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Well, it was fun while it lasted … Spider-Man leaving the Marvel Film Universe is one of those examples showing that sometimes nothing lasts forever.
Is it completely over for Spider-Man and the MCU? Damn no! As long as Disney has a lot of money, expect Spider-Man to return to the MCU at some point. But, for the immediate future, the web slinger is all alone.
OK, who is to blame here? Shortly after the announcement of Spider-Man's separation from the MCU, Sony issued a press release that blatantly blamed Disney:
"Most of today's news on Spider-Man has misinterpreted recent discussions about Kevin Feige's involvement in the franchise.We are disappointed, but respect Disney's decision not to let him continue as the lead producer of our upcoming Spider-Man movie, we hope it will change in the future, but understand that the many new responsibilities Disney has given him – including all the newly added Marvel properties – leave him alone. No time to work on an intellectual property that does not belong to them Kevin is great and we are grateful for his help and advice and we appreciate the path he has helped us to follow and we will continue. "
So … if you read in this statement, it seems that Sony says that Disney told them, "Why should we have one of our most important characters, Kevin Feige, focused on properties that we do not even own? ? "
Disney earns a lot of money with the Marvel properties that she owns and, unfortunately, Spider-Man, whether it likes it or not, is the competitor. In the end, the loyalties of Disney and Sony are back to their shareholders. Both companies are companies and their main goal is to make money, not friends. And this agreement has never been done to make Marvel fans happy. It was about making Sony and Disney happy and making them earn money at the same time.
Rumors say that Disney is playing hard with Sony. They wanted a new contract with Feige and his commitment to Sony's upcoming Spider-Man movies would be a 50/50 co-financing deal that would make Disney far better than they have now. Sony was not ready to give up so much about their greatest filmmaker and both parties seemed to want to quit.
Who benefited the most from the initial agreement that brought Spider-Man to the MCU? In a way, Sony and Disney have taken advantage of it, but I would say that Sony has benefited more, because not only "Spider-Man: far from home" has become their most profitable Spider-Man movie of all the time, it's now become their biggest hit Sony movie ever. And the success is largely due to the involvement of Marvel and his reinvention of the character for Sony.
One of the reasons for the success of MCU films is that Marvel and his writers are personally involved, as opposed to a simple film studio. They understand their characters like no other and know what their fans want. This makes Marvel comic fans happy, and this has helped create a base of loyal moviegoers for all their MCU films.
Sony, on the other hand, always seemed to have problems with Spider-Man. It was always close, but no cigar, when it was Spider-Man movies. (Although I still personally love Spider-Man 2.) Sony has earned a lot of money through Spider-Man, but let's be honest, Marvel has taken a group of virtually unknown comic characters, The Guardians of The Galaxy, and turned them into a blockbuster, profitable franchise. Spider-Man is one of the most recognizable heroes in the world behind Batman and Superman. He is without a doubt, the Marvel posterboy. Yet Spider-Man's films earned less than Guardian's films. It's just crazy, and it must have made Sony a little crazy.
The presence of Spider-Man in the MCU has been beneficial for the MCU with "Captain America: Civil War". They planned to do the "civil war" without Spider-Man, but Sony and the MCU reached an agreement for Spider-Man to be part of the MCU and Marvel would help Sony with their Spider-Man movies. As part of this deal, Robert Downey Jr. was loaned by Marvel to resume his role in Iron Man in "Spider-Man: Homecoming." It was a huge success for Sony.
The anticipation of seeing Spider-Man debuting in "Civil War" was irrelevant. The first trailer showing Spider-Man for the first time interacting with Iron Man and Captain America did not disappoint. Would the "Civil War" have been successful without Spider-Man? Sure. But that would not have been also successful. There is no doubt that the inclusion of Spider-Man has had a huge impact on the box office. See Spider-Man in the "Civil War" was palpable: Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and Hulk were fighting for the first time in "The Avengers".
The "Civil War" brought in $ 1.153 billion at the box office. After that, Sony released "Spider-Man: Homecoming," and the movie grossed $ 880 million at the box office. The previous Spider-Man movie, "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" reported $ 709 million. Sony has always thought that Spider-Man was a movie franchise that should be at the top of the box office and that their white whale was worth a billion dollars. Well, they finally figured it out with "Spider-Man: Far From Home," which recently brought in more than $ 1.10 billion.
What leaves me wondering, has the success of Spider-Man's films caused all this?
Despite what Sony said in its press release, I do not think Disney and Marvel wanted to lose Spider-Man in the MCU. On the contrary, they were probably playing with Sony in the hope of recovering the film's rights on Spider-Man. So why would Marvel say, "We're too busy to help you and we do not really need Spider-Man anymore. Good luck guys. Disney might have been a bit greedy if they wanted a bigger piece of the cake. But there is something else that we are not told.
Earlier this year, I watched Sony's conference at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and let me tell you that I had a bad feeling for Spider-Man from the beginning. At CES, the goal is generally that Sony sells its "electronic" products to the public. You know: 4K TVs, cameras, audio, PS4 and mobile phones. The majority of this conference had a huge presence of Spider-Man. They praised the success of "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" and how it was well received, a technical feat and a box office success. They then insisted that they possessed hundreds of Spider-Man characters and planned to use them in future films, mainly derivative films, because of the success encountered by "Venom" and "Into The Spider" -Verse ". And it did not sound good.
They also contributed to the resounding success of the exclusive Spider-Man game on PS4 and the way it became one of the best-selling PS4 games. And this week again, Sony announced the acquisition of Insomniac, the studio that developed the game for Sony. Sony will create a huge share of Spider-Man-related properties, even though Disney still holds the merchandising rights to Spider-Man, which includes all movie products.
If Sony posted new advances in 4K or 8K TVs at CES, "Spider-Man: In Spider Worms", "Spider-Man: Homecoming", "Venom" or Spider-Man PS4 was displayed on them. I just had a bad feeling that with all this success of Spider-Man for Sony, they would never let it go now. It would not surprise me that they feel that Spider-Man is so big that it can now sell and that Sony does not really need the MCU anymore.
Tom Rothman is another player to keep in mind. Who is he? From 1996 to 2012, Rothman was president of the Fox movie studio. Fox owned the Fantastic Four and X-Men film rights at the time, and Marvel Studios wanted a similar deal with Sony, in which both parties would benefit. But Rothman was known for his categorical opposition to any sort of deal with Marvel Studios and the main catalyst for the quarrel that existed between Disney, Marvel and Fox. Can you guess who is president of Sony Pictures now? Yeah, that's Rothman. Coincidence?
This may seem dark and dark for fans of Spider-Man and MCU, but I am rather convinced by the unpopular opinion that it could be good for the MCU. I loved Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Spider-Man and I loved his costume. But what I did not like, was that it looked more like Robin, The Boy Wonder, Iron Man than Spider-Man. Spider-Man must be his own hero. In a way, he must be above everyone in the MCU, not a sidekick. ("Sky High" is the reference.) And if I had to see Spider-Man with his mask in Endgame one more time, I was going to scream. It's not Spider-Man. Even though Spider-Man was in the Civil War, it could have been much better if it had been written better, in future episodes. It may be nice not to have Spider-Man in the shadow of Iron Man from now on.
Another thing that could follow from this is that Marvel is going to need someone to replace him in the MCU. And I think we might see the Fantastic Four and the X-Men much sooner rather than later. Who was Marvel's most popular character in comics after Spider-Man? In general, it is the wolverine. And I would love to see it debut at MCU, again, much sooner than later. So maybe that just helped put the wheels in motion for that.
Finally, if you read this sentence in Sony's statement:
"We hope this could change in the future."
Everything can happen. And if history repeats itself, Sony will eventually ruin everything. And with Rothman in charge, make sure this is definitely. But in the end, we took several steps backwards for Spider-Man to become a permanent part of the MCU, and that kind of stinks for everyone.
Editor's note: This article contains the opinions of the author, Joe Hogarty. These opinions may or may not match those of WDWNT LLC, Tom Corless or anyone on this planet. Feel free to express your own ideas in the comments section below.
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