Multiple Generations of ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘Venom’ Movies Swinging onto Disney+ in Coming Weeks
Did somebody call for a wall-crawler? Disney+ has announced it is adding several “Spider-Man” titles to its content library starting Friday, April 21. All of the Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man” movies are headed to the service, as well as “The Amazing Spider-Man” featuring Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s first turn as the character in “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Tom Hardy’s first outing as the Spidey villain/antihero “Venom” will also head to Disney+.
All three Maguire films as well as “The Amazing Spider-Man” will debut on the service on April 21. “Homecoming” and “Venom” will take another few weeks to get there, and are currently due to arrive on Disney+ on May 12. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” as well as “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” are not currently scheduled to head to Disney+, and will remain on STARZ for the time being.
That’s due to a complex series of licensing agreements. Sony, which owns the rights to the character Spider-Man, had a Pay-1 deal in place with Starz from 2017-2021. That deal meant that Sony movies would head to STARZ to stream first after their theatrical run had ended, but “No Way Home” was the last movie under that deal. A new series of licensing deals agreed to in 2021 now mean that Sony movies head to Netflix to stream for an exclusive 18-month window, then move to a Disney-owned streamer.
It’s all very messy and rather confusing, but the result of those myriad agreements is that while all of the Tobey Maguire films are now available on Disney+, Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield will only see their first turns as the character available on the House of Mouse’s flagship streaming service. Similarly, only the first of the two “Venom” movies will be sent to Disney+.
Thankfully, there’s plenty more Spidey content on the service to tide you over if the addition of these movies isn’t enough. Other MCU titles featuring Spider-Man on Disney+ include “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: End Game,” but it’s the amount of animated content devoted to the webslinger on the service that’s truly impressive. The 1990s animated series “Marvel’s Spider-Man” is available, as well as newer titles like “The Spectacular Spider-Man,” “Ultimate Spider-Man” and “Spidey and His Amazing Friends.”
Disney has made some noise lately about licensing its content to other streamers, but the bargain struck between it and Sony for these “Spider-Man” titles represents the content pipeline flowing in the opposite direction. Users of Disney+ hope that remains the status quo, as it’s bringing popular and beloved titles from the “Spider-Man” franchise to the service beginning this week.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”