Spider-Man's return to Marvel unlikely any time soon

Los Angeles: Tom Holland's Spider-Man will not be back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe any time soon.

"For the moment the door is closed," Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra said, commenting on the issue at the Variety's Entertainment & Technology summit.

However, Vinciquerra added "it's a long life", hinting that there is still hope for the web-slinging superhero to swing back to the Disney-owned company.

Despite the failure of Disney and Sony to reach an agreement, fans all around the world were hoping for Spider-Man to return to the Marvel universe. The two studios were sharing the "Spider-Man" brand across a plethora of films since 2015. As part of the previous agreement, Marvel had also been acting as producer of Sony's standalone "Spider-Man" films released in 2017 and 2019.

However, Disney and Sony broke the deal because they were "unable" to reach new terms for the funding of future movies. It resulted in distancing Spider-Man from the Marvel fold, in terms of both future standalone films as well as team-up projects.

Holland was introduced as Spider-Man in "Captain America: Civil War" in 2016. The actor got his first solo movie as the masked superhero with "Spider-Man: Homecoming". the film took Spider-Man back to school. He came back as the superhero his second solo movie, "Spider-Man: Far From Home" this year.

Vinciquerra insisted that there is "no ill will" between Sony and Marvel. He said Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is busy with new additions to MCU, and that was one of the driving forces behind the split.

"We had a great run with (Feige) on Spider-Man movies," variety.com quoted the Sony chief as saying.

"We tried to see if there's a way to work it out…the Marvel people are terrific people, we have great respect for them, but on the other hand we have some pretty terrific people of our own. Kevin didn't do all the work," he added.

Vinciquerra is confident that the Spider-Man franchise will continue to flourish.

"Spider-Man was fine before the event movies, did better with the event movies, and now that we have our own universe, he will play off the other characters as well," Vinciquerra said.