No More Spider-Man in the MCU – Disney/Marvel and Sony can’t make a deal!
This this is all the rage on the twitters and the interwebs right now.
Oh noes! Sony wont agree to a 50/50 deal with Disney for the money on future Spider-Man movies!
It’s reported all over the place.
Oh look, Slate talked about it.
USA Today? Check. Gizmodo? Of course.
I could link to dozen’s more, but you’re not here to be linked to other articles, you want to know what that guy from that one podcast that talks about comics thinks. While you read feel free to press play on our review of Spider-Man: Far From home.
Alright, so let’s talk about Sony and Disney fighting over Spider-Man! I do want to start this with saying that I 100% think that Marvel should have control over all it’s characters. I understand legally they signed the movie rights away to several characters during some financial down time, but frankly I don’t care. There should have been some “buy back” clause in there to get their characters back.
That being said, I don’t like Disney’s dominance in the entertainment world. I think it has the potential to dilute what we get to experience and puts too much power in the hands of one company as to whats “ok” for us to watch. (I also love Disney cartoons, so it’s a love hate for sure). It just feels very “market research shows you will love this!” I mean, the proof is in all the damn classic animated cartoons getting “live action” remakes.
I really loved the first two Sony Spider-Man movies when they came out. Granted it was a different time, but Sony can make a good Spidey. Amazing Spider-Man had it’s moments, but they went in a wrong direction. MCU Spider-Man is great, but it’s different. Part of me thinks it’s different just to be different, that they make changes certain story elements just to have it be different than the source. I mean yeah, that’s kinda par for the course with the MCU, but still. Changing things like MJ not being MJ, how Spidey integrates in with the rest of the MCU. I really dislike (even though I get it) them using Tony as MCU Spidey’s Uncle Ben, when he had an Uncle Ben that died when he became Spider-Man.
The two MCU Spider-Man movies have grossed around $1.9 billion, partly due to the fact that this Spider-Man is integrated in with the greater MCU, so move people see it because people are invested into this universe, to this ride. And no doubt people love Spider-Man (see below for a better breakdown), but you can’t argue the current MCU effect on top of it. I believe currently Disney get’s about 5% of the profits of the Spider-Man movies, but they retain all merchandise rights. They want to re-negotiate this deal to make it 50/50 on costs spent and profits. (This could be wrong, I’m not a reporter nor do I fully understand deals. This is what I’ve read and how I understand it. Feel free to call me an idiot in the comments).
I think part of why Sony wants this is because they released the Venom movie last year and it did well. Even though it wasn’t very good, it made a lot of money, a shocking amount of money for sure. Because they made a ton of money with Venom, Sony believes they can do the same thing with Spider-Man without the MCU, (also, shame on all of you who paid money to see this atrocity! Supporting it with money in the theatre gives Sony the false notion people like this thing and they should make more! Also, we fall into this, just listen to this episode about the movie.)
So what do I think is going to happen? Honestly I think this is a ploy to create buzz. I don’t think it’s fake, but I do think that Sony is trying to get leverage on Disney on this to keep more of a chunk from the proceeds of the future films. I think they will use the fan outrage to try and negotiate. This could work against Sony though as most fans are probably angry AT them for pulling out and not agreeing to the 50/50.
If Sony does stick to it’s guns and not keep this Spider-Man in the MCU, and doesn’t make the next two within the MCU with the guidance of Feige, I think we are in trouble of getting some retconned garbage. There is so much of the MCU weaved into the current Spider-Man movies they would have to ignore so much to make it work, and then we get some hot garbage like Venom (which we called back in February of 2018)
Bottom line is I don’t like this, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. The MCU will survive without Spider-Man, and Sony will keep making Spider-Man movies, and people will keep seeing them. I do HOPE they come to a deal and we get more Tom Holland in this universe, but we will see.
As promised I wanted to tell you about the by movie breakdown of box office results, as I think people do discredit Sony for what they have done.
Spider-Man (2002): $821 million
Spider-Man 2 (2004): $783 million
Spider-Man 3 (2007): $890 million
Amazing Spider-Man (2012): $757 million
Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014): $708 million
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017): $880 million
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) $1.1 billion
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018): $375 million
It should be noted that this is worldwide totals, and ticket prices have gone up over the years. I would love to have a “number of tickets sold” calculation for this, but that would even be inflated with free screenings or whatever. Anyway, you can see the live action Spider-Man movies are pretty consistent. I do want to point out that the greatest movie of them all made the least amount of money. Into the Spider-Verse is the greatest Spider-Man movie ever. Just listen to us talking about it here.
Thank you for your time, I’m going to go watch some old Spider-Man cartoons, they wont let me down.