It is hard to go anywhere and not hear someone talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially if one of its key players is being ripped out of the franchise.
The MCU just recently finished its “phase 3” of movies last summer with Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home. Both films were huge hits with Endgame breaking James Cameron’s Avatar’s reign of being the highest grossest film in history.
However, very soon after the release of Far From Home, Sony, who owns the rights to Spider-Man, announced that they would be removing Tom Holland’s Spider-Man from the MCU in favor of creating their own films with him.
This sparked international outrage amongst the fans and after many weeks of careful negotiation — Sony is allowing Disney to make two more movies with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man under the MCU.
While this is all well and good for Disney and MCU fans alike, it does leave Sony in a bit of weird place. Most people don’t know this, but both of the most recent Spider-Man movies were, in fact, made by Sony with Disney only footing a portion of the bill to make them. And even though Sony is the one doing the filming, Disney is getting all of the credit and that is the case again with the next two movies.
From a PR standpoint, this could not be more detrimental to Sony as a brand. It isn’t that they do not know how to make a Spider-Man movie, they have made 8 of them now, but because of their failings with the original Spider-Man trilogy and the reboot, fans are wary of them getting their hands on Tom Holland (even though they already have).
Sony had a fantastic opportunity to impress the MCU audience with a well-done Spider-Man movie that would be entirely under their name, but instead, they allowed themselves to get bullied by Disney into signing a deal that will most likely diminish their involvement with the creation of the third sequel.
And as for Disney; they’ve just scammed their biggest competitor and probably couldn’t be happier about it. The deal entails that Disney will foot 25% of the production cost for 25% of the profit. This is an infinitely small price to pay when they will probably make all their money back as soon as the next film goes international.
Overall, this was not a great deal for Sony. They’re getting 75% of the profit for probably about 25% of the recognition when they could’ve been getting 100% of both. Disney is getting the better end of this deal, and even though the fans are happy; that means nothing for the Sony stakeholders and employees.
-Alison Hopkins
prowlpr.com 