There's a sense of culmination hovering around Spider-Man: No Way Home as the film enters its final marketing push in the lead-up to a release next month. It's the third solo outing for Tom Holland as Spider-Man, and we're trained as moviegoers to expect a sense of finality in movie trilogies, but the energy of this film goes beyond that. It's not just a potential culmination for Holland's version of the webslinger, but a multiversal journey with the potential to bring some kind of culminating energy to every big-screen incarnation of Spider-Man so far, thanks to the inclusion of characters from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and the Amazing Spider-Man films starring Andrew Garfield.
It feels in many ways like the biggest Spider-Man movie yet, and it's hard to shake the idea that the scope of the thing might point in the direction of a concluding chapter.
But according to producer Amy Pascal, that's very much not the case. Speaking to Fandango ahead of No Way Home's release, Pascal -- who's worked in some way on every big-screen Spider-Man film so far and served as producer on the Holland films alongside Marvel's Kevin Feige -- said that she's already looking ahead to what's next for the character.
"This is not the last movie that we are going to make with Marvel – [this is not] the last Spider-Man movie," Pascal said. "We are getting ready to make the next Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland and Marvel, it just isn't part of… we're thinking of this as three films, and now we're going to go onto the next three. This is not the last of our MCU movies."
Holland, who's now played Peter Parker in more films than Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield combined thanks to his various MCU appearances, made some fans a bit nervous earlier this month when he commented on the notion of hanging up his Spider-suit, saying "If I'm playing Spider-Man after I'm 30, I've done something wrong." The actor, whose other major film projects include Cherry and the upcoming Uncharted film, turned 25 over the summer, so he's still got some time left by his own reckoning, but it was enough to get fans concerned that his era might come to a close soon.
According to Pascal, that's very much not the case. As one of the key architects of the collaboration between Sony and Marvel Studios on bringing Spider-Man into the MCU, she's committed to keeping this incarnation of the character in the spotlight for some time to come, even as Sony Pictures continues to juggle other versions of the character in various big-screen incarnations.
"Well, there's the Marvel Universe, which is one container and then there's the Spider-Verse movies, which are different and then there's the other universe where the Sony characters are in," she said. "We all are very respectful of each other and work together and make sure that we're only being additive."
Spider-Man: No Way Home is in theaters December 17.
*Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify producer Amy Pascal is no longer an executive at Sony Pictures, but remains a producer on Spider-Man film projects.