As the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Multiverse Saga continues to put the pieces in place for the conclusion of the Multiverse Saga, all sights are set on Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Those two films are set to bring back who-knows-how-many MCU legends as the Avengers go up against Doctor Doom in a battle with the fate of the multiverse itself at stake. They are also set to be box office phenomenons, and much like with the previous two Avengers movies, any MCU installments that come out in between them will undoubtedly get a major boost. The fact that it's going to be a Spider-Man movie says so much about the investment from Marvel Studios in that character.
Spider-Man 4 is already set to be one of the biggest movies of 2026, as audiences are ready to see Tom Holland's webslinger return to screens for the first time since the record-breaking Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021 left his story in a very unexpected place. Sony Pictures will once again be collaborating with Marvel on this one so that Spidey gets what could well be his biggest adventure yet.
It's going to be a major event film (and that's before you factor in its placement between the two Avengers movies). However, it has also undergone a number of changes ahead of the start of production, and that reportedly involves the removal of certain characters.
Spider-Man 4 will reportedly no longer feature the Sinister Six
As reported by Heroic Hollywood, a new report from Marvel scooper The Beyond Reporter claims that Spider-Man 4 will not feature the Sinister Six as the characters were removed after rewrites of the script got underway. If that's the case, it seemingly confirms the end of Sony's longtime plan to bring the Sinister Six to screen and eventually have them come face to face with at least one version of Spider-Man.
It also suggests that the new villain for the film could be Mephisto, with Ghost Rider to serve as a supporting hero to the wall-crawler in the same way that Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and Happy Hogan/Nick Fury did in previous films in the MCU's Spider-Man franchise. Needless to say that would make Spider-Man 4 a very different kind of movie, throwing Peter Parker and his supporting characters into a world of supernatural.
Marvel Comics' answer to the devil, Mephisto has been a recurring presence in the pages of the source material for years, but he has yet to make his official debut in the MCU. Audiences have been anticipating his arrival in the franchise since WandaVision seemingly made some references to him, but it wasn't until 2024 spinoff Agatha All Along that he was name-dropped for the very first time. He's now expected to make his live-action debut in Ironheart.
That would be an interesting choice for a Spider-Man villain, but the fact that fans are even having a discussion about this highlights how the film keeps changing. According to reports, Marvel Studios were eager to produce a more lower-scale, street-level Spider-Man movie for the fourth installment - something that fans have been asking for from the Spidey films since Tom Holland debuted as the webslinger - but Sony reportedly wanted another multiversal adventure after the success of 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. Given that the movie is sandwiched between two Avengers movies that will also star Tom Holland's Spider-Man and bring the Multiverse Saga to an end, it's pretty clear that Sony won out.
Speaking of Sony, the studio has been attempting to bring the Sinister Six to screens for years now, starting as early as the previous Spider-Man franchise. 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2 seemingly set those plans in motion but after the underperformance of that film, Sony made the call to Marvel and the two have collaborated on Spider-Man ever since, rebooting the character with his MCU debut in 2016's Captain America: Civil War.
However, they continued to set the stage for their own standalone Sinister Six in the Sony Pictures Universe of Spider-Man Characters, but it never came to be before the apparent end of that franchise with Kraven the Hunter's poor box office performance. The characters' apparent removal from Spider-Man 4 doesn't necessarily rule the villains out from a future appearance, but it does suggest that it will be a while before that plan ever comes to fruition.
Spider-Man 4 arrives in movie theaters on July 24, 2026.