Three days ago on the 28th February 2020, Marvel Production and Sony Pictures announced the air date for Spider-man 3 for 16th July 2020. However, the journey to get that film commissioned for the screen has been chaotic.
In 1998, bankrupt Marvel Studios proposed Sony to buy sold 900 comic-book characters for a total of 25 million USD. However, at the time Sony’s CEO, Yair Landeau did not care about any other character: “Nobody gives a shit about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-man.”. So they went back and bought only Spider-man for barely 7 million USD with the deal that the studios produce a Spider-man film every five years.
Which it did with ‘Spider-man’ (2002, Sam Raimi), ‘Spider-man 2′ (2004, Sam Raimi), ‘Spider-man 3‘ (2007, Sam Raimi), ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ (2012, Marc Webb), and ‘The Amazing Spider-man 2‘ (2014, Marc Webb).
However, while it didn’t really bomb, The Amazing Spider-man 2 was the lowest grossing Spider-man film ever. Spider-man 3 with an audience score of 51% on Rotten tomatoes made 895 million dollars at the box office, while the Amazing Spider-man 2 with an audience score of 64% only made 709 US dollars.
In order to save a character they have a lot of hope for, Sony signed a contract with Marvel Studios in 2015 where Spider-man would be allowed to appear in the Marvel in the Cinematic Universe along every Marvel characters. In exchange, Sony would retain the distribution rights and Marvel gain 5% of the gross.
After that Tom Hollands’ Spider-man made several appearances in the MCU with ‘Captain America: Civil War‘ (2016, Russo’s Brothers), ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘ (2017, Jon Watts), ‘Avengers Infinity War‘ (2018, Russo’s Brothers), and ‘Avengers: Endgame‘ (2019, Russos’s Brothers). The audience couldn’t be happier with the collaboration, even ranking Tom Hollands’ Spider-man their 3rd favorite MCU character after Iron Man and Thor. It reached a peak when ‘Spider-Man: Far Form Home‘ (2019, Jon Watts) came out this summer and became the highest grossing Spider-man film, and Sony’s highest grossing film yet with 1 billion USD at the world-wide box office.
Under the success of the character, Marvel Production started thinking that their benefit share over the films was too slim when faced with the fact that it was their MCU that revived Spider-man. On the 20th August 2020, Kevin Feige announced that he pulled out of producing future Spider-man films. And the fans were not happy.
Facing the fans disapproval of Tom Holland’s Spider-man leaving the MCU, as a large part of his character was his relationship with genius billionaire Tony Stark, Sony and Marvel decided that they would lose too much in breaking their collaboration. Moreover, the president of Marvel Studios argued that the story-line with which the previous Spider-Man: Far From Home ended would benefit greatly if the character remained in the MCU.
Convinced, Sony Pictures made a new deal in September 2019 which would give Marvel 25% of the profits made by the next Marvel/ Sony Spider-Man film. On the 27th September 2019, Marvel announced that a Spider-Man 3 co-produced by Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures had been commissioned.
Will the increase in Marvel’s profits save the partnership, or give the studios more legitimacy over the character ending up in more tension in the future?
Léon Bodier 
