In case you haven’t been following along, there has been a lot going on behind the scenes of Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures regarding the future of Spider-Man. After 2014’s ill-received Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony was forced to reevaluate the future of the character at their studio, since they weren’t pleasing critics, audiences, or fans of the property. The studio shocked the world by coming to an agreement with Marvel to include Spider-Man within their growing cinematic universe starting with Captain America: Civil War.
However, Sony’s ambitions for the property have not stopped there. Next year, they will reboot the franchise for the third time, but this time they will have the backing of the MCU. Actor Tom Holland will be reprising his role as Peter Parker and will be joined by Marvel heavyweight Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei, and rumors indicate that Michael Keaton is in negotiations to be the lead villain. The excitement over the live-action franchise has also overshadowed the studio’s other plans for the character.
One of the more overlooked scheduled releases for 2018 is Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s upcoming animated movie starring Spider-Man. There have been so few details about the project that many had assumed that the directors had left the movie on the backburner, due to their commitments to the Star Wars universe. Particularly with Holland becoming an instant celebrity, it was hard to envision how the animated movie would fit into the Spider-Man landscape. Well, thanks to a scoop from Heroic Hollywood, we now have an a better understanding of the upcoming film. According to the report, Miles Morales will be the Spider-Man that the movie will feature. (For an in-depth video on the character’s history click the video at the bottom of the article.) In addition, the working title for the movie is either The Ultimate Spider-Man: Miles Morales or Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man.
The character came to prominence in 2011, during the death of Peter Parker run in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics. Morales became Parker’s successor to the Spider-Man mantle and a hero for the modern generation. Morales is from NYC and is born of black and latino ancestry. Unlike the hundreds of heroes in the past who have tried to assume an already established superhero identity, Morales’ popularity has soared and the character was quickly written into Marvel Comics’ canon. His ascension has a lot to do with the immense popularity of the Spider-Man character, but probably owes an equal amount to the fact that the new face of Spider-Man better reflects not only modern day Queens, New York, but of the increasingly diverse population of the world.
This report may provide clues to how Morales may one day be introduced in the MCU as well. After 2018, people that don’t read Marvel Comics will have the opportunity to get familiar with the new face of Spider-Man at the movie theater. This is good news for both fans of Sony and Marvel, as the tracks will be greased to one day see the Ultimate Spider-Man in live-action. The prospect of seeing a completely different, albeit animated, Spider-Man adventure should be a fresh experience that suddenly becomes one of the most anticipated movies of 2018.
The animated Spider-Man movie (The Ultimate Spider-Man) opens on December 21st, 2018.
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Source: Heroic Hollywood