Avengers Assemble! And Spider-Man Too!

The infamous Sony hacks have given comic book fans something to celebrate. It seems that the dream of Marvel readers everywhere is finally becoming a reality. According to the leaked documents, Sony and Marvel have finally learned to play nice and Spider-Man will be joining his fellow Avengers in the upcoming and highly anticipated Captain America: Civil War. Now don’t get too excited, Marvel does not have the rights to the web-crawler back; the contract is conditional and has a fair amount of small print, but that small print might just be the thing that makes this deal work.

The contract stipulates that in exchange for Spider-Man appearing in the new Captain America and also Avengers: Infinity War I, Sony will produce 25% of any Marvel movie in which Spider-Man appears. They also have access to two characters from Marvel’s line-up in order to help future Spidey movies flow into the larger Marvel universe more cohesively. While Sony gets to maintain creative control over things like costume design and which actor gets cast, they pay a penalty if any Marvel movie featuring Spidey misses its release date, and all rights revert back to Marvel.

At the end of the day, it’s pretty amazing that fans are going to get to see Spider-Man join the likes of Captain America, Iron Man as part of the Avengers. Of course, the possibility of this agreement going sour is a looming threat, and one misstep from either studio could cause any number of problems. As fans we’ll have to trust these two giants to work together amicably and hope that nothing happens to delay the production of the classic storylines we love. Marvel heavyweights Avi Arad and Kevin Feige are said to be working with Spidey veteran Matt Tolmach to produce any future Spider-Man movies, that kind of power should bring some comfort despite the fact that Spider-Man will be suffering yet another reboot. But before we get too excited, let’s remember that this is based on a leak, we’ll keep an eye out for any official news.