While Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is dealing with stagnation and superhero fatigue, Sony — which owns the rights to Spider-Man villains and sidekicks — never got its universe off the ground in the first place. While Venom enjoyed modest success, later attempts like Morbius and Madame Web were huge flops.
With the serially-delayed Kraven the Hunter still in the works, it’s clear the Sony universe needs a fresh start, and it’s found one in the directors of the one Sonyverse project that’s been a massive success: the Spider-Verse trilogy.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, the directing duo behind the stylized animated hits Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, will take control of Sony’s Marvel projects for the foreseeable future. While the two have never had such a high-level role, they have a deep collective resume when it comes to working on franchises, which includes everything from The Lego Movie to 21 Jump Street.
Their takeover is already off to a rocky start, as it was just announced that Amazon has ended the development of Silk: Spider Society, a live-action Sonyverse TV show. Lord and Miller were executive producers on Silk, which will now be shopped to other streaming services. Their partnership with Amazon stands, however, thanks to the recently announced Noir series starring Nicolas Cage as Spider-Man Noir.
Regardless of Silk’s demise, Lord and Miller being given creative oversight of the cinematic universe is a promising sign for fans. Not only have their Spider-Verse movies introduced fans to Mile Morales and countless other Spider-Man variants rather than focusing on side characters like the live-action movies, but their Oscar-winning animated features are also the only Sonyverse movies to be any good.
Maybe, with new leadership, the Sonyverse will finally do what so many fans have waited for it to do and show some version of live-action Spider-Man on the big screen (no, newborn Peter Parker in Madame Web doesn’t count). At the very least, this move implies we’ll see more Spider-Verse spinoffs ahead, including that long-teased Miles Morales movie.
Movie franchises can’t just be a collection of films that all exist in the same universe; they need direction and foresight. Matching what Kevin Feige did for the MCU and James Gunn is (hopefully) doing for the current DCU is a tall order, but Lord and Miller are an obvious choice to get the opportunity. They understand that with great power comes the responsibility to try making great films.
