'Avengers: Endgame' directors 'not surprised' by Spider-Man split

The Marvel / Sony Spider-Man saga seems to have more twists than an entire run of the comics.

First the deal collapsing was said to be Sony’s fault, then it was Marvel’s, then Sony closed the door, now we’re hearing that Kevin Feige fought hard to make the deal work, despite how difficult it was to get over the line.

“It wasn’t easy,” says Joe Russo, who directed Captain America: Civil War, the first Marvel Studios film to feature Tom Holland’s Peter Parker.

“Kevin [Feige] went through a lot. There were a lot of ups and downs, and he kept walking into our office and we’d go, ‘Look, we’ve got to do it with [Sony],’ and he’d go, ‘OK, I’ll figure it out,’ and walk back into his. He was looking for the way out.”

“He wanted to open that door and have us go, ‘We figured it out! We don’t need Spider-Man!’ because it’s a lot of work to get two major corporations to play nice with each other, and the fact that it happened at all, we should all be dancing and celebrating that we got that little bit of time.”

Read more: Sony Pictures boss dashes hopes of Spider-Man in the MCU

It sounds like a complex collaboration, so much so that the Russos were pretty much the only Marvel fans who weren’t shocked when the deal collapsed.

“I think that’s why Joe and I are not so devastated or surprised that there’s been a falling-out, because it was so hard to make it happen in the first place,” Anthony Russo said.

Read more: Kevin Feige Says Deal ‘Never Meant to Last Forever’

And, whatever happens, we’ll be getting Spider-Man movies starring Tom Holland for a long time to come, even if he does have to receive a blow to the head that makes him completely forget about Tony Stark.