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Spidey OUT of MCU

Jayson1 said:
This hurts the MCU more than Spiderman. Loosing Spidey after Stark and Rogers is a big blow especially for future Avengers movie. They better not mess up on Fantastic 4 and X-Men now. Jason
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Not really. The MCU has tons of options and the most successful track record in Hollywood. Sony's spider-verse has Venom (a crappy filmed that succeeded mainly on novelty value, so what will the sequel really do?), Into the Spider-verse (an animated success with animated box office numbers), and a bunch of half-baked, stupid spin-off plans (which they've repeatedly failed to get off the ground at all before).

Spider-man 3 is now basically all of Sony's eggs in one basket, and while they don't necessarily need the MCU connections for the movie to be good, they also can't truly excise all the things that happened in order to take full control of the story without rebooting the character, so they haven't really even retaken full creative control. (Unless they full on reboot again which would be total insanity.) Yet at the same time, losing the Marvel studios brand will unquestionably affect the box office (FFH made a billion dollars in no small part because of Avengers Endgame) and could actually affect the bts stuff in terms of who is willing to work on the film (Watts isn't signed for another movie yet, to give just one example, and Sony has a history of screwing up Spider-man films through executive interference). And that's without even getting into their long history of blatant incompetence in regards to Spider-man films, which judging by Venom (and the persistent rumors about Holland Spidey vs Venom, which I expect will now probably be what Sony wants) has not improved significantly.
 
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I love Holland as Spidey, even though I wasn't exactly blown away by Far From Home, but I don't think the MCU actually needs him. Marvel have plenty of great characters and more coming.

I've always thought Spidey's much vaunted rogues gallery were actually pretty poor and would add zip to the MCU going forward. Sony will continue making similar movies and this might actually result in more movies per year from Sony and Marvel.

This in itself could be a negotiating tactic. Sony could, however, do well going solo with Spider-Man. They would then have a stronger hand in further negotiations with Marvel and could theoretically get a decent deal. However, if they produce crud and stuff up (which is certainly a possibility !) that would bring them back to the table too. Or Sony could sell its film studio - it's been mentioned before.

We might well get to see Spidey in the MCU again. If we don't...well, it's not a massive issue for me.
 
Relayer1 said:
Or Sony could sell its film studio - it's been mentioned before.
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Given how much of the entertainment world Disney has already gobbled up, if we have to wish for an acquisition, surely we can wish for Disney to throw Sony a few billion to buy back the Spider-Man and Co. only rights, rather than the whole damn Sony film/TV division and catalogue. :p


ETA: Sony has now publicly stated that it's Disney's fault the arrangement may not continue. Variety:

“Much of today’s news about Spider-Man has mischaracterized recent discussions about Kevin Feige’s involvement in the franchise,” Sony said in a statement. “We are disappointed, but respect Disney’s decision not to have him continue as a lead producer of our next live action Spider-Man film.”​
 
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I can't shake the feeling that Disney/Marvel is starting to become their own enemy.

The first snafu was the issue with Gunn and his postings for which he got fired in a kneejerk reaction by Disney, When that blew up in their face publicly, a far greater black mark on their record than what may have been if they kept on a director who made some distasteful and inappropriate jokes for which he apologized, they upset the well oiled machinery that was the MCU and Guardians 3 was pushed back quite a bit.

Now apparently Disney tried to muscle themselves into a bigger piece of the pie and Sony (in what i assume) in their knowledge that Marvel popularized this new version is probably banking on their ability to keep up the quality and popularity of Holland's Spiderman and this earn the 1 billion+ for themselves.

It seems Disney overestimated their power in this and didn't think that Sony would take a stand and thus upset their own machine. It is far too early to judge this new MCU post Infinity Stone Saga but so far there is little that seems to connect all the planned movies and we don't know if Marvel will even follow the blueprint they had with the first 22 movies by slowly building up the overarching story and main villain.

If not and the movies are mostly self contained with occasional overlaps or teamups it could well be the start of the end as people really do get saturated with Superheroes and something new replaces them (unlikely and probably doomsaying on my part).
 
The Disney deal that's just ended seems weighted in favour of Sony whereas Disney's new proposal to put up half the money for half the proceeds (and access to the MCU) isn't unreasonable. It's not, however, generous. Considering Marvel don't own the character rights, Venom did well and Sony are planning a bunch of movies with their other characters, they don't see why they should give up such a huge share.

They're underestimating the MCU draw and overestimating both the attraction of their other characters (I can't think of one I give a damn about) and their own competence. I think that even if this isn't a negotiating ploy, they'll be back sooner or later.

In the short term, I can see some sort of on screen One More Day reset to restore Spidey's secret identity and remove him from the larger MCU. Following the loss of Tony and Fury's interference in his life he'd probably jump at a lower profile 'Friendly Neighbourhood Spiderman' gig anyway.
 
Are we all forgetting this is Sony we are talking about? Amazing Spider-man, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call and yes, Venom (which was not good).
I watched Far From Home again yesterday and it's plastered with Amy Pascals name in the credits. But Peter Holland's Spiderman is a Marvel made Spiderman, the amount of time and effort they put into him I can't blame them for wanting a bigger piece of the pie. I can blame Sony for their stupidity in thinking that they will not fuck this up again. The slightest bit of success and they plan dozens of spin offs like they did with the whole Sinister Six thing.
Seriously, how is this good in any way? Bye bye to Secret Wars, bye bye to Spiderman taking Iron Man's mantle. Bye Bye Deadpool and Spiderman. Hello Amazing Spiderman, hello another rebooted Spiderman, hello another bad movie.
 
I'm not a big Spidey fan, so I'm ambivalent. But I'm very curious how the MCU will excuse Spider-Man after making him such a big part of their universe.
 
OK, here's the thing: Spider-Man is Sony's only proven franchise. There's no way in hell they can afford to give away *half* of the revenue from the only thing keeping them afloat right now. I mean they have their own larger corporate overlords to answer to and of course their investors!
Also what people seem to forget about all this is that Disney retains all merchandising and theme park attraction rights (they're building one as we speak!), and nothing I've seen indicates that Disney offered to cut Sony in on that.

What I suspect is going on is that Disney wanted more of the grosses that the 5% they're currently getting and only really probably wanted 20-30% (first rule of haggling: always ask for more than you'd actually settle for) but they way overplayed it in what's basically a power move, and Sony just power moved them right back by threatening to pull Spidey out of the MCU, then leaking all of this knowing full well D23 is right around the corner. They knew the fans would go berserk and this puts pressure on both studios to come to an agreement *fast*.

I suspect when the dust settles Disney will end up getting 10 or 15% of the grosses and perhaps even cut Sony into 5% of the merc (but not the theme park), probably in exchange for Disney having a much firmer long term grip on the rights to the character. Like: exclusively locked in for the next decade or so. Maybe even the the extent that *all* future Spider-man associated movies (so anything with Venom, Silk, Jessica Drew, whoever else) have to be Marvel Studios joints.
 
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I would be shocked to see the MCU running its course before Disney ever gets its hands on Spider-Man again, and by that time, it will be yet another reboot independent of any film universe.
 
I'll reiterate what I said earlier:
Sony has no incentive or reason to do a reboot, and I don't think Disney can legally force them to or prevent them from retaining Watts, Holland, et al, so this current version of Spidey will remain implicitly part of the MCU even without Feige's involvement.

All this would really mean is that Amy Pascal gets a new producing partner and we lose Happy and future blatantly overt references to the MCU.
 
I'm OK with it, I liked Spidey movies before the MCU and wasn't real crazy about the Stark connection. The MCU is already stuffed without him already and I think he has a big enough rogues gallery to work outside it. The only problem is if Sony wants to build some type of "cinematic universe" off the property as it is thin on that front but for just Spider-Man movies I think it's fine.
 
Given that he wasn't even going to be in any Phase 4 films, isn't this a lot of fuss over nothing? And losing Favreau will give him more time to make inexplicably successful soulless CGI monstrosities.
 
StCoop said:
Given that he wasn't even going to be in any Phase 4 films, isn't this a lot of fuss over nothing? And losing Favreau will give him more time to make inexplicably successful soulless CGI monstrosities.
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Almost like they knew this was going to happen, or something...
 
StCoop said:
Given that he wasn't even going to be in any Phase 4 films, isn't this a lot of fuss over nothing? And losing Favreau will give him more time to make inexplicably successful soulless CGI monstrosities.
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You're making the assumption that a lack of an announcement from Disney is/was indicative of absence, but the actual reason that Spidey was absent from the Phase 4 announcement is that Disney can't legally make announcements about a character they don't own.
 
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