Kevin Feige Confirms MCU Characters Will Appear in Sony's Spider-Man Movies

About nine months ago, Marvel Studios president and mega-producer Kevin Feige, the architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, said that based on the agreement he made with Sony Pictures to share the rights to Spider-Man, characters from the MCU "could" appear in Spidey's new movies for Sony. At the time, we all assumed that meant that it was a given those crossovers would eventually happen, but Feige's use of the word "could" meant there was still a chance — however small — that the MCU characters would be restricted only to Marvel Studios films.

Now, in a new interview with EW, Feige confirmed everyone's original assumption: those MCU characters will, in fact, appear in Spider-Man's solo films.

“He is in the universe now, and the fun of the universe is that characters go back and forth,” Feige said.

So that obviously opens the door to a ton of character possibilities, but it also opens a host of questions from the business side of things. As The Playlist notes, if an actor appears in a Sony Spider-Man movie, does that count as part of their nine-picture deal with Marvel? Or would those appearances have to be negotiated separately? How much do you think Robert Downey Jr. is going to get paid to show up in a Spider-Man movie? Or maybe those films will provide a good opportunity to introduce The Defenders on the big screen, since they're in the same general geographic area as Spidey?

The first Tom Holland Spider-Man solo film (possibly called Spider-Man: Homecoming, or maybe one of these other choices) hits theaters on July 7, 2017.