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Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

What grade would you give the Marvel Cinematic Universe? (Ever-Changing Question)


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To clarify, has it been noted anywhere whether or not Cindy Moon is one of Sony's collection of Spider-characters, movie-wise?
I would imagine she is, although the leaked document that outlines who owns what was updated in 2011 so I can't tell you the answer conclusively.

^ As far as I know, Sony owns the filmic rights to all characters associated with Spider-Man with the possible exception of the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman.

Jessica Drew is a shared character. Sony owns the rights to her as Spider-Woman with powers and all that but Marvel can use her as a non-powered Jessica Drew.
 
There's not a lot that are good amongst those though.

Spider-Gwen, Miles, Mayday Parker, The Prowler, Cindy Moon, Ben Reilly, Spider-Man 2099, Silver Sable, Black Cat, Morbius, Madame Webb, and Anya Corazon aren't good characters?

Spidey's massive rogues gallery aren't good characters?
 
Assume that Silk is part of the Spider-Properties list. She keeps crossing over into their books.
I'm pretty sure she would be, she was introduced in a Spider-Man book and is pretty closely linked to the him.
 
Spider-Gwen, Miles, Mayday Parker, The Prowler, Cindy Moon, Ben Reilly, Spider-Man 2099, Silver Sable, Black Cat, Morbius, Madame Webb, and Anya Corazon aren't good characters?

Spidey's massive rogues gallery aren't good characters?
Well we're going to have to disagree about the rogues gallery, because I think they're badly over-rated. To say the least.

Miles and family I really like and they did a fine job with Spiderverse. Silk, Spider-Gwen, Miles and Co. are all promising but likely to be relegated to the animated films. Maybe that's actually for the best.

Live action looks like being the Parker Spidey and probably be vs Kraven, Mysterio, Rhino, Green Goblin, Vulture or any of that crap rota and I'm far from enthusiastic.
 
Reading that through, I could see a situation where Sony do their own Spidey and family movies and if they're successful, would be in a strong position to do a deal by deal arrangement to loan Spidey to Marvel. Maybe one appearance for an Avengers movie every phase, and continue with their own stuff the rest of the time.

This could be good news - Sony could put out near as many movies as Marvel, Spidey being a priority, giving us more overall.

Edit - is that 100% that Marvel get the IP back If and when Sony is sold ?
 
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There's a lot of 'ifs' in those theories. It's one thing to say Spider-man could be a big success or even possibly a successful cinematic universe, but quite another to say Sony's shown any sign of actually being able to make that happen, let alone being able to make it a serious rival to the MCU.

Yeah, Spider-man comes with hundreds of characters, but not hundreds of viable lead characters - those are fairly few, especially in comparison to the MCU (now fresh with all the fox stuff as well). And Sony has relegated most of Spidey's best leads to animation preferring to make live action Morbius, Black Cat and Silver Sable and Kraven. They've also started chasing a certain grimy, dark aesthetic for their spider-verse (with Venom and probably Morbius to follow) that really isn't going to mesh well with Holland's Spider-man as we know him. And that's all without mentioning the fact that like 50-60% of Spidey's character roster is some version of Spider-person or venom-person, which is going to seriously get old if they actually try to match the MCU in volume. Or mentioning the fact that their plans are based on continuing what Marvel already set up with Holland, yet Watts isn't signed at all yet and Holland is only signed for one more movie.

And yeah, all problems can be overcome IF you get the right creative people in charge, but how often has Sony actually managed to do that for any of their franchises? They get things wrong more often than they get them right and they haven't ever achieved anything even remotely similar to the consistent quality of the mcu at all.

If the MCU dies in the coming years, it won't be at the hands of Sony's Spider-Verse. And if these negotiations aren't resumed, I really don't see the Spider-man franchise doing anything but floundering in the near future.
 
I'd say the take-out from this is that regardless of whether or not a new deal is done, Spidey will be back at Marvel in the mid-term. Disney might buy the rights back or buy Sony, or if someone else buys Sony, Disney get him back anyway.

The only way Spidey could stay out of the MCU long term is if Sony knock it out of the park AND don't get taken over.
 
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Out of left field solution: WB buys Sony and get’s the Spider-Men rights along with it, allowing or even forcing a DCU and MCU crossover because that would be the only way WB can make a Spidey movie successful assuming they want to keep the rights?
 
It's actually occurred to me that if Sony goes up for sale, WB might be one of the likelier buyers (I mean, we're kind of running out of actually successful studios at this point). Even if they got the rights, though, I'm not sure they'd want a crossover. Maybe they'd be more interested in trading Spider-man rights for some other franchise(s) that Disney controls. Maybe a portfolio of the Alien/Predator/Indepedence day/Planet of the Apes kind of stuff - WB could be the king of sci-fi (it already has the Matrix, Mad Max and Blade Runner).

But I'm not sure if the rights are even transferable. Do we know enough about the license to know whether a sale would include the Spidey rights or if any sale would automatically revert Spidey to Marvel?
 
Out of left field solution: WB buys Sony and get’s the Spider-Men rights along with it, allowing or even forcing a DCU and MCU crossover because that would be the only way WB can make a Spidey movie successful assuming they want to keep the rights?
Spider-Mans rights revert to Marvel in any sale or merger of Sony.
 
Continuing the series either in or outside MCU both have risks as the character has become pretty identified with high school and the older years with either having already been done or quickly becoming too old. I remember Feige wanted at least three solo films with the character in high school i.e. there could possibly be more, but with even Holland aging and Sony wanting to and maybe having to do more its own thing, it's more likely a third solo will complete the high school era.

I think a third movie will give a big role to Gwen and it or a fourth will at least hint at, if not establish, Miles Morales. It could feel safer to move forward with older Spider-Man if future or other movies are able to continue having another high school Spider-Man as well.
 
Spider-Mans rights revert to Marvel in any sale or merger of Sony.
Disney could (in theory) just buy Sony if they wanted. Disney market cap is $244B, Sony much smaller at $70B
But in reality Sony being a Japanese company probably won't willingly go for it so it would have to be a hostile takeover. In which case this would drag out of years and years and become a much more serious issue than who owns Spiderman.
 
I remember Feige wanted at least three solo films with the character in high school

Sony wanted 3 films with the character in HS.

Tom Holland may have taken Disney/Marvel Studios' side in this situation because he apparently unfollowed Sony on Instagram yesterday.
 
Disney could (in theory) just buy Sony if they wanted. Disney market cap is $244B, Sony much smaller at $70B
But in reality Sony being a Japanese company probably won't willingly go for it so it would have to be a hostile takeover. In which case this would drag out of years and years and become a much more serious issue than who owns Spiderman.
The bigger hurdle is I can not see them getting regulatory approval in the US to buy ANOTHER major movie studio, reducing us to 4 (Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Warner). They barely got by with buying Fox.
 
Sony wanted 3 films with the character in HS.

Tom Holland may have taken Disney/Marvel Studios' side in this situation because he apparently unfollowed Sony on Instagram yesterday.
To be fair I don't think this has been independently verified? The "news" comes from the guy with #BoycottSonySpiderMan hashtag. So I guess it's just another version of "fake news"
 
The bigger hurdle is I can not see them getting regulatory approval in the US to buy ANOTHER major movie studio, reducing us to 4 (Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Warner). They barely got by with buying Fox.
Right, I forgot about that. Yeah, they could buy Sony if Sony Pictures is spun off, but then that would not help them get Spiderman back.
 
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