Is The Amazing Spider-Man part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Question

Spider-Man is a Marvel franchise, just like Avengers and X-Men. When they rebooted the Hulk in 2008 it was to incorporate the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Amazing Spider-Man opens on July 3, 2012 in the USA and is a reboot of the character. Spider-Man 3 was released in 2007. It's only been five years since the last movie for this character!

Based on what they did with the Hulk, it seems likely that they're rebooting the series so that they can include the character in the next Avengers movie. Spider-Man is even a member of the New Avengers in print.

Has anyone confirmed whether or not the new Amazing Spider-Man movie is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Answer 1

Yes*

*The Amazing Spider-Man's Andrew Garfield

starred as one of three Spider-Men in the newly released Spider-Man: No Way Home. The other two were portrayed by Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is MCU canon. Therefore, Andrew Garfield's "Amazing Spider-Man" is part of the MCU, and the film The Amazing Spider-Man is MCU canon, just not on the same timeline/universe as the rest of the MCU. There are a lot of differences between the MCU's world and The Amazing Spider-Man's, however, it is present as an alternate timeline in the MCU.

In addition, the 2021 series Loki introduced us to the idea of infinite variants of various people, including Loki, Mobius, Renslayer, Kang, and so on, due to infinite timelines. This means that Garfield's Peter Parker and Maguire's Peter Parker are both passable as just variants for retcon purposes, but their stories are therefore MCU canon.

Both Garfield's Spider-Man and Maguire's Spider-Man retain memories of the events as their times as Spider-man, and it matches up with the events of the movies:

PARKER (GARFIELD): You know, Max was the sweetest guy... until he fell into a vat of electric eels.

PARKER (MAGUIRE): That'll do it.

^{Spider-Man: No Way Home}

Garfield's Parker remembers what happened to Max Dillon (Electro).

Another example:

PARKER (MAGUIRE): I've made a serum for Dr. Osborn before.

^{Spider-Man: No Way Home}

This references the events of the first Sam Raimi trilogy Spider-Man movie (Spider-Man, 2002).

Furthermore,

both new Spider-Men remember about their villains and what happened to them. It's even reasonable to assume that each had killed their respective villains, due to Maguire's Spider-Man looking much older and Garfield's Spider-Man remembering Gwen Stacy's loss, which came after he had killed both Connors and Electro.

Answer 2

The new Amazing Spider-man film is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's Sony's newest Spider-man film. They're required to keep making them or the rights will revert to Marvel, which would then allow Marvel to make their own Spider-man films in addition to including Spidey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. For more information, see my answer to a related question.

Answer 3

No, it is still not part of the MCU

According to this article and Wikipedia, Tom Holland will be playing Spider-Man in the new movies, whereas Andrew Garfield played him in The Amazing Spider-Man.

Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, has also made it very clear that this is a new version of Peter Parker:

In terms of the age of what we believe Peter Parker is, I’d say 15-16 is right…We want to play with Spider-Man in the high school years because frankly there’ve been five Spider-Man films and the amazing thing about it is, even though there’ve been five Spider-Man films, there are so many things from the comics that haven’t been done yet.

Note that this contradicts The Amazing Spider-Man. According to Feige:

I think it was midway through the first film that he graduated high school. At the beginning of the second Marc Webb film, he graduated high school. And some of my favorite Spider-Man arcs and Spider-Man stories, he’s in high school for a lot of it.

The Marc Webb films are The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Since Spider-Man will be in high school for Captain America: Civil War, it is clear that Feige is going for a very different story for Peter than happened in The Amazing Spider-Man.

Similarly, from an official Marvel article,

New Spider-Man Will Appear First in an Upcoming Marvel Film Within Marvel's Cinematic Universe

...

Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel's Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.

This constitutes explicit confirmation that the version of Spider-Man appearing in Civil War is an entirely new iteration of the character.

Answer 4

No. Marvel does not own the movie rights to Spider-Man but seems as if Sony might be willing to work with Marvel/Disney in the near future since the Oscorp Tower was almost incorporated into the Avengers skyline of New York. Spider-Man could also fit in to the timeline since the Amazing Spider-Man movie came out after the Avengers meaning Peter could have gotten his powers after the events of the Avengers movie.

Answer 5

The Amazing Spider-Man is not part of the MCU,
but the new Spider-Man is.

The character Spider-Man, moving forward, is now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe due to a deal that was struck between Marvel and Sony.

This does not impact the status of The Amazing Spider-Man films - they're still not part of the MCU. Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man films, both 1 and 2, are done and that's that; they are their own universe and aren't part of the MCU or anything. That story is over. None of that changed with the Sony / Marvel deal.

What did change is the future of the character Spider-Man in film. The new Spider-Man (with a new actor Tom Holland, new suit, slightly different backstory etc.) is part of the MCU, and thus will be appearing in team up MCU films like Captain America: Civil War and forthcoming solo MCU Spidey films from Sony, like Spider-Man: Homecoming.

The new, MCU Spider-Man (with Tom Halland) is a different Spider-Man than the Amazing Spider-Man (with Andrew Garfield); they have different, even conflicting storylines, and so on. They're not the same. All future Spider-man films will be MCU Spider-Man films and will therefore ignore the existence of the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man films entirely.

From Wikipedia:

On February 9, 2015, it was announced that Sony and Disney made a deal for Spider-Man to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a new film to be released on July 7, 2017. The companies announced on June 23, 2015 that after many auditions, Tom Holland had been cast to play Spider-Man within the MCU.

• The first reference to Spider-Man within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following the deal with Sony, was in the Ant-Man film. This was confirmed by director, Peyton Reed.
• Holland makes his first onscreen appearance as Peter Parker / Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War.
• Holland will reprise his role in Spider-Man: Homecoming, directed by Jon Watts.

For the reference in Ant-Man mentioned above, see Who jumps, who swings, who crawls up walls?

Answer 6

Currently things changed and there is a reboot happening for Spiderman with him now being part of the MCU even (appearing in Captain America 3: Civil War). Though how much he is part of the MCU aside from this appearance will have to be seen as he was an origianlly unplaned of hero to appear and only got into the MCU because of a recent deal with Sony.