My first reaction to animated comic book films is that they are a consolation prize, a property or story that the studios want to explore but don't have the confidence to make a proper live action film. If you haven't heard the name Miles Morales then you are A) not alone and B) probably not a huge comic book fan. Morales took up the mantle of Spider-Man after Peter Parker's death in the Ultimate comics run and has proved to have a largely popular fan base. I'm not going to pull a race card and say that the big studios didn't have the balls to put an African-American Spider-Man in the MCU but I wouldn't be far off. Now we all love the choice of Tom Holland as Peter Parker, and deservedly so, but prior to seeing his debut you had only to look at the hard fact that he was to be the third Peter Parker in a decade to know that it was time for a change. Not only would it have added to the growing diversity of the MCU but, possibly more importantly from a story standpoint, it would have given us a totally new angle on something familiar. I think it was even batted around that Morales would show up in Civil War after Peter Parker reveals himself due to the registration act and is then killed...man that would have taken some cajones!
I'm going to back track on that consolation prize statement. The honest truth is that DC and Marvel have made amazing strides in animated films in the last five years and that trajectory appears to be continuing on the up and up. With the awesome shows we're getting on Disney XD and the Justice League Dark animated movie, not to mention that, regardless of reception, we got The Killing Joke on screen, it's hard to say that animation is a silver medal. There's no word from Sony, who announced the film and it's incarnation of Spider-Man earlier today, who will be voicing the character but the obvious fan choice is our new Lando Calrissian, Donald Glover who has voiced the character before.
The film won't be connected to the MCU, for obvious reasons, but sounds like it will be getting a big screen release, which could start a trend for animated films as most are released strictly on VOD. That release is scheduled for December 2017
