In the world of cinema, nothing can be more complicated, frustrating, or aggravating than the web of red tape involving the rights of characters and properties; which studio owns what character and what they are allowed to do with it. This week came news that many fans of superheroes have been dreading; an inability by Disney and Sony Pictures to reach an agreement over the rights to Spider-Man, which means the property will no longer be involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)…the long-running series of films that has been populated with characters such as Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Rocket & Groot.
How did this happen? How could Spider-Man, one of Marvel Comics’ most iconic characters, be taken away from them? The rights to bring the web-slinger to the big screen in live-action form were purchased from Marvel way back in 1985, and moved through various companies before being secured by Sony Pictures. Sony brought on director Sam Raimi of EVIL DEAD fame to bring Spidey and his alter-ego Peter Parker into summer blockbuster territory. Tobey Maguire took on the lead role, which resulted in the pretty-good SPIDER-MAN (2002), the excellent SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004), and the shitty SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007).
From there things got messy. After a planned SPIDER-MAN 4 with Raimi fell apart, Sony rebooted the character with a new cast and director. This time Andrew Garfield stepped into Peter’s tights, and the result was the boring THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in 2012 and the awful THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 in 2014.
At this point, Marvel Studios had been picked up by Disney and were dominating the superhero film universe with their connected series of super-films. In 2015, a deal was reached between Disney and Sony to share the Spider-Man film rights, and this brought yet another new version of the character to screens. This time, Tom Holland became Peter Parker, and the character was allowed to play in the same playground as famed characters Iron Man and Hulk. Holland appeared in two solo films, along with CIVIL WAR (2016), INFINITY WAR (2018), and ENDGAME (2019). Holland’s performance, and the new Spidey were fully embraced by fans.
But today, the dispute between Sony and Disney has yanked Parker out of that playground. The dispute is all about, of course, money. Disney wanted any future Spidey films to be a 50/50 co-financing between the studios, while Sony wanted to keep the arrangement going under the current terms where Disney receives 5% of the gross. Disney refused. This is coming off the heels of Holland’s two solo films breaking many box office records, including the recent one, FAR FROM HOME (2019), becoming Sony’s highest-grossing film.
We can debate endlessly over who is really at fault here. Disney certainly got greedy, and Sony shows their greed here as well, but Disney is the one with the better reputation in making movies. Their success with Marvel characters is unprecedented, while Sony in the meantime hasn’t made a decent live-action superhero movie since 2004. A year ago they tried their hand at making a solo-villain movie, with Spider-Man’s top villain VENOM…and the result was hot garbage. The fans are the ones who will be on the losing end, as Sony is bound to take Holland’s Spidey and go back to making crappy movies, or worse…reboot the character again. Marvel of course will be fine with the hundreds of characters they have and are planning to roll out over the next decade. The MCU will survive, but this is clearly not what fans want. Cinematic superhero history shows that the public likes quality, and they like consistency…which means Sony has nothing to gain by this result. Negotiations may still happen down the road, but for now the real Spider-Man is no more.
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