Spider-Man: No Way Home's streaming release date gets a six-month window from Starz as the film continues to dominate the box office. Tom Holland returns to lead the newest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Peter Parker struggles to regain his secret identity after Mysterio exposes him with a post-death video released via J. Jonah Jameson and his Daily Bugle website. Parker turns to Doctor Strange to perform a spell to fix the problem, only instead to break open the doors to the multiverse and invite villains from other realities to enter their world and come after Spider-Man.
Alongside Holland, Spider-Man: No Way Home saw the returns of director Jon Watts, writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers and stars Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Benedict Wong and Tony Revolori. The threequel also built the bridge between Sony's past Spider-Man franchises with the arrivals of Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus, Thomas Haden Church's Sandman, Rhys Ifans' Lizard, Jamie Foxx's Electro and the webslingers themselves, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Spider-Man: No Way Home swung into theaters this past December to rave reviews and has set multiple box office records and now audiences are eager to bring the movie home.
In the recent Lionsgate earnings call, per Deadline, the company revealed Spider-Man: No Way Home's streaming release date window. The studio confirmed that the hit MCU threequel will premiere on Starz and the network's streaming apps sometime in the next six months. Starz CEO Jeffrey Hirsch expressed his hope that Spider-Man: No Way Home will help give a tremendous boost to the network and app and stated they plan to "put the right shows and content around it" in an effort to "move customers that watch Spider-Man into one of your originals."
A six-month window may seem to be a generally loose one for the Spider-Man: No Way Home streaming release, the trickier nature of the film's rights are a key factor in this plan. Unlike fellow MCU titles Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals, which hit PVOD and Disney+ within two months of their theatrical releases, the webslinging threequel is primarily owned by Sony, who currently has a deal set with Lionsgate for their films to be released on Starz. With this deal seeing films hit the network after both their theatrical and home media releases, it makes sense Spider-Man: No Way Home wouldn't arrive on Starz sooner as it would need to wait for the film to hit PVOD and physical shelves, of which no window has been given by Sony at the time of writing.
It is interesting to note that Spider-Man: No Way Home is set to be the final Sony film to be released on Starz under their deal with Sony as the latter signed a lucrative deal with Netflix in early 2021 for all future films through 2026. Sony also signed a deal with Disney the same time that allowed both Disney+ and Hulu to begin streaming the studio's legacy content, namely that of past Spider-Man films and Sony's Spider-Man Universe, which is set to kick off sometime this year. While audiences await a more clear date for its streaming premiere, Spider-Man: No Way Home can be caught in theaters now.
Source: Deadline