Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show, I’m your host Deffinition aka Mr. Disappointment and I hate to be the bearer of Bad News but it’s difficult to not feel frustrated with today’s breaking news.
That is that Spider-man will no longer be a part of the MCU as Sony and Disney have cut ties with one another. Within the last hour Deadline have reported that the two companies have failed to reach an agreement with one another and therefore are parting ways.
Obviously, this is crushing if you’re a Marvel fan and it completeLY destroys all of the potential that the Spider-man films had been building since Civil War.
Sony Contract Explained
For those who don’t know Sony own Spider-man but they allowed the character to appear in the MCU in exchange for Disney making the films in order to get the character back to the height of popularity after they’d derailed it with the Andrew Garfield movies.
Disney only wanted a small cut for the films and they were contracted to do Civil War, Homecoming, Infinity War, Endgame and Far From Home. After Far From Home the contract was at an end and there were rumors that Sony would only renew it with Marvel if the film grossed over 1 billion dollars which it managed to, making it the first Spider-man film to do so.
You would think that Sony would be pleased with this but apparently, negotiations broke down due to money and because Disney wanted 50% of profits from the films instead of the small amount that Sony was allowing them to have even though they were doing the majority of the heavy lifting.
Spider-Man Ruined?
What’s so frustrating about this is that Sony had pretty much-ruined spider-man and Disney got the character back on track with some phenomenal films and they even had the character in Avengers: Endgame which has gone on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time.
It just seems like such a bad play that is purely down to greed and reportedly Sony flat out turned down the 50/50 deals and apparently didn’t even come back to try and figure out a compromise. It just seems that they didn’t want Disney to have any part of their biggest cash cow and were expecting the company to stick with the 5% that they had been making on the prior movies which is honestly quite laughable.
There’s been a lot of back and forth between the two companies and the entire thing has been a shambles with Disney unable to call MJ, Mary Jane, due to Sony wishing to keep the character a certain way and so on that just shows that Sony doesn’t really understand what they are doing.
Spider-Man 3?
Apparently, they are working on two more films that will have Jon Watts and Tom Holland at the helm so the cliffhanger from the end of Far From Home will still have a conclusion, though I don’t really trust Sony all that much to be able to deliver on it.
If you’ve been following their films it’s pretty clear that this has been a play that they’ve been attempting with the company starting up their own films in the spider-verse such as Venom and Mobius and I think now it looks like Sony were pretty much-letting Disney go out and do the work so that they could get all the profits.
Essentially Sony is pretty much Geri Halliwell thinking that she can go on to have a big career without the Spice Girls. It’s completely baffling why they’ve even done this move when all they had to do was kick their feet up, let marvel do the work and take 50% of the profit for it. The MCU is the most consistent film franchise of all time with every movie making money and doing well critically and it’s ridiculous that at a time when Disney has just made the character’s first billion-dollar film that they’ve decided to take their ball away and go home.
MARVEL
Marvel has produced three out of four of the highest-grossing movies this year and I really hope that this backfires massively for Sony to the point that they are forced to renegotiate. I’m not a big fan of boycotting things but if the next movie is unconnected from the MCU then I probably won’t be all that interested in going to see it all that much as I’ll no longer be invested in the character’s journey as it won’t have a bigger effect on the larger world. What sucks the most is that Marvel was setting up Spider-man to become the next Iron-Man but this is just abysmal foresight on Sony’s behalf.
There are rumors that Marvel even stepped in and helped with the edit of Venom and this just comes across as biting the hand that feeds. I guess that oscar for into the spider-verse has gone to their head and they now think they can do it without the company which is why they are creating several spider-man spin-offs and a rumored Sinister Six film.
I really think that Sony should have been happy with 50/50 but if that’s how they want to play it I’m sure Disney will just buy them in a couple of years time anyway.
Your Thoughts
Obviously, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue, I can imagine that a lot of you are gonna be mad which is completely understandable so rant away in the comments as I’ll be reading them all.
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