Marvel’s Kevin Feige Planned “Peter Focused” Spider-Man 3 Before Disney Sony Split

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige planned for future Spider-Man movies to be “all Peter focused and Peter based” after Spider-Man: Far From Home moved Tom Holland’s Peter Parker out of the shadow of mentor Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and the Avengers.

“It’ll be fun to see Spidey back in his element, out of the shadow of Tony, out of the shadow of the other Avengers, as his own man now, as his own hero,” Feige said in a July interview when asked how the franchise moves forward following Far From Home‘s mid-credits shocker. “And yet now facing his own challenges that aren’t coming from Avengers fighting, like [Captain America: Civil War], or aliens coming, like [Avengers: Infinity War] or [Avengers: Endgame]. It’s all Peter focused and Peter based.”

Returning to New York after defeating master of illusion Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) during a class trip to Europe, Spider-Man is surprised to learn the supposedly dead fraudster supplied Daily Bugle pundit J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) with a tape used to out his secret identity on national television.

In a separate interview, Feige said the fallout from that mid-credits reveal meant doing “something completely different next time” and telling a “Peter Parker story that has never been done before on film.”

“The how and the when and the specifics can change and evolve, but setting yourself up for something that has never been done before… at the end of Iron Man, it was a hero publicly outing himself so that in the next movies and all subsequent movies, we couldn’t fall back on the secret identity trope which had been part of Iron Man’s story for decades in the comics,” Feige said. “And now people know Peter’s identity. People now think he’s a villain, Mysterio plays one last trick on him and succeeds… [so that] means everything’s different. Where it goes, we’ll see. But it’s exciting that it once again sets us up for a Peter Parker story that has never been done before on film.”

Those plans have since been derailed by Sony and Marvel parent company Disney’s inability to reach an agreement when coming back to the table to renew the deal that allows the Sony-controlled Spider-Man to exist in the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe under Feige’s stewardship.

The original deal saw Marvel introduce Holland’s Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War before acting as creative producers on Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far From Home for Sony; in turn, Spider-Man was allowed to participate in Disney’s Infinity War and Endgame.

According to an insider with knowledge of the Sony-Disney talks, Sony film chief Tom Rothman feels confident the studio — fresh off the success of Venom and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — no longer needs Feige’s guidance to shepherd a healthy Spider-Man franchise, even if that franchise is severed from the MCU.

After Sony faced viral backlash in response to news talks between both sides broke down, the studio said in a statement Feige was now facing “many new responsibilities” handed down by Disney — namely control over the Fantastic Four and X-Men properties — that “do not allow time for him to work on IP they do not own.”