While on tour promoting the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel chief Kevin Feige is of course being peppered with questions about other upcoming projects. One in particular that’s seen some tidbits of news coming out? Spider-Man 4, aka the fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man movie. And not only is there someone(s) working on a script, but Feige confirmed director Jon Watts is almost definitely not returning.
“Amy [Pascal] and I are working on it,” Feige told Gizmodo when asked about the status of the film. “We have writers who are going to be delivering us a draft relatively soon.”
It’s not a huge surprise they’re working on a fourth Holland Spider-Man film. But it is a bit of a surprise that it’s taking this long, and is still shrouded in so much secrecy. After appearing in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, Holland basically played Peter Parker / Spider-Man almost yearly. Spider-Man: Homecoming premiered in 2017, Avengers: Infinity War in 2018, Avengers: Endgame in 2019, Spider-Man: Far From Home later that same year, and then Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021.
And in fact, as No Way Home was about to be released, producer Amy Pascal made a move that in show business is called “pulling a Sony” and announced that Sony and Marvel were working on three more Spider-Man movies, despite no real evidence that was actually happening.
“This is not the last movie that we are going to make with Marvel – [this is not] the last Spider-Man movie,” Pascal told Fandango in 2021. “We are getting ready to make the next Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland and Marvel. We’re thinking of this as three films, and now we’re going to go onto the next three. This is not the last of our MCU movies.”
A month later, Pascal seemingly walked this bold talk back in an interview with the New York Times, with Feige adding a much more conservative statement. “Amy and I and Disney and Sony are talking about — yes, we’re actively beginning to develop where the story heads next,” Feige said, “which I only say outright because I don’t want fans to go through any separation trauma like what happened after Far From Home. That will not be occurring this time.”
So now we know, two and a half years later, that someone is working on a script. A recent update from Production Weekly seemed to indicate that Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, who wrote the previous Holland Spider-Man trilogy, were working on this one. It also indicated that the flick was aiming for an October 2024 production start date in the UK, which seems wildly soon if Feige and company are just getting handed a draft of the script. So take that with a grain of salt.
However, we do know one person who won’t be returning for the movie: director Jon Watts. As Feige told Cinemablend, “We love Jon. Jon did three of the best Spider-Man films ever for us. He’s got lots of things going on now. So we’ll probably be looking for somebody else, just because he’s busy.”
This isn’t a surprise since Watts said as much after the No Way Home. Recent speculation has pointed to directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, or John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Holland and Zendaya (who played MJ) are set to return, and particularly with the latter’s busy schedule — she’s currently scheduled to shoot Euphoria Season 3 and Dune 3 in 2025 — they may want to lock in that script and directing team soon. Otherwise, we’re going to be watching Spider-Man: Old Folks Home some time in 2036.
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