The Marvel Cinematic Universe and Spider-Man are things of the past. After weeks without reaching an agreement, Sony and Marvel Studios, now part of Disney, will no longer share the web-slinger. Yes, in the midst of the recent success of Far From Home and Avengers: Endgame and the prominent future that Disney envisioned after acquiring X-Men and Deadpool, one of Marvel's most important pieces falls.
According to Deadline, the differences were mainly economic. Apparently Disney wanted to split the profits in half of the Spider-Man films, but Sony rejected that offer, countering with the old contract that gave the mouse company 5% of the opening day's box office.
Sony has expressed disappointment via Twitter:
The full statement after several threads reads as follows:
“Many of today's Spider-Man news have not accurately characterized the recent discussions about Kevin Feige's involvement in the franchise. We are disappointed but we respect Disney's decision not to let him continue as lead producer of our next Spider-Man film. We hope this changes in the future but we understand that the many new responsibilities Disney has given Kevin, including all his new Marvel properties, do not leave him time to work on intellectual property that they do not own. Kevin is fantastic and we are grateful for his help and we appreciate the path he has helped us follow.”
With these statements, Sony points out that the responsibility for the contract falling apart is entirely Disney's. In fact, the statement hopes that “it changes in the future”, so we will have to wait for a statement from Disney. The Japanese company still has the Venom sequel in the works, which was already born outside the MCU, so we speculate about a joint film with Peter Parker.
If we go back a few years, specifically to 2015, we saw an approach between Sony and Marvel when they agreed that Spider-Man could participate in the MCU, as well as in the production of the films. Not even four years later, Disney's rush to include its new platform has led to this situation.
It is strange that Sony would want to part not only with Marvel Studios, but also with Kevin Feige, the CEO of Marvel Studios, who has worked on all the superhero films Sony made since that first Spider-Man by Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire in 2000.
It is worth noting that two Spider-Man films are still in the pipeline, and that Tom Holland would return with Jon Watts directing. However, with this news, we will no longer see links between the MCU and Peter Parker's films, and as mentioned earlier, Kevin Feige will no longer be the creative producer of the next films. Recall that the last MCU release, Spider-Man: Far From Home, became the highest-grossing film in Sony's history, surpassing 007: Skyfall (2012) and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017).
We will see if Sony manages to capitalize on the success obtained without the dependence on the Marvel world, which will continue through several confirmed films and the new series that will arrive on Disney+, the platform that will launch on November 12 in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands.
