The trailer offered assurances that A) the movie will open only in theaters this Christmas and B) audiences won’t have to see the Disney+ shows to understand it.
The trailer offered assurances that A) Spider-Man: No Way Home will open only in theaters this Christmas and B) audiences won’t have to watch the Disney+ shows to understand it. Sony pulled off a coup at CinemaCon last night, both debuting the much-hyped/anticipated Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer and then treating the attendees to a full screening of Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The Spider-Man 3 version 2.0 teaser was immediately offered up (in non-bootlegged form, although the leak did nothing but help in terms of building anticipation and dominating the news cycle) online where folks got their first look at Jon Watts’ direct sequel to Spider-Man: No Way Home. As of now, it has notched around 225 million views in the first 15 hours. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange remains at his best when he’s expressing his disdain (or patronizing support) for his fellow MCU superheroes. Having him as “Peter’s mentor” role this time (after Robert Downey Jr. in Homecoming and Samuel L. Jackson in Far from Home) is a fun choice. The film’s multiverse-centric plot will feature prior characters from prior Spider-Man franchises showing up in the MCU, including Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octavius from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and at least one Green Goblin (be it Willem Dafoe from Spider-Man, James Franco from Spider-Man 3 and/or Dane DeHaan from The Amazing Spider-Man 2). More importantly, the trailer offered two crucial pieces of information, one in terms of when it’ll open and one in terms of what’s required to buy a ticket. Sony declared their fidelity to the big screen and theatrical windows, which makes sense as A) they don’t own a major streaming platform, B) their mega-bucks Netflix pay-tv window deal is predicated on theatrical movies still being of paramount value to streamers and C) Tom Rothman and friends are trying to position Sony as the last “major” old-school movie studio.
