Friday night was full of big news during Disney’s D23 Expo, and Marvel Animation & Family Entertainment’s panel did not disappoint. Several new announcements were made, one of which was surprising in lieu of recent announcements that Sony’s Spider-Man franchise would be breaking ties with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
As previously reported by mxdwn, Sony and Disney have parted ways, leaving the Spider-Man franchise in limbo. This has since led to Marvel head’s Kevin Feige departing from Sony, and thus removing Sony’s Spider-Man franchise from the MCU. Feige shared his feelings on the departure, showing no hostilities: “We got to make five films within the MCU with Spider-Man: two standalone films and three with the Avengers. It was a dream that I never thought would happen. It was never meant to last forever. We knew there was a finite amount of time that we’d be able to do this, and we told the story we wanted to tell, and I’ll always be thankful for that.”
Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends is set to premiere in 2021, and will be Disney Junior’s first Marvel series that will be full length. It is an animated series original aimed at preschoolers, so not exactly fulfilling for most Spider-Man fans. However, Marvel Animation & Family Entertainment’s SVP, Cort Lane, seemed to believe that this new fanbase is worth targeting, stating that “Preschool kids already love Spidey, so they’ll be delighted to have Peter Parker thwipping across their screens in this new series.” Concerning Marvel’s involvement, Lane added that, “Everyone at Marvel is thrilled to launch our first preschool series on Disney Junior, the gold standard platform for the audience. We believe parents and kids will be excited about these stories filled with themes of friendship, cooperation, solving problems and using your abilities to help others.”
The series will follow Peter Parker, who unlike the typical Spider-Man persona, must work together with friends in order to tap into his deeper superhero powers. Spider-Man and friends Miles Morales and Gwen, also known as Ghost-Spider, must team up with other superheroes like Black Panther, Hulk, and Ms. Marvel, learning the values of teamwork in order to win over evil.
Other series announced at D23 included Ms. Marvel, a new live-action series, as well as other series for the MCU.