heading back to work in the new year. Either way, I imagine the earliest we would see Spider-Man 4 is sometime in 2025, i.e. over three years after Spider-Man: No Way Home’s release.
Despite Spider-Man: No Way Home’s game-changing ending, Zendaya, who plays MJ, is reportedly expected to return for Spider-Man 4. On the other hand, it’s unclear if that’s the same case for Jon Watts, director of Tom Holland’s first three Spider-Man movies, as he stepped away from helming Fantastic Four because he wanted to take a break from blockbuster movies, and now he’s working on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and a heist movie reuniting Ocean’s Eleven duo George Clooney and Brad Pitt. So it’s possible a new filmmaker could be tapped for Spider-Man 4, and with Peter’s changed status quo, don’t be surprised if the majority of the supporting cast is made up of Spider-Man characters we haven’t seen in the MCU yet, like Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy.
Once there are any specific updates to share about Spider-Man 4, we’ll pass them along. Until then, Spider-Man: No Way Home can be streamed on Starz, and most of the other MCU movies can be accessed with a Disney+ subscription. The next straightforward Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is slated for June 2 among the 2023 movie releases.
