The deal between Marvel and Sony that allowed Peter Parker to join up with the Avengers is actually kind of extraordinary. More often than not — all the time, really — studios jealously hold tight to their superhero properties, often, as with Fantastic Four, making movies just so they can keep the rights. But Spider-Man allowed two studios to co-parent a character, allowing Spidey and other Avengers to ping-pong between movie universes, appearing in both. That deal seems like it may be up in the air after whatever follows Spider-Man: Homecoming.

While speaking with CosmicBookNews at CinemaCon, Amy Pascal, producer of Homecoming, said that Spider-Man might not join the Avengers again for some time after the Homecoming sequel.

One of the things that I think is so amazing about this experience is that you don’t have studios deciding to work together to make a film very often. In fact it may never happen again, after we do the sequel. Because Sony, and Disney, and Marvel all decided that the right thing to do was to allow Peter Parker and Spider-Man to be in the MCU and to work with the Marvel guys and have them produce this film. And I think that was a very rare thing for three companies to do, and a very brilliant thing for them to decide to do because there are only so many stories that you can tell again and again and again about Spidey, and this is something that we would have never been able to do in any other way. So it was a very selfless thing that very smart on the part of all the companies.

This deal is basically Pascal’s baby, as she finalized negotiations for it right before she left Sony after the infamous email hack. What she’s saying here is that another deal like this one could be struck, she just wouldn’t be the one striking it. And if both Homecoming and its sequel do well, Sony might see that there’s an advantage to having the Spidey and Avengers universes married to each other. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker will be back for Avengers: Infinity War and probably its sequel, so it’ll be quite a while before we have to really start worrying about this.

Spider-Man: Homecoming opens July 7.

More From MIX 108