Tom Rothman - the chairman of Sony Pictures - broke the news at CinemaCon on Wednesday (22.04.15) and announced Lego Movie's Phil Lord and Chris Miller as its director.

What's more, the pair - who have also directed '22 Jump Street' and 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' - will write and produce the Spider-Man animation project.

Sony has made it clear the movie will exist independently of the live-action Spider-Man universe and set a July 20, 2018 release date for the film.

Rothman also remained tight-lipped about the next incarnation of Spider-Man from Marvel's Cinematic Universe, which is currently due for release on July 28, 2017.

Freddie Highmore, Dylan O'Brien, Donald Glover and Ansel Elgort are among the actors who have been linked to the role of Peter Parker, which was previously played by Andrew Garfield.

This comes shortly after Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studio, revealed the studio's 'Spider-Man' movie will not be an origin story.

He shared: ''In Spider-Man's very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that origin in the last whatever it's been - [13] years - for us, we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics.

''It will not be an origin story, but with great power comes great responsibility. It is inherent to who his character is. But we want to reveal it in different ways and spend much more time focusing on this young high school kid in the Marvel Comic universe dealing with his powers.''