Marvel Had Several Phase 3 Movie Plans With and Without Spider-Man
Back in 2014, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige announced the third phase of Marvel Studios' master plan. A few months later, Spider-Man was added to the roster. Sony Pictures and Marvel were in talks during this time trying to figure out how they would make it all work. Well, thankfully it did work out and Spider-Man will be making his first appearance in the MCU in Captain America: Civil War.
It's normal to think that the addition of Spider-Man would really change things up in Marvel's plans for their upcoming films, but apparently that's not the case. In an interview with /Film, Feige was asked how drastically they had to update their plans when the inclusion of Spider-Man was made official. Here was his reply:
"As you might have imagined, that had been in the works for a long, long, long, long time. And we had, as we often do, mapped out various alternatives if things don’t happen. So we had a plan how it would continue without him and we have a plan how now it will continue with him. I wouldn’t say it was 'drastic' but we were certainly happy when it all came together."
I'm sure that the creative team at Marvel develops multiple scenarios for all of their productions with multiple characters before they move forward with them. It's also interesting to note that Marvel was confident enough in the fact that they would get Spider-Man back that they made sure they had a plan in place to implement him.
We reported earlier today that Spider-Man will play around in the MCU through 2019 with the conclusion of Avengers: Infinity War. There's no word on what will happen beyond that, but hopefully he sticks around.