Sony’s reboot series. whilst making more money than you can shake a underbaked script at, has come to a screeching halt. Marvel Studios have entered a deal with Sony that allow Ol' Web-Head to join the MCU (which...granted, includes yet another rebooted single film in 2017). The deal itself appears to being kept under wraps, but will more than likely include vast swathes of cash being delivered to Sony in a dump truck.
The cancellation of the Spidey-Verse (copyright Marvel 2015) means that Andrew Garefield and Marc Webb's series has been jettisoned out the window, and as a guess, the Sinister Six / Venom movies have been placed on the back burner for the time being.
What happened? How did ASM and Sony come to this?
Sit back, and lets have a look.
WITH GREAT POWERS COMES MORE ORIGINS
When Sony rebooted the Spider-Verse, (already did this joke) they took a different slant on Parker's origins. A conspiracy element was added to his parents death, and then was excised for the most part from the final movie. The second film took these missing parts, and then adding to them, leaving a air of confusion for those who had not watched any DVD extras, or had read any leaked versions of earlier scripts. Add to that, the need that Sony had to add multiple villains to create a launching pad for more spin-offs and sequels (see: Marvel Cinematic Universe), left ASM 2 as broken and almost unwatchable mess.
ASM2's major failing however, falls with Spider-Man himself. Sony looked to the Ultimate Spider-Man comics to recreate the franchise, but in doing this appeared to forget to include Peter Parker himself. The Parker we are presented with is a cocky, skateboarding "cool hipster kid", who is already self assured an confident when bitten by a radioactive spider, thus lessening the impact over when a conflicted and socially awkward teen trying to fit in and gaining his powers, which teach him to be the best version of himself he could be, whilst also allowing him to find the confidence in himself he never could have gained otherwise.
In other words... ASM's Parker is very hard to relate to. Not impossible, but difficult.
Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man is quippy, and sounds more like Spidey than Tobey Maguire's ever was, so it is a shame that the script let him down so badly throughout the second film, none more so in the was he deals with both Uncle Ben's death and the promise he made to a dying Captain Stacy
What Sony set out to achieve is what it appears DC is about to try. A game of Catch-Up. By throwing all the eggs into a basket to create a single universe in which to create media, too much is going on before your eyes and it becomes a unified mess. Marvel spent years playing with the idea before going all-out with Avengers. Both Sony and DC don't feel they have the time to slowly build a shared universe, and maybe they could be right. But the gung-ho approach that Sony went for gave us ASM, and ultimately led to the point where one of the most recognisable Superheroes in the entire world...... became box office poison.