The "Fox Universe" would be their way of saying to Marvel, "We're keeping
Deadpool, Fantastic Four, and
X-Men all to ourselves.
FU!"
The thing is, by connecting each of these 'side projects' to Spider-Man Homecoming and its two direct sequels, even if it's only through references and "Easter Eggs" (which is what Sony is clearly going to do), said projects won't be existing 'outside of a Spider-Man context'. They'll be linked to Spider-Man even if he doesn't directly appear in them.
Yeah, but, as others have said, Venom's origins are so closely tied to Spider-Man that it doesn't make any sense to do a movie of him without doing the black costume story in a new
Spider-Man movie first. And while Black Cat & Silver Sable aren't quite so intensely tied to Spider-Man for their origins, how many people are aware of them as their own separate characters, rather than as extensions of the
Spider-Man property? (Admittedly, for me, the main selling point for any Black Cat movie would be when I start seeing some costume pics.
)
What people are overlooking is that comic books have done this exact thing all the time -- different series have nominally been in the same universe but have effectively ignored each other and struck their own paths except on those rare occasions when they crossed over. Adam-Troy Castro wrote
a good post about this on Facebook this morning. Large comic-book universes often have series that are nominally in-universe but are far more adult or more comedic than the normal stuff and thus tend to stay very far apart with minimal interconnection. Heck, that's how comics crossovers got started in the first place. In Golden and early Silver Age DC, each individual comic basically ignored the existence of all the other superheroes, even though there were team books where they worked together routinely.
Kinda like how I was never sure when, in the midst of her own series, Spider-Gwen also found time to be a member of the Web Warriors. (Shame that
Web Warriors was canceled. I found that series to be a lot more fun than
Spider-Gwen, even though she was the main reason that I was reading it.)
BTW, I want them to do a
Spider-Gwen movie where she fights the Bodega Bandit and Koala Kommander!
Or with Doctor Who's spinoffs -- both Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures characters appeared on the flagship show, but never on each other, and any highly public near-apocalypse on one show would never be mentioned on either of the others.
I just keep hoping that, somehow, at some point, some of the Doctor's time travel shenanigans have managed to wipe
Torchwood: Miracle Day out of existence!
I know Sony has an animated Mile Morales movie in the works but why not use him in these live action movies!?!?
If the Peter Parker from
Spider-Man: Homecoming isn't going to be involved in the Sony Spiderverse at all, using Miles Morales would seem to be the next best thing.
Merchandise profits and access to Spider-Man is exactly what Marvel Studios gets out of the deal.
The lack of profit-sharing goes both ways, BTW; Sony doesn't see any of the profits from Civil War, Infinity War, or any other Marvel Studios-produced movies that feature Spidey or any of his supporting cast, but that's offset, of course, by the fact that they (Sony) retain full ownership of and control over the Spider-Man property in general when it comes to film rights.
News to me. I'd been under the impression that Sony got a small slice for putting Spider-Man in
Captain America: Civil War and Marvel got a small slice for putting Iron Man in
Spider-Man: Homecoming. I didn't think it was much but I thought it was more direct remuneration than just prestige and boosting character-related merchandise sales.
And the third is vastly underrated/underappreciated.
It's been a while since I've seen it, so I can't say for sure. I certainly wonder if the "overstuffed" quality of the film would seem not to be such a problem 10 years later in world where we also have tons of heroes crammed into
The Avengers &
Captain America: Civil War. After all that, does 2 or 3 villains really seem like the overkill that it once did?
Like I suspected, it was a simple matter of branding and distinguishing between one studio's work and the other.
