Spider-Man: Brand New Day Unites 5 Superhero Franchises For The First Time In History

Spider-Man: Brand New Day has already made MCU history, but its biggest achievement could be uniting five different superhero franchises for the first time. Spider-Man: Brand New Day features a stunning selection of beloved Marvel heroes, each with adaption rights owned by completely different companies. Even ten years ago, this felt like a complete impossibility.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day depicts Tom Holland’s Peter Parker as he navigates his new life post-Spider-Man: No Way Home. While Peter's previous life with MJ and Ned has been erased, Spidey has accrued some friends and allies of his own. When a wholly new threat appears in the MCU’s world, Spider-Man must work with his new comrades to save the city once again.

Many of these are drawn from different studios and franchises. Yet Brand New Day manages to make the crossover feel like a natural extension of Peter's increasingly complicated life.

Brand New Day effectively turns Spider-Man into the meeting point for several previously disconnected superhero continuities, creating a crossover that would have been unthinkable when the early superhero movies were dominating theaters. This is particularly good news for the MCU’s future, which seems set to fold in even more disconnected superhero universes into its ongoing franchise plans.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day United 5 Superhero Franchises For The First Time

Spider-Man Brand New Day, like all of the MCU’s Spider-Man movies, are produced by Sony Pictures, who still own Web-Head's cinematic rights. Thankfully, the ongoing partnership has allowed these to be part of the wider MCU timeline, and as such featured other MCU characters alongside Tom Holland’s Peter Parker.

Brand New Day also boasts Jon Bernthal’s Punisher from Marvel's Netflix era, a character who originated in the Daredevil series before Marvel Studios incorporated him into the MCU. Things get a little more complicated with the Hulk. Universal Pictures still own the rights to solo Hulk movies, which is why he is perennially stuck as a supporting character.

Nevertheless, Mark Ruffalo's Hulk brings the character's history from Universal's The Incredible Hulk into the same movie as Spider-Man. Then there's the biggest surprise with Sadie Sink's Jean Grey. The character is a new MCU interpretation rather than Famke Janssen's version from Fox's X-Men films, but her presence means the movie now directly connects Spider-Man's corner of Marvel to the X-Men's cinematic legacy.

Fox had long owned the rights to the X-Men franchise, and did so until Disney’s acquisition of Fox. Brand New Day represents the MCU’s first major foray into the mutant world, bringing a major X-Men character into the spotlight. Brand New Day therefore becomes an extraordinary franchise collision, featuring the MCU, Sony, Netflix, Universal, and Fox.

Avengers: Doomsday Is Set To Continue This Trend

Marvel clearly isn't finished breaking down the walls between its superhero franchises. Avengers: Doomsday is set to take the concept even further by bringing together the MCU's Avengers, Marvel's new Fantastic Four, and the original Fox X-Men characters in the same movie.

The confirmed cast includes Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Anthony Mackie's Captain America alongside Pedro Pascal's Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm, Ebon Moss-Bachrach's Ben Grimm, and Joseph Quinn's Johnny Storm.

The X-Men side is even more significant. Patrick Stewart returns as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, James Marsden as Cyclops, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, and Channing Tatum as Gambit.

That means Doomsday is effectively the next step in Marvel's increasingly ambitious approach to its cinematic history. Instead of pretending the previous franchises never existed, Marvel is bringing them into the multiverse and allowing characters from radically different eras to finally occupy the same story. After Spider-Man: Brand New Day brought five superhero movie franchises together through Spider-Man, Doomsday is preparing to make that kind of crossover look almost routine.