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Sony Spider-Verse discussion thread

Samurai8472 said:
The rapper Bad Bunny will star in Sony/Marvels “El Muerto.”
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So, I actually read all comic appearances of Marvel's El Muerto today (yes, all two!) and mostly I'm wondering how they even found this character. Like, does Sony pay people to skim Spider-Man comics to find characters that could be vaguely viable for a movie? Or did they put the names of all the characters they own on a dart board and let luck decide? Maybe they just decided that they wanted to make a movie starring rapper/wrestler Bad Bunny and this was the highest profile wrestling-related character they own?

El Muerto isn't even remotely the most interesting thing about the two-part story, IMO he's overshadowed by both the budding Jarvis/May romance and Peter, as a scientist struggling to come to terms with the fact that his powers might be magic-related (although that does tie in a little with El Muerto's story). Hell, I found Jonah realizing that his son isn't Spider-Man (which, duh, as even characters in the story point out) a lot more engaging than the El Muerto story.

All that being said, there is a surprising amount of backstory and stuff to mine for a movie, considering that it's just a two-part story. (Thanks Peter David!) Hell, he even comes with his own build-in villain, El Dorado. Not sure how they're gonna handle that his right of passage thing is unmasking a super hero, without having Spider-Man in there but okay.

In conclusion, I have gained no new insight into a movie that I don't care about, made by a studio that makes other movies I don't care about, but I enjoyed re-visiting the pre-One-More-Day era, and Peter David's writing does, if nothing else, stand out, so I'll call this a win.
 
Jinn said:
So, I actually read all comic appearances of Marvel's El Muerto today (yes, all two!) and mostly I'm wondering how they even found this character. Like, does Sony pay people to skim Spider-Man comics to find characters that could be vaguely viable for a movie? Or did they put the names of all the characters they own on a dart board and let luck decide? Maybe they just decided that they wanted to make a movie starring rapper/wrestler Bad Bunny and this was the highest profile wrestling-related character they own?

El Muerto isn't even remotely the most interesting thing about the two-part story, IMO he's overshadowed by both the budding Jarvis/May romance and Peter, as a scientist struggling to come to terms with the fact that his powers might be magic-related (although that does tie in a little with El Muerto's story). Hell, I found Jonah realizing that his son isn't Spider-Man (which, duh, as even characters in the story point out) a lot more engaging than the El Muerto story.
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Holy cow, I have those issues (or rather, the TPB that collects them). Well, I'd congratulate Peter for getting a movie based on his character, but knowing Marvel, I'm not sure whether he'll get paid for it or just get a "Special Thanks" notation at the end of the credits.
 
Captaindemotion said:
I saw reference on twitter to Sony describing Morbius as “a hit” but no mention of a sequel. No link to the original story though.
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I almost did a double take. It's been out for almost a month and has only done $156,815,458 worldwide. That's a failure no matter what Sony says.

To put that in perspective, the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, a superhero team that only hardcore comic fans knew about, pulled $773,350,147 worldwide. And that was eight years ago. Even the Eternals had a better run than Morbius and that's the lowest performing Marvel movie I can think of.
 
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ichab said:
I almost did a double take. It's been out for almost a month and has only done $156,815,458 worldwide. That's a failure no matter what Sony says.
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Even with a $75m budget it needs around $200m to just cover its costs and that ain't happening.

Ironically, come next January when Kraven is released it probably will look like a hit in comparison.
 
Christopher said:
Holy cow, I have those issues (or rather, the TPB that collects them). Well, I'd congratulate Peter for getting a movie based on his character, but knowing Marvel, I'm not sure whether he'll get paid for it or just get a "Special Thanks" notation at the end of the credits.
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Saul said:
In the balls.
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It'll be worse than that since it's Sony and not Marvel.
 
Given the film's premise and his WWE connections, we expect Sony to partner with the promotion for guest spots and promotional tactics.

Bad Bunny's no stranger to the WWE

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The Nth Doctor said:
It'll be worse than that since it's Sony and not Marvel.
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I meant Marvel Comics, since Peter created the character for them. So I figure matters of compensation would be determined by his contract with them.

Anyway, Sony only has the license to make movies based on certain Marvel characters; Marvel still owns the actual characters.
 
ichab said:
I almost did a double take. It's been out for almost a month and has only done $156,815,458 worldwide. That's a failure no matter what Sony says.

To put that in perspective, the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, a superhero team that only hardcore comic fans knew about, pulled $773,350,147 worldwide. And that was eight years ago. Even the Eternals had a better run than Morbius and that's the lowest performing Marvel movie I can think of.
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I mean, are they not the ones who determine if it is a failure? It's their money.
 
Wow, they are really going for a deep dive with this El Muerto movie. If they really wanted a movie with a Latino lead, you'd think they would have gone with Spider-Man 2099/Miguel O'Hara, unless this is more about Bad Bunny and his history as a wrestler.
 
JD said:
Wow, they are really going for a deep dive with this El Muerto movie. If they really wanted a movie with a Latino lead, you'd think they would have gone with Spider-Man 2099/Miguel O'Hara, unless this is more about Bad Bunny and his history as a wrestler.
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Maybe someone at Sony is a fan of luchador movies. Or maybe they want to appeal to the Latin American market. There used to be (and maybe still is, for all I know) a whole genre of low-budget Mexican films that starred real luchadores playing what were essentially superheroes, fighting mad scientists and evil robots and demonic entities and the like. There were at least a couple featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It might be fun to do a modern riff on those.

Besides, Miguel O'Hara is appearing in the Spider-Verse sequels, so maybe they don't want a competing live-action version.
 
Christopher said:
Maybe someone at Sony is a fan of luchador movies. Or maybe they want to appeal to the Latin American market. There used to be (and maybe still is, for all I know) a whole genre of low-budget Mexican films that starred real luchadores playing what were essentially superheroes, fighting mad scientists and evil robots and demonic entities and the like. There were at least a couple featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It might be fun to do a modern riff on those.

Besides, Miguel O'Hara is appearing in the Spider-Verse sequels, so maybe they don't want a competing live-action version.
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Yeah, I guess that could be it.
 
Grendelsbayne said:
The idea that the success of a project is dependant on how well known a character is/whether people are 'asking' for the movie is provably wrong.

Guardians of the Galaxy. Suicide Squad. Joker solo film. Aquaman being the highest grossing DC character. Not to mention stuff like Star Wars or Avatar.
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Exactly. For the average person who's not a comic book fan -- a.k.a. the vast majority of the audience -- there's zero difference between a Z-lister like this wrestler dude and even a high B-lister like Deadpool. They both fall squarely in the category of "Never heard of 'em."

If anything, that it's an obscure character could be a good sign, because the only reason it could have been picked is because someone sees something worthwhile in it and is actually enthusiastic, rather than approaching from an attitude of "Well, I have no idea what the appeal of this is, but it seems popular so..."

Not that I have high hopes given Sony's track record.
 
fireproof78 said:
I mean, are they not the ones who determine if it is a failure? It's their money.
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In terms of determining whether continued investment is financially worthwhile to them? Absolutely.

But let's not pretend the financial success of a film is somehow completely unknowable to the public at large, even if the exact measure of profit remains somewhat fuzzy. Nor should we pretend that companies are always unfailingly honest and never try to present themselves as more successful than they actually are, especially when they're clearly trying to protect a major long-term investment (which is exactly what the Venom/Morbius/Kraven shared universe is to Sony).

The bottom line is that we have a range of actual objective numbers relating to the success of Morbius and none of those numbers are good. They're not even good in comparison to 'normal' movies that don't carry the high expectations of the superhero genre or major blockbuster franchises, let alone in comparison to Morbius' actual competitors (ie, MCU or DC) or to Venom, which set the bar for Sony's target.
 
The Nth Doctor said:
Also of note from that io9 story is the second sequel will be called Beyond the Spider-Verse and between the sequels, there will be 240 characters in six different universes.

Things are going to be chaotic. I can't wait!
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If there are that many characters, there had better be Japanese Spider-Man. I need to see Leopardon appear and get into some kind of giant mech action.

As for the news about El Muerte, others have said it best: Almost any character has the potential to be great, even z-list characters that only appeared in two issues like El Muerte. But, Sony's terrible track record really doesn't give people any reason to think that El Muerte, or Kraven, Madam Web, etc will be any good. From them it just kind of comes off as a desperate attempt to make some Spider-Man related money that they don't have to share with Disney, even though they are still relying on Disney/Marvel to keep putting out Spider-Man stuff good enough to generate interest in their weird spinoffs. This doesn't apply to the animated Spider-Man, but those two divisons of Sony really don't seem like they could be farther apart, quality wise.
 
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