‘Animated Spider-Man movie?’ you ask? Why yes, that is happening.
There’s no denying that it’s been a turbulent few years for Marvel’s wisecracking wall-crawler. He had his film continuity reset following Spider-Man 3. Then Sony didn’t learn the lesson of Spider-Man 3 and crammed too many villains into Amazing Spider-Man 2. This was one of several reasons that Amazing 2 tanked.
Meanwhile, there was a hole in the MCU in the shape of a science geek with Spider powers. Therefore everyone was delighted when Sony decided to let the MCU borrow Spidey.
Of course, in all the excitement, it’s easy to forget that Sony still owns Spidey’s movie rights. Puny Parker is merely on loan to Marvel. So while Marvel now has creative input on Spider-Man’s live action movie outings, Sony is still free to release their own independent offerings.
Which, the Guardian reports, is exactly what they’re doing.
While Marvel takes charge of the live action side of things, Sony plans to release an animated Spider-Man movie in 2018. This is one year after Spidey’s first solo film in the MCU. It’s a little unclear if this film will be part of the new MCU Spidey’s continuity. Sony Pictures chairman Tom Roth has said that it would ‘co-exist’ with the live action continuity. But a Sony press release claimed that it would ‘exist independently’.
Animated Spider-Man will be produced by Chris Miller and Phil Lord (directors of the Lego Movie). No word yet on whether Spidey will sing ‘Everything is Awesome’ during the movie.
