Sony's Marvel Movie Universe Gets a Spider-Man Rebrand

08/24/2021 01:29 pm EDT

As it stands right now, Peter Parker isn't able to have a role in the standalone Marvel movies released by Sony, save for the ones that are co-produced by Marvel Studios (which exist within an entirely different cinematic universe). However, it appears as though a recent franchise rebrand could be hinting at some changes to come for Sony's Marvel world in the near future. Sony took the stage at Cinemacon on Monday night and showed off footage from several upcoming projects, including Spider-Man: No Way Home. During the presentation, the studio also revealed a potentially important name change for its Marvel films.

The movies featuring Spider-Man characters — like Venom, Morbius, the upcoming Kraven the Hunter — have been referred to as Sony Pictures' Universe of Marvel Characters. That long and convoluted title is now gone. Sony revealed on Monday that the new name of the franchise is simply Sony's Spider-Man Universe.

For what seems to be a really simple change, there's a lot to unpack. The obvious thing on the minds of every Marvel fan will be whether or not this means Spider-Man will appear in live-action movies from Sony. It could certainly hint that some kind of crossover situation is in the works, but the deal between Marvel and Sony has its confusing elements, so that could take a lot of work to make happen.

This could also hint that perhaps a different Spider-Man is coming to the Sony universe, someone like Miles Morales. Maybe there's a reason that Miles hasn't made an appearance in the MCU yet.

Then again, there could be a much simpler explanation to all of this. Sony Pictures' Universe of Marvel Characters is a long and annoying title, much harder for fans to get behind then the MCU or DCEU. Sony likely wanted a change. On top of that, why wouldn't Sony want to get the term "Spider-Man" into as much franchise branding as possible? All of the characters it has the rights to are related in one way or another to Spider-Man, so even if the web-slinging hero doesn't appear in one of Sony's standalone movies, it's not exactly untrue. It's the universe around Spider-Man, just potentially without Spider-Man directly involved.

Time will tell what this name change really means, but it's going to be fun to try and speculate until anything concrete comes around.

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