Venom kicked things off in 2018, and it proved the demand, grossing over $850 million worldwide.
The studio originally named this "Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters" (SPUMC) back in 2019, a little on-the-nose and hardly the most elegant acronym; it did, however, have the benefit of avoiding specifying whether this shared universe was centered around heroes or villains, instead just reminding potential viewers the movies starred "Marvel characters." Now, however, Sony has chosen to rename the universe; it is officially "Sony's Spider-Man Universe."
This name is particularly interesting in that it places Spider-Man at the very center of the expanding universe, making further big-screen appearances by the wall-crawler inevitable. There interesting question is whether or not this will involve Tom Holland's Spider-Man; back in October 2019, Spider-Man: No Way Home is expected to raise the possibility of multiple live-action Spider-Men active across the Multiverse at the same time.
"Sony's Spider-Man Universe" is still in its early stages right now, mostly because the releases of first trailer drop for Spider-Man: No Way Home. With marketing kicking off for the Spider-Man threequel, it's likely the two studios are now discussing the future of the Spider-Man franchise once again.
Meanwhile, It's also important to note Sony is carefully avoiding committing to this being a "Cinematic" universe. In fact, their goal is to create a transmedia universe, one that transcends one medium and involves both films and TV shows; Sony is already working on a Silk TV series under showrunner Tom Spezialy (Watchmen), which stars a character named Cindy Moon, a Korean-American who was also bitten by that infamous radioactive spider. Hopefully, it won't be long before further movies and TV series are announced, hopefully featuring Spider-Man himself.
