In May of last year, having learned absolutely nothing from the last time the studio tried to run before it could walk and launched a cinematic universe without having laid enough groundwork, Sony announced that their would-be mythology already had a name, despite the fact it was and still is just one movie old with Venom as its sole inhabitant.
Naturally, people weren’t exactly enamored by the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, which is a bit of a mouthful. Fifteen months later, and with no sign of that second installment yet, the company have only gone ahead and renamed the entire operation. In what most likely isn’t a coincidence given that it’s coming less than 24 hours after the first No Way Home trailer, the SPUMC is no more: Say hello to Sony’s Spider-Man Universe instead.
Based on nothing but the rebranding, it becomes even more clear that the endgame is for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker to cross over and interact with some of Sony’s other comic book characters. So far, we’ve got Venom: Let There Be Carnage coming in October, Morbius releasing in January of next year and Kraven the Hunter penciled in for 2023, so we can expect plenty of connective tissue.
Of course, Tom Holland’s contract expires after No Way Home and if the latter two Sony blockbusters flop at the box office then it’s back to the drawing board again, but you at least have to admire the enthusiasm. Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, or SSU for short as nobody’s probably going to call it, is at least more palatable than the previous moniker, but there’s still a lot of work to be done before it becomes a viable long term property in its own right.
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