Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was at a press roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, and someone asked him about the chances of Miles Morales—yep, the star of that amazing, award-winning Spider-Verse trilogy—making his way into the MCU.

Feige’s answer? “That is nowhere… Sony has their brilliant, genius, incredible Spider-Verse animated franchise going, and until that finishes, we’ve been told to stay away.” And just like that, I felt the urge to write about my all-time favorite webhead, because honestly, so few people know how deep and dramatic Spider-Man’s story really is—not just in the comics or movies, but also behind the scenes. A lot of folks know and love Spider-Man—the stories, the suits, the villains, the whole multiverse thing. But not everyone knows that Spider-Man’s journey off-screen is just as wild as anything he’s done swinging through New York. And it all started way before he made his comic debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 (written by Stan Lee, drawn by Steve Ditko) back in August 1962. That was during what many call the “Golden Age” of comics and the beginning of Marvel’s rise to glory.

Let ’s rewind a bit. Marvel didn’t start with superheroes. It was founded in 1939 as Timely Comics, then became Atlas Comics in the ’50s. Back then, they were just trying to survive. The comic industry was in chaos after the U.S. Senate went after horror comics for supposedly corrupting kids. So Atlas (Marvel at the time) just did whatever was selling—romance, westerns, anything. Think Millie the Model and Rawhide Kid. Then in 1957, Marvel got hit with a terrible distribution deal that limited them to only eight titles a month. Most of the staff got laid off. Meanwhile, DC Comics was killing it with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Everything changed in 1961, when Stan Lee, Marvel’s resident creative genius (and shameless self-promoter), teamed up with artist Jack Kirby to create the Fantastic Four. These weren’t perfect heroes—they argued, made mistakes, and felt real. Fans loved it. The comic took off, and suddenly Marvel had a hit. From there, things snowballed. Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Thor, and Hulk—all rolled out in the ’60s. Marvel became the place for heroes with heart and flaws.

Fast forward to 1991, and Marvel was on top of the world. Their re-launch of X-Men #1 (written by Chris Claremont, drawn by Jim Lee) sold over 8 million copies, a record that still stands. The issue had five different covers, and collectors went wild buying every version, sometimes multiple times. These books weren’t just stories; they were “investments” to seal in plastic sleeves and save for retirement. The whole industry got sucked into a speculative bubble. People were buying comics not to read them, but to flip them later for profit. Publishers like Marvel leaned into it hard: tons of #1 issues, shiny covers, spin-offs, reboots—you name it. Fans bought everything. Retailers overstocked. Everyone thought the money would keep coming, and even while the hype was peaking, some people were waving red flags. One of them was Neil Gaiman—you know, the guy who would go on to write American Gods and Good Omens. At the time, he was known for his brilliant run on The Sandman over at DC. He warned retailers that the gold-foil bubble would burst. He told them flat-out: “You’re ordering too many copies. People won’t want these in five years.” But retailers and speculators were having none of it.

By the mid-’90s, the bubble burst. People stopped buying. Sales tanked. The value of those “collectible” comics crashed.

Marvel tried to fix things by buying Heroes World Distribution in 1994 to handle their own shipping, but it totally backfired. Orders got delayed, messed up, or never arrived. Retailers were pissed. On top of that, Marvel had sunk tons of money into things like Toy Biz (action figures), Fleer/SkyBox (trading cards), theme park deals, and mass comic printing. So when the crash hit, they were stuck with mountains of unsold stuff and massive debt.

By 1996, Marvel Entertainment Group had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Yep—Spider-Man’s home company went broke.

By 1996, Marvel was deep in bankruptcy, buried under bad investments, late comic shipments, and warehouses full of unsold trading cards. The company was a mess—like, Spider-Man-swinging-through-a-financial-disaster levels of messy.

A massive tug-of-war broke out behind the scenes between Marvel’s then-owner, billionaire Ron Perelman, and a couple of lesser-known but game-changing players: Avi Arad and Ike Perlmutter, who were running Toy Biz—the company that made Marvel’s action figures. Eventually, Perelman lost the fight. In 1998, Toy Biz and Marvel merged, and the guys from Toy Biz—Perlmutter and Arad—took over. That was the official end of Marvel Entertainment Group (MEG). From then on, the company would be known as Marvel Enterprises, which later became Marvel Entertainment, LLC (and eventually got scooped up by Disney in 2009, but that’s a completely different superhero saga).

Now here’s where things get especially painful. Before the bankruptcy, Marvel had already been licensing out its characters to survive. They didn’t have the money to make movies themselves, so they made deals—short-term cash, long-term regret. And the biggest deal of all? They sold the film rights to Spider-Man. That’s right. In the early 1990s, Marvel sold the rights to Sony Pictures. It wasn’t just a random licensing deal—it was a full-blown handover of movie rights, which meant Sony controlled all cinematic use of Spider-Man and related characters (like Mary Jane, Green Goblin, Venom, etc.). Marvel still owned the character, but they couldn’t use him in their own movies. What’s wild is that before Sony, Marvel had tried to shop Spider-Man to other studios—including Cannon Films (yes, the low-budget company behind Superman IV and Masters of the Universe). That project fell apart, but by the time Sony came around, Marvel was desperate.

So when Spider-Man finally hit the big screen in 2002, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, it wasn’t Marvel calling the shots—it was Sony. The film was a massive hit, launching a billion-dollar franchise… but Marvel saw none of that sweet, sweet movie profit. In a twist of irony, Marvel had built one of the most iconic superheroes in history… and now had to watch from the sidelines while someone else turned him into a global movie sensation.

Sony had struck gold with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. The first movie in 2002 crushed the box office, and Tobey Maguire became the face of Peter Parker for an entire generation. Spider-Man 2 (2004) was a masterpiece—arguably one of the best superhero movies ever made. It had everything: Doc Ock, emotional weight, existential crisis, and upside-down kisses. Classic. Then came Spider-Man 3 in 2007. And… yeah. You probably remember the dancing. The eyeliner. The three villains crammed into one script because the studio wanted it. Raimi wanted to focus on Sandman and the emotional threads, but Sony executives pushed Venom into the plot, and everything got bloated and messy. Even Raimi wasn’t happy with it. Fans were confused. Critics were lukewarm.

Sony had planned a Spider-Man 4, and Raimi was on board. But the creative tension between him and the studio never eased. Raimi didn’t want to rush a half-baked film just to hit a release date, and Sony didn’t want to wait. So in 2010, the whole thing fell apart. Spider-Man 4 was scrapped. And just like that, Tobey’s Peter Parker was done.

But Sony wasn’t about to let their golden goose sit idle. Enter: the reboot. In 2012, they launched The Amazing Spider-Man, with a new Peter Parker played by Andrew Garfield. He was younger, more sarcastic, and had a skateboard. Directed by Marc Webb, the tone was darker, sleeker, and a little more brooding. It wasn’t bad—it even gave us Emma Stone as a scene-stealing Gwen Stacy—but it had a weird déjà vu effect. Audiences were being asked to re-watch Spider-Man’s origin story just 10 years after Tobey’s. Why the reboot so soon? Simple: contractual obligation. See, Sony had to keep making Spider-Man movies every few years (a legal clause in the deal with Marvel that I can’t make sense of) or risk losing the rights back to Marvel. So even though there was no real demand for a reboot, they hit reset. Gotta keep the brand alive.

Meanwhile—on the other side of the superhero universe—Marvel was doing something radically different. While Sony was rebooting Spider-Man, Marvel Studios (finally making its own movies) had launched a little film in 2008 called Iron Man. It starred a recently revitalized Robert Downey Jr., and nobody expected it to kick off a revolution. But it did. It was sharp, cool, and confident—and at the very end, in a little post-credits scene, Nick Fury showed up and talked about the Avengers Initiative. That was the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Marvel Studios, now under Kevin Feige’s vision, started building out a connected world, one hero at a time: The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). And finally, it all came together with The Avengers in 2012—the same year Garfield’s Spider-Man was swinging around solo in Sony’s separate universe. Talk about timing.

While Marvel was connecting the dots, Sony was fumbling with rewrites, retcons, and increasingly forced world-building. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) was supposed to launch Sony’s own cinematic universe—with spin-offs like Sinister Six, Venom, and even a rumored Aunt May solo film (yep, seriously). But it didn’t work. The film underperformed, critics weren’t thrilled, and fans were mostly confused.

At this point, everyone wanted one thing: Why can’t Spider-Man just be part of the MCU already?

So, picture this: it’s 2014, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 just wrapped up with blue Electro, awkward romance, and a teaser for villains who never came. Sony’s grand plan for a Spider-Verse was falling apart. Meanwhile, over at Marvel Studios, The Avengers had already changed the game—and fans were begging for Spidey to join the party.

And then… Sony got hacked.

Yeah. Real-world drama, and I swear this part had me laughing my heart out. In November 2014, hackers (Guardians of Peace) released a vast trove of internal Sony Pictures documents, including over 200,000 email messages, a lot of them from the (then) Co-chairperson of Sony Pictures entertainment, Amy Pascal. Some of these leaked emails were humiliating or crude remarks from Hollywood peers—such as references to Bruce Jenner’s transition, awkward messages about Rita Ora, and even explicit content involving “random pics of penis”—revealing a candid, unruly backstage view of industry gossip. The U.S. government concluded that the culprits were sponsored by the North Korean government in an act of retribution for Sony releasing The Interview, a Seth Rogen comedy about a journalist who gets recruited by the CIA to kill the North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.

Prior to this, Marvel was disappointed and confused by how the Sony studio and producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach were stewarding the Spider-Man character. Alan Fine of Marvel Entertainment (and the still-active Creative Committee) emailed his thoughts to Feige after reading a screenplay for The Amazing Spider-Man 2: “This story is way too dark, way too depressing. I wanted to burn the draft after I read it.”

For his part, Feige told Fine he was dismayed by the lack of continuity between the Raimi films and the Webb films. “I saw the spider bite in Sam Raimi’s movie, and it was totally different than the spider bite in ASM. They have rebooted,” Feige wrote. “In a million years I would not advocate rebooting the Iron Man MCU. To me it’s James Bond, and we can keep telling new stories for decades even with different actors.”

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige quietly arranged a lunch with Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony Pictures and the woman steering the Spider-Man ship. They met on the porch outside her office, eating gourmet sandwiches. Pascal thought Feige was just there to give a few notes on The Amazing Spider-Man 3. But Feige had other plans. He told her straight-up, “I’m not good at giving advice and walking away. If we’re going to fix this, we need to actually do it. Not just help out. We produce it fully.” Then he laid it all out: “Don’t think of it as giving back the rights. No exchange of money. Just let us make the movie—like what DC did with Christopher Nolan on Batman. We’re not Nolan, but… we’re kind of good at this.”

Pascal threw her sandwich at him and said, “Get the fuck out of here.”

No joke. She was offended, maybe even insulted. But deep down, Feige’s pitch made sense. Sony was struggling. And Marvel Studios was on fire. After the now-infamous 2014 Sony hack exposed the Spider-Man talks, fans demanded that something change. The public pressure was immense. And somewhere between the thrown sandwich and leaked emails, Pascal came around.

While Marvel and Sony were figuring out how to share custody of Peter Parker, something else was quietly brewing in the background—something animated, ambitious, and downright electric.

Enter Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (I love you, Miles Morales!). Developed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the brains behind The LEGO Movie, this wasn’t going to be another Peter Parker reboot. Instead, it focused on a new hero: Miles Morales (I love him so much)—a Black-Latino teenager from Brooklyn who picks up the mask after his universe’s Peter Parker dies. It had graffiti-style animation, hip-hop flavor, glitchy multiverse energy, and heart for days. Nobody expected it to be more than a quirky side project. What it became was a cultural earthquake. Released in 2018, Into the Spider-Verse shattered expectations. Critics loved it. Fans obsessed over it. And it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature—the first Spider-Man movie to ever win an Oscar.

While Sony’s animation division was redefining what a Spider-Man story could be, Marvel Studios was turning Peter Parker into the heart of the MCU. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man made his grand debut in Captain America: Civil War (2016), swinging into that airport scene like he owned it. Then came Homecoming, where Peter tried to balance high school and high-tech suits under the reluctant mentorship of Tony Stark. And then: Avengers: Infinity War (2018). When Peter dissolved into dust in Tony’s arms—“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good…”—he became the emotional gut punch of the entire film. Suddenly, he wasn’t just the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He was our Spider-Man. Vulnerable. Brave. Beloved.

Two huge Spider-Man universes were now running in parallel: one animated, inventive, and multiverse-warping. One live-action, emotionally grounded, and tangled into the biggest cinematic universe of all time.

And then things got even more interesting.

The events of Avengers: Endgame (2019) left Peter reeling after Tony’s death. Far From Home followed, exploring grief, responsibility, and the illusion of heroism (shout-out to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio). But behind the scenes, Marvel and Sony’s partnership was fraying. There were negotiations, standoffs, and even a moment in 2019 when it looked like Spider-Man would leave the MCU forever. Fans freaked out, Hashtags trended and Tom Holland made desperate phone calls (reportedly he was drunk and crying in one of them). Then—miraculously—they struck a new deal. Spidey would stay. And not just stay, but come back in No Way Home (2021), the multiverse-shattering love letter to every generation of Spider-Man fans. Tobey Maguire. Andrew Garfield. One movie. One theater. All the screams.

While the MCU was taking Spider-Man through space, time, and loss, the Spider-Verse saga kept evolving too. Across the Spider-Verse (2023) exploded into an even bigger, more layered web of identities, timelines, and philosophical questions. Beyond the Spider-Verse is still on the way (delayed but highly anticipated).

Both versions of Spider-Man—the digital Miles and the live-action Peter—have proven that the character isn’t just a superhero. He’s a symbol. Of growth. Of second chances. Of responsibility. And of infinite possibility.

For all the web-slinging acrobatics, multiversal madness, and billion-dollar box office numbers, Spider-Man’s most powerful story might be the one behind the scenes. It’s a tale of rights and rivalries, of executives throwing sandwiches and shaking hands, of fans begging to see their hero swing just one more time.

It’s messy. Complicated. Human. Just like Peter Parker.

Tom Holland gave us a Spider-Man we could grow up with. A kid who fumbled through high school, lost everything, and still chose to fight. No Way Home wasn’t just the end of a trilogy—it felt like the final chapter of an era. And the silence that followed? Deafening. Meanwhile, the world fell in love with Miles Morales. His coming-of-age through the Spider-Verse films has redefined what Spider-Man can be—diverse, artistic, emotionally raw, and unapologetically modern. Miles speaks to a generation. He is the future.

And yet, according to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, that future is on pause. Sony’s holding the keys, and Marvel’s been told to wait. It’s a little heartbreaking. We saw Holland’s Peter evolve in real time—folded into the larger Marvel Universe, growing alongside Avengers, fighting beside Iron Man, and eventually standing alone. He was allowed depth and dimension beyond his own story.

To know that Miles might not get that same kind of spotlight—at least not in the MCU—is a loss. Not just for Marvel, but for millions of fans hoping to see themselves in that universe, in that mask. It’s ironic, really. A character built on motion—always swinging forward—is now stuck. Tom might not return. Miles can’t debut yet. And Spider-Man, for all his universality, remains trapped in a very particular web of business, branding, and billion-dollar decisions.

But maybe that’s part of what makes him so enduring. He’s not perfect. He’s not unstoppable. He stumbles, loses, and gets back up. Whether it’s Peter or Miles under the mask, the story of Spider-Man is the story of resilience—on and off the page. So as we wait—for deals to be made, for stories to be told, for the next Spider to rise—one thing remains true:

He may change faces, studios, and suits, but Spider-Man always finds his way back.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige was at a press roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, and someone asked him about the chances of Miles Morales—yep, the star of that amazing, award-winning Spider-Verse trilogy—making his way into the MCU.

Feige’s answer? “That is nowhere… Sony has their brilliant, genius, incredible Spider-Verse animated franchise going, and until that finishes, we’ve been told to stay away.” And just like that, I felt the urge to write about my all-time favorite webhead, because honestly, so few people know how deep and dramatic Spider-Man’s story really is—not just in the comics or movies, but also behind the scenes. A lot of folks know and love Spider-Man—the stories, the suits, the villains, the whole multiverse thing. But not everyone knows that Spider-Man’s journey off-screen is just as wild as anything he’s done swinging through New York. And it all started way before he made his comic debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 (written by Stan Lee, drawn by Steve Ditko) back in August 1962. That was during what many call the “Golden Age” of comics and the beginning of Marvel’s rise to glory.

Let ’s rewind a bit. Marvel didn’t start with superheroes. It was founded in 1939 as Timely Comics, then became Atlas Comics in the ’50s. Back then, they were just trying to survive. The comic industry was in chaos after the U.S. Senate went after horror comics for supposedly corrupting kids. So Atlas (Marvel at the time) just did whatever was selling—romance, westerns, anything. Think Millie the Model and Rawhide Kid. Then in 1957, Marvel got hit with a terrible distribution deal that limited them to only eight titles a month. Most of the staff got laid off. Meanwhile, DC Comics was killing it with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Everything changed in 1961, when Stan Lee, Marvel’s resident creative genius (and shameless self-promoter), teamed up with artist Jack Kirby to create the Fantastic Four. These weren’t perfect heroes—they argued, made mistakes, and felt real. Fans loved it. The comic took off, and suddenly Marvel had a hit. From there, things snowballed. Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Thor, and Hulk—all rolled out in the ’60s. Marvel became the place for heroes with heart and flaws.

Fast forward to 1991, and Marvel was on top of the world. Their re-launch of X-Men #1 (written by Chris Claremont, drawn by Jim Lee) sold over 8 million copies, a record that still stands. The issue had five different covers, and collectors went wild buying every version, sometimes multiple times. These books weren’t just stories; they were “investments” to seal in plastic sleeves and save for retirement. The whole industry got sucked into a speculative bubble. People were buying comics not to read them, but to flip them later for profit. Publishers like Marvel leaned into it hard: tons of #1 issues, shiny covers, spin-offs, reboots—you name it. Fans bought everything. Retailers overstocked. Everyone thought the money would keep coming, and even while the hype was peaking, some people were waving red flags. One of them was Neil Gaiman—you know, the guy who would go on to write American Gods and Good Omens. At the time, he was known for his brilliant run on The Sandman over at DC. He warned retailers that the gold-foil bubble would burst. He told them flat-out: “You’re ordering too many copies. People won’t want these in five years.” But retailers and speculators were having none of it.

By the mid-’90s, the bubble burst. People stopped buying. Sales tanked. The value of those “collectible” comics crashed.

Marvel tried to fix things by buying Heroes World Distribution in 1994 to handle their own shipping, but it totally backfired. Orders got delayed, messed up, or never arrived. Retailers were pissed. On top of that, Marvel had sunk tons of money into things like Toy Biz (action figures), Fleer/SkyBox (trading cards), theme park deals, and mass comic printing. So when the crash hit, they were stuck with mountains of unsold stuff and massive debt.

By 1996, Marvel Entertainment Group had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Yep—Spider-Man’s home company went broke.

By 1996, Marvel was deep in bankruptcy, buried under bad investments, late comic shipments, and warehouses full of unsold trading cards. The company was a mess—like, Spider-Man-swinging-through-a-financial-disaster levels of messy.

A massive tug-of-war broke out behind the scenes between Marvel’s then-owner, billionaire Ron Perelman, and a couple of lesser-known but game-changing players: Avi Arad and Ike Perlmutter, who were running Toy Biz—the company that made Marvel’s action figures. Eventually, Perelman lost the fight. In 1998, Toy Biz and Marvel merged, and the guys from Toy Biz—Perlmutter and Arad—took over. That was the official end of Marvel Entertainment Group (MEG). From then on, the company would be known as Marvel Enterprises, which later became Marvel Entertainment, LLC (and eventually got scooped up by Disney in 2009, but that’s a completely different superhero saga).

Now here’s where things get especially painful. Before the bankruptcy, Marvel had already been licensing out its characters to survive. They didn’t have the money to make movies themselves, so they made deals—short-term cash, long-term regret. And the biggest deal of all? They sold the film rights to Spider-Man. That’s right. In the early 1990s, Marvel sold the rights to Sony Pictures. It wasn’t just a random licensing deal—it was a full-blown handover of movie rights, which meant Sony controlled all cinematic use of Spider-Man and related characters (like Mary Jane, Green Goblin, Venom, etc.). Marvel still owned the character, but they couldn’t use him in their own movies. What’s wild is that before Sony, Marvel had tried to shop Spider-Man to other studios—including Cannon Films (yes, the low-budget company behind Superman IV and Masters of the Universe). That project fell apart, but by the time Sony came around, Marvel was desperate.

So when Spider-Man finally hit the big screen in 2002, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, it wasn’t Marvel calling the shots—it was Sony. The film was a massive hit, launching a billion-dollar franchise… but Marvel saw none of that sweet, sweet movie profit. In a twist of irony, Marvel had built one of the most iconic superheroes in history… and now had to watch from the sidelines while someone else turned him into a global movie sensation.

Sony had struck gold with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. The first movie in 2002 crushed the box office, and Tobey Maguire became the face of Peter Parker for an entire generation. Spider-Man 2 (2004) was a masterpiece—arguably one of the best superhero movies ever made. It had everything: Doc Ock, emotional weight, existential crisis, and upside-down kisses. Classic. Then came Spider-Man 3 in 2007. And… yeah. You probably remember the dancing. The eyeliner. The three villains crammed into one script because the studio wanted it. Raimi wanted to focus on Sandman and the emotional threads, but Sony executives pushed Venom into the plot, and everything got bloated and messy. Even Raimi wasn’t happy with it. Fans were confused. Critics were lukewarm.

Sony had planned a Spider-Man 4, and Raimi was on board. But the creative tension between him and the studio never eased. Raimi didn’t want to rush a half-baked film just to hit a release date, and Sony didn’t want to wait. So in 2010, the whole thing fell apart. Spider-Man 4 was scrapped. And just like that, Tobey’s Peter Parker was done.

But Sony wasn’t about to let their golden goose sit idle. Enter: the reboot. In 2012, they launched The Amazing Spider-Man, with a new Peter Parker played by Andrew Garfield. He was younger, more sarcastic, and had a skateboard. Directed by Marc Webb, the tone was darker, sleeker, and a little more brooding. It wasn’t bad—it even gave us Emma Stone as a scene-stealing Gwen Stacy—but it had a weird déjà vu effect. Audiences were being asked to re-watch Spider-Man’s origin story just 10 years after Tobey’s. Why the reboot so soon? Simple: contractual obligation. See, Sony had to keep making Spider-Man movies every few years (a legal clause in the deal with Marvel that I can’t make sense of) or risk losing the rights back to Marvel. So even though there was no real demand for a reboot, they hit reset. Gotta keep the brand alive.

Meanwhile—on the other side of the superhero universe—Marvel was doing something radically different. While Sony was rebooting Spider-Man, Marvel Studios (finally making its own movies) had launched a little film in 2008 called Iron Man. It starred a recently revitalized Robert Downey Jr., and nobody expected it to kick off a revolution. But it did. It was sharp, cool, and confident—and at the very end, in a little post-credits scene, Nick Fury showed up and talked about the Avengers Initiative. That was the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Marvel Studios, now under Kevin Feige’s vision, started building out a connected world, one hero at a time: The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). And finally, it all came together with The Avengers in 2012—the same year Garfield’s Spider-Man was swinging around solo in Sony’s separate universe. Talk about timing.

While Marvel was connecting the dots, Sony was fumbling with rewrites, retcons, and increasingly forced world-building. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) was supposed to launch Sony’s own cinematic universe—with spin-offs like Sinister Six, Venom, and even a rumored Aunt May solo film (yep, seriously). But it didn’t work. The film underperformed, critics weren’t thrilled, and fans were mostly confused.

At this point, everyone wanted one thing: Why can’t Spider-Man just be part of the MCU already?

So, picture this: it’s 2014, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 just wrapped up with blue Electro, awkward romance, and a teaser for villains who never came. Sony’s grand plan for a Spider-Verse was falling apart. Meanwhile, over at Marvel Studios, The Avengers had already changed the game—and fans were begging for Spidey to join the party.

And then… Sony got hacked.

Yeah. Real-world drama, and I swear this part had me laughing my heart out. In November 2014, hackers (Guardians of Peace) released a vast trove of internal Sony Pictures documents, including over 200,000 email messages, a lot of them from the (then) Co-chairperson of Sony Pictures entertainment, Amy Pascal. Some of these leaked emails were humiliating or crude remarks from Hollywood peers—such as references to Bruce Jenner’s transition, awkward messages about Rita Ora, and even explicit content involving “random pics of penis”—revealing a candid, unruly backstage view of industry gossip. The U.S. government concluded that the culprits were sponsored by the North Korean government in an act of retribution for Sony releasing The Interview, a Seth Rogen comedy about a journalist who gets recruited by the CIA to kill the North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.

Prior to this, Marvel was disappointed and confused by how the Sony studio and producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach were stewarding the Spider-Man character. Alan Fine of Marvel Entertainment (and the still-active Creative Committee) emailed his thoughts to Feige after reading a screenplay for The Amazing Spider-Man 2: “This story is way too dark, way too depressing. I wanted to burn the draft after I read it.”

For his part, Feige told Fine he was dismayed by the lack of continuity between the Raimi films and the Webb films. “I saw the spider bite in Sam Raimi’s movie, and it was totally different than the spider bite in ASM. They have rebooted,” Feige wrote. “In a million years I would not advocate rebooting the Iron Man MCU. To me it’s James Bond, and we can keep telling new stories for decades even with different actors.”

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige quietly arranged a lunch with Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony Pictures and the woman steering the Spider-Man ship. They met on the porch outside her office, eating gourmet sandwiches. Pascal thought Feige was just there to give a few notes on The Amazing Spider-Man 3. But Feige had other plans. He told her straight-up, “I’m not good at giving advice and walking away. If we’re going to fix this, we need to actually do it. Not just help out. We produce it fully.” Then he laid it all out: “Don’t think of it as giving back the rights. No exchange of money. Just let us make the movie—like what DC did with Christopher Nolan on Batman. We’re not Nolan, but… we’re kind of good at this.”

Pascal threw her sandwich at him and said, “Get the fuck out of here.”

No joke. She was offended, maybe even insulted. But deep down, Feige’s pitch made sense. Sony was struggling. And Marvel Studios was on fire. After the now-infamous 2014 Sony hack exposed the Spider-Man talks, fans demanded that something change. The public pressure was immense. And somewhere between the thrown sandwich and leaked emails, Pascal came around.

While Marvel and Sony were figuring out how to share custody of Peter Parker, something else was quietly brewing in the background—something animated, ambitious, and downright electric.

Enter Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (I love you, Miles Morales!). Developed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the brains behind The LEGO Movie, this wasn’t going to be another Peter Parker reboot. Instead, it focused on a new hero: Miles Morales (I love him so much)—a Black-Latino teenager from Brooklyn who picks up the mask after his universe’s Peter Parker dies. It had graffiti-style animation, hip-hop flavor, glitchy multiverse energy, and heart for days. Nobody expected it to be more than a quirky side project. What it became was a cultural earthquake. Released in 2018, Into the Spider-Verse shattered expectations. Critics loved it. Fans obsessed over it. And it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature—the first Spider-Man movie to ever win an Oscar.

While Sony’s animation division was redefining what a Spider-Man story could be, Marvel Studios was turning Peter Parker into the heart of the MCU. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man made his grand debut in Captain America: Civil War (2016), swinging into that airport scene like he owned it. Then came Homecoming, where Peter tried to balance high school and high-tech suits under the reluctant mentorship of Tony Stark. And then: Avengers: Infinity War (2018). When Peter dissolved into dust in Tony’s arms—“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good…”—he became the emotional gut punch of the entire film. Suddenly, he wasn’t just the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He was our Spider-Man. Vulnerable. Brave. Beloved.

Two huge Spider-Man universes were now running in parallel: one animated, inventive, and multiverse-warping. One live-action, emotionally grounded, and tangled into the biggest cinematic universe of all time.

And then things got even more interesting.

The events of Avengers: Endgame (2019) left Peter reeling after Tony’s death. Far From Home followed, exploring grief, responsibility, and the illusion of heroism (shout-out to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio). But behind the scenes, Marvel and Sony’s partnership was fraying. There were negotiations, standoffs, and even a moment in 2019 when it looked like Spider-Man would leave the MCU forever. Fans freaked out, Hashtags trended and Tom Holland made desperate phone calls (reportedly he was drunk and crying in one of them). Then—miraculously—they struck a new deal. Spidey would stay. And not just stay, but come back in No Way Home (2021), the multiverse-shattering love letter to every generation of Spider-Man fans. Tobey Maguire. Andrew Garfield. One movie. One theater. All the screams.

While the MCU was taking Spider-Man through space, time, and loss, the Spider-Verse saga kept evolving too. Across the Spider-Verse (2023) exploded into an even bigger, more layered web of identities, timelines, and philosophical questions. Beyond the Spider-Verse is still on the way (delayed but highly anticipated).

Both versions of Spider-Man—the digital Miles and the live-action Peter—have proven that the character isn’t just a superhero. He’s a symbol. Of growth. Of second chances. Of responsibility. And of infinite possibility.

For all the web-slinging acrobatics, multiversal madness, and billion-dollar box office numbers, Spider-Man’s most powerful story might be the one behind the scenes. It’s a tale of rights and rivalries, of executives throwing sandwiches and shaking hands, of fans begging to see their hero swing just one more time.

It’s messy. Complicated. Human. Just like Peter Parker.

Tom Holland gave us a Spider-Man we could grow up with. A kid who fumbled through high school, lost everything, and still chose to fight. No Way Home wasn’t just the end of a trilogy—it felt like the final chapter of an era. And the silence that followed? Deafening. Meanwhile, the world fell in love with Miles Morales. His coming-of-age through the Spider-Verse films has redefined what Spider-Man can be—diverse, artistic, emotionally raw, and unapologetically modern. Miles speaks to a generation. He is the future.

And yet, according to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, that future is on pause. Sony’s holding the keys, and Marvel’s been told to wait. It’s a little heartbreaking. We saw Holland’s Peter evolve in real time—folded into the larger Marvel Universe, growing alongside Avengers, fighting beside Iron Man, and eventually standing alone. He was allowed depth and dimension beyond his own story.

To know that Miles might not get that same kind of spotlight—at least not in the MCU—is a loss. Not just for Marvel, but for millions of fans hoping to see themselves in that universe, in that mask. It’s ironic, really. A character built on motion—always swinging forward—is now stuck. Tom might not return. Miles can’t debut yet. And Spider-Man, for all his universality, remains trapped in a very particular web of business, branding, and billion-dollar decisions.

But maybe that’s part of what makes him so enduring. He’s not perfect. He’s not unstoppable. He stumbles, loses, and gets back up. Whether it’s Peter or Miles under the mask, the story of Spider-Man is the story of resilience—on and off the page. So as we wait—for deals to be made, for stories to be told, for the next Spider to rise—one thing remains true:

He may change faces, studios, and suits, but Spider-Man always finds his way back.