We Finally Have a Release Date For Spider-Man: No Way Home

Not only do we finally have a title for the upcoming third Spider-Man movie, but we have a release date, too! Marvel has officially announced that Spider-Man: No Way Home will arrive in theaters on Dec. 17.

The announcement came along with two other major release-date announcements from Disney-owned brands: the premiere of the Disney+ series Loki will be on June 11, and the latest Star Wars spinoff Star Wars: The Bad Batch has the perfectly punny release date of May 4 (aka Star Wars Day, "May the Fourth be with you"). The Spider-Man announcement, however, is particularly intriguing, since both of the previous movies in the series have had summer release dates. Most likely, it's an attempt to avoid the ongoing uncertainties about exactly when movie theaters will be reopening this year after being mostly shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement does say "Only in theaters," so for now, at least, the plan is to have a traditional big-screen release, rather than the Disney+ route that several movies have taken this past year.

The title and release date mark the biggest pieces of confirmed information that we have so far about the third Spidey film. For months, there have been rumors that the movie will fully immerse the Marvel universe into the multiverse and involve actors from the past two iterations of the Spider-Man franchise. When star Tom Holland appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Feb. 23, he specifically shot down the rumors that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would appear in the movie. "It would be amazing if they were [in the movie], because they haven't told me that yet," Holland joked. "I am Spider-Man, and I've read the script from the beginning to the end, so it would be a miracle if they could have kept that from me!"

We do know that most of the main cast from the previous installments — Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, and Marisa Tomei — will be back for a third go-round. Also in the cast: Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange (fanning the flames of those multiverse rumors) and, reportedly, Jamie Foxx and Alfred Molina as, respectively, Electro and Doc Ock (rumors that Holland specifically did not deny in his Fallon interview). We're sure more information will start to come out as the release date gets closer, and we can't wait to learn more!