Disney-Sony Standoff Ends Marvel Studios Involvement In ‘Spider-Man'

[Rosebunse]

Maybe not at the time, but nowadays... the MCU has had more obscure villains as leads for movies.

I think not having the FF, X-Men, or even Spider-man for a while really helped Marvel and Disney come into their own. They couldn't depend on the big names, so they HAD to make due with a bunch of obscure characters no one was sure were going to work. These movies had to be good or else everything would have fallen apart.

[Lukmendes]

Yeah, if Vulture and Mysterio can carry their own movies, I would say the same for Sandman.

Well, I dunno about Mysterio, but Vulture had to essentialy become someone else to work as the main villain, since in the comics he's just one of those villains who loves being evil, in the movie he's someone who got fucked over by another company, and he needed the money to pay bills and whatever, which, while should be temporary, he kept going, that makes him more of an anti-villain than just the simple villain he is in the comics.

By that logic, even villains like Big Wheel, Hypno Hustler or Clown-9 could carry their own movies, by becoming someone else.

Then again, I guess that's okay to happen anyways, Norman wasn't that threatening of a villain at first, look at what he became lol.

Anyways, I think this video is fitting for this situation:

[regg215]

Man does disney know how to manipulate a narrative. Sony offers to keep the deal going as is, disney demands more money and yet sony is somehow the greedy one who killed the deal.

Disney had a deal where they get to use marvels most popular character who they don't have the rights to for free in their movies which helps their box office and sony gets nothing from those films, they get 5% of first weekend gross in movies they pay nothing for, all of the toy and merch sales from sony produced movies and still wanted more and somehow they are the victim that got betrayed by evil sony in most people's eyes.

Sony rightfully owns spidey in movies fair and square, people may hate that but marvel chose to sell the rights add in to that the fact that the mcu in large part exists due to the absolutely massive success of the raimi films that sony made which renewed faith in CBM's and yet somehow sony should just hand over 50% of their flagship character to disney just because disney wants to be greedy. Expecting them to agree to that is just ridiculous and the majority of the people complaining at sony are asking them to do something that they would never do if it was their own company and their own money involved.

Sony wanted to keep the deal and disney didn't, disney killed the deal plain and simple. All sony was doing was protecting their most valuable property, not sure how they catch blame for that especially when they were not asking for anything more than the original deal.

[Kurolegacy]

Man does disney know how to manipulate a narrative. Sony offers to keep the deal going as is, disney demands more money and yet sony is somehow the greedy one who killed the deal.

Disney had a deal where they get to use marvels most popular character who they don't have the rights to for free in their movies which helps their box office and sony gets nothing from those films, they get 5% of first weekend gross in movies they pay nothing for, all of the toy and merch sales from sony produced movies and still wanted more and somehow they are the victim that got betrayed by evil sony in most people's eyes.

Sony rightfully owns spidey in movies fair and square, people may hate that but marvel chose to sell the rights add in to that the fact that the mcu in large part exists due to the absolutely massive success of the raimi films that sony made which renewed faith in CBM's and yet somehow sony should just hand over 50% of their flagship character to disney just because disney wants to be greedy. Expecting them to agree to that is just ridiculous and the majority of the people complaining at sony are asking them to do something that they would never do if it was their own company and their own money involved.

Sony wanted to keep the deal and disney didn't, disney killed the deal plain and simple. All sony was doing was protecting their most valuable property, not sure how they catch blame for that especially when they were not asking for anything more than the original deal.

You know, I keep hearing people throwing out that Disney was asking for 50% of the cut yet they seem to conveniently leave out the part where they also would bankroll 50% of the production costs. Is asking for that much of the returns much? Sure, but people gotta stop ignoring the fact that they were also offering to take half of the financial burden for the films off of Sony’s shoulders so it’s not as if they weren’t giving anything in return.

[WebLurker]

To the actual audience who sees those movies it won't matter. If they see Tom Holland as Spider-Man and the rest of the Midtown cast and Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, and Simmons as Jonah...then they are seeing a sequel to Far From Home.

Course, they may start wondering why the MCU stuff just disappeared.

Logan isn't canon you know to the X-men continuity. But it was seen and accepted as a great X-Men and Wolverine movie.

Heard that, although I do have to admit that the source is somewhat questionable.

[regg215]

You know, I keep hearing people throwing out that Disney was asking for 50% of the cut yet they seem to conveniently leave out the part where they also would bankroll 50% of the production costs. Is asking for that much of the returns much? Sure, but people gotta stop ignoring the fact that they were also offering to take half of the financial burden for the films off of Sony’s shoulders so it’s not as if they weren’t giving anything in return.

Sure disney bankrolls half of the film but for sony where spidey is their most profitable character, letting marvel get half the profits makes no sense even if they bankroll half the film. Sure MCU takes some of the risk in paying for half but in all honesty it's not like there is much risk in making a spidey film, even bad ones that shut down franchise plans make about 700 million. Marvel offering to finance half the film is just them taking pretty much zero risk to make more profit off of spidey films. Letting 50% of your most profitable film series go to another company when you already allow that company to use the character free of charge and make profit off of him in their own films is a loser deal for sony. Disney wanted an unreasonable amount, all they had to do was keep the same deal in place and the whole spidey out of the mcu fiasco is avoided but they got greedy and instead of catching flack for that, everybody is ticked at sony for not handing 50% of their most profitable films to a company that already was getting the better end of the deal.

[Kurolegacy]

Sure disney bankrolls half of the film but for sony where spidey is their most profitable character, letting marvel get half the profits makes no sense even if they bankroll half the film. Sure MCU takes some of the risk in paying for half but in all honesty it's not like there is much risk in making a spidey film, even bad ones that shut down franchise plans make about 700 million. Marvel offering to finance half the film is just them taking pretty much zero risk to make more profit off of spidey films. Letting 50% of your most profitable film series go to another company when you already allow that company to use the character free of charge and make profit off of him in their own films is a loser deal for sony. Disney wanted an unreasonable amount, all they had to do was keep the same deal in place and the whole spidey out of the mcu fiasco is avoided but they got greedy and instead of catching flack for that, everybody is ticked at sony for not handing 50% of their most profitable films to a company that already was getting the better end of the deal.

As I had said in my post, 50% is much but that should have been where they began to negotiate on profit percentages rather than just walking especially when, at that point, they would be getting help with production costs. Even if it came to a 75/25 split, you don’t let a deal like that just break down. Them working with Disney more than bolstered their brand and they haven’t exactly seen such success without it.

[boots]

As I had said in my post, 50% is much but that should have been where they began to negotiate on profit percentages rather than just walking especially when, at that point, they would be getting help with production costs. Even if it came to a 75/25 split, you don’t let a deal like that just break down. Them working with Disney more than bolstered their brand and they haven’t exactly seen such success without it.

bargaining up from 50/50 ain’t easy

[JKtheMac]

You know, I keep hearing people throwing out that Disney was asking for 50% of the cut yet they seem to conveniently leave out the part where they also would bankroll 50% of the production costs. Is asking for that much of the returns much? Sure, but people gotta stop ignoring the fact that they were also offering to take half of the financial burden for the films off of Sony’s shoulders so it’s not as if they weren’t giving anything in return.

There’s a reason they leave that part out. Because the original news story didn’t include it either. Deadline only mentioned the production costs side when challenged by Sony’s tweets. Which is precisely why we should stop panicking and wait and see what happens.

The entire news story is based on a news outlet not fully understanding the context and not properly listening to their inside sources. Deadline messed up. They caused an Internet storm, and they are trying to pretend it’s all factual and that they had the right story all along.

Even this 5% figure is not factual. It’s not even clear where that comes from. That is most likely something to do with a distribution deal because Marvel technically help promote Sony’s films. Again Deadline are trying to make it sound like this was a demand from 5% to 50% and not even talking about the same things.

The only thing this has taught me is never to trust Deadline unless we have independently corroborated facts and the context is verifiable.

It is shocking how ill informed the press are over the current deal, let alone potential deals that haven’t even been agreed yet.

The press keep saying Sony financed Homecoming for example. They didn’t need to. As a sweetener Marvel gave a sum of money to Sony which coincidentally matched the production costs. Marvel then got this back as a bonus payment once the film’s takings passed a target amount.

That’s 100% production costs for zero profit.

[Prof. Warren]

That movie happens to be the only one on which he has screenwriting credit, which he did not have on the first two movies. So it's kind of hard for the buck to stop anywhere else but there.

I'm sure Raimi had involvement on the scripts for 1 and 2 as well - both films have very Raimi-esque stamps on them - but was gifted a credit on 3 as a way to give him a bigger piece of the pie. Given how happy they were with 1 and 2, Sony would have wanted to do all they could to make 3 worth Raimi's while.

From an producer perspective if you want to do Spider-Man and have him face his three biggest and baddest enemies going from Goblin to Octopus to Venom was a rational expectation on the part of Sony. I mean it's certainly how a lot of fans saw it.

A lot of dumb fans, sure. And from a producer's perspective, the problem of leapfrogging from the Silver Age stable of villains all the way to the '90s isn't something that would occur to them because all they care about is money.

Raimi was more at home with the old school characters. That's where his trilogy should have been allowed to remain, for the sake of consistency if nothing else.

Sandman would never have been able to carry a movie on his own. The fact they had to so drastically rewrite his origin proves it.

No, it only proves that the approach taken to the Sandman in 3 was flawed. They fact that they mishandled the character isn't proof that Sandman couldn't work as a solo villain given better treatment.

And Sandman wouldn't have been the sole villain in 3 as Raimi wanted to use the Vulture as well - a choice much more fitting to the tone established in 1 and 2.

Raimi should have done what Burton did after Batman Returns, and walked away if he didn't feel he could do Venom right.

Burton and Batman Forever was a whole different situation. Warners didn't want Burton back after Batman Returns. Burton realized that when he was in a meeting discussing his plans for the next movie. Batman Returns was seen as a movie that soured the brand. Warners wanted to go in another direction. But with Spider-Man 3, Sony was nothing but happy with Raimi. Spider-Man 2 was a triumph, critically and commercially, and no one wanted Raimi to not finish the trilogy.

At some point in the production, Raimi might have felt the movie slipping away from him but you can't just walk off a production like that mid-way. Raimi surely gave 3 his best shot, given the circumstances. It just didn't work out.

[JKtheMac]

When this issue last came up I did a ton of research into the Sony deal. This is how it works in a nutshell. There are probably other parts to the deal we will never know.

The Spider-Man movie deal in cash terms (source Ben Fritz, Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2017)

Originally Sony bought the rights to Spider-Man giving Marvel Comics 5% of film revenues and a 50/50 split of merchandise revenue.

Disney wanted Spider-Man in their movies and merchandising rights to said movies.

Disney paid Sony a cash incentive of 175 Million USD to sign a deal that enabled this.

Sony used this to finance Homecoming. The reported production costs a coincidental 175 Million.

The Disney side of the deal is marketing rights. Per movie 35 Million US.

The Sony side of the deal is MCU production (Feige and co.) Per movie 35 Million US.

Disney included a clause that stipulated Sony would pay Marvel 35 Million US if Homecoming made over 750 Million US (which it did). It is not clear if this clause is present for other MCU co-productions.

Notes:

The original 5% deal still stands for Venom and for the projected non MCU Sony movies. As far as we know, this was not the case for the MCU deal. If the deal totally collapsed Sony could make a Spider-Man movie and continue to pay 5% of their takings to Marvel, but Disney would not have complete merchandising rights.

As a side issue Sony did not produce any Venom merchandise, and Marvel produced a lot of coincidental Comic Book merchandise and increased the character’s presence in their comics. This suggests there may be a gentleman’s agreement at play when it comes to secondary characters not in the MCU.

Historically Sony and Disney have usually played nicely with each other.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

You know, I keep hearing people throwing out that Disney was asking for 50% of the cut yet they seem to conveniently leave out the part where they also would bankroll 50% of the production costs.

Asking for 50% of production costs is tantamount to asking for 50% of returns. And that's a laughable claim to take seriously to anyone who knows anything about film production. A blockbuster movie's production costs can be covered easily enough. Sony can cover the production costs easily. If it costs $200mn to make a Spider-Man film (not including marketing) and the film makes $800mn then it's better because that's 600mn profits. But if it's a case where Disney and Sony chip in $100mn each and Sony gets $400mn$ of gross which given production costs is 100 is now $300 profits then it's a big come down from.

High risk high reward. That's how it works.

...

Could use an overkill of citations for this screed of yours. Deadline at least has that.

I'm sure Raimi had involvement on the scripts for 1 and 2 as well - both films have very Raimi-esque stamps on them - but was gifted a credit on 3 as a way to give him a bigger piece of the pie.

That's now screenwriting credits work. The Writers' Guild is an independent organization that governs the credit system of any movie and they have a system of arbitration in place to decide credits or not. They are pretty good at that, if Raimi's contributions weren't significant to credit, then it didn't show up. What likely could have happened is that Raimi and producers could have sat with screenwriters and decided and talked stuff and the writer would then put that to paper and polish it. That's still the writer doing his thing. The films that critics consider Raimi's best -- A Simple Plan, The Gift -- made right before the Spider-Man movies, weren't written by him either. The fact is most directors, even great ones, aren't screenwriters themselves. Spielberg is a good example.

Given how happy they were with 1 and 2, Sony would have wanted to do all they could to make 3 worth Raimi's while.

Sony made mistakes and some of their suggestions were stupid, like introducing Gwen Stacy which Raimi didn't want at all since he hated that character. It wasn't an ideal collaboration but it served Raimi to walk away and let Sony make their movie than compromising himself by being involved. As it is, making Spider-Man 3 seemed to have done a number on him. He's only made 2 movies since then, and seems to be semi-retired nowadays, which is a shame.

A lot of dumb fans, sure. And from a producer's perspective, the problem of leapfrogging from the Silver Age stable of villains all the way to the '90s isn't something that would occur to them because all they care about is money.

Are you saying Venom isn't Spider-Man's third biggest enemy and biggest threat alongside Goblin and Doctor Octopus? Even Dan Slott would place him there. In either case, Producers back then, and even Raimi himself, didn't think in terms of Silver Age or '90s or made such groupings.

Raimi was more at home with the old school characters. That's where his trilogy should have been allowed to remain, for the sake of consistency if nothing else.

As it is, Spider-Man 3 adapts parts of JMD's Harry Osborn stories in Spectacular, and that was Raimi's interest so he wasn't exactly old-school since those stories were from the late 80s and 90s. Mary Jane's backstory of being from an abusive background is based on the Stern-Defalco era stories, again from the '80s.

And calling Raimi's movies silver age throwbacks isn't entire right. They are significantly more violent than anything in the Silver Age. I mean Green Goblin murders 21 people in the first movie (the highest body count of any Spider-Man villain, including the MCU) and the final fight between Goblin and Spider-Man where Peter gets smashed to a pulp is closer to Todd MacFarlane and Erik Larsen's fights than anything before that.

No, it only proves that the approach taken to the Sandman in 3 was flawed. They fact that they mishandled the character isn't proof that Sandman couldn't work as a solo villain given better treatment.

Sandman's entire origin was Raimi's contribution. Not sure what "they" you are talking about.

At some point in the production, Raimi might have felt the movie slipping away from him but you can't just walk off a production like that mid-way. Raimi surely gave 3 his best shot, given the circumstances. It just didn't work out.

The stuff about Venom and all was decided in the writing stage. If Raimi had issues with Venom and making him work, that should have been when he decided whether or not it was worth it for him to commit to a movie and story that he didn't want to do.

[Prof. Warren]

The films that critics consider Raimi's best -- A Simple Plan, The Gift -- made right before the Spider-Man movies, weren't written by him either. The fact is most directors, even great ones, aren't screenwriters themselves. Spielberg is a good example.

No one considers The Gift to be Raimi's best. Absolutely no one. No one with a functioning brain, at least.

Even Simple Plan, an excellent film which has many admirers, is more of an outlier in Raimi's filmography. It's proof of the range he's capable of but is seldom referred to as his best.

Everyone knows that Raimi is legendary first and foremost for Evil Dead 2.

Sony made mistakes and some of their suggestions were stupid, like introducing Gwen Stacy which Raimi didn't want at all since he hated that character. It wasn't an ideal collaboration but it served Raimi to walk away and let Sony make their movie than compromising himself by being involved. As it is, making Spider-Man 3 seemed to have done a number on him. He's only made 2 movies since then, and seems to be semi-retired nowadays, which is a shame.

He's not semi-retired at all. He's very busy as a producer, most recently on the low budget hit Crawl.

Are you saying Venom isn't Spider-Man's third biggest enemy and biggest threat alongside Goblin and Doctor Octopus? Even Dan Slott would place him there. In either case, Producers back then, and even Raimi himself, didn't think in terms of Silver Age or '90s or made such groupings.

While he might not have thought in terms of "Silver Age" specifically, Raimi certainly thought in terms of the characters he grew up on.

He was familiar with the Lee/Ditko/Romita Sr. run, and had a nostalgic attachment to the villains from those runs. Venom, not at all.

The stuff about Venom and all was decided in the writing stage. If Raimi had issues with Venom and making him work, that should have been when he decided whether or not it was worth it for him to commit to a movie and story that he didn't want to do.

Easy to say these things in hindsight. Not so easy to realize them in the moment.

[JKtheMac]

Could use an overkill of citations for this screed of yours. Deadline at least has that.

Well if you have any reason to doubt my more recent post the Wall Street Journal is available in any good library and online it was archived. Iger’s statement to shareholders was public. Last year’s Disney end of year report has some details, and the original press release for the deal was also public. If you really want me to cite them for your reading pleasure I have the links somewhere, but really the only citation you need is the Wall Street Journal piece. [Link]

Note: None of my citations are entertainment websites, primarily because they only ever reference each other and continue the misinformation trail.

PS. Iger's Shareholder statement:

To that end, we recently completed a transaction with Sony Pictures to simplify our relationship. And then in the deal, we purchased Sony Pictures' participation in Spiderman merchandising, while at the same time, Sony Pictures purchased from us our participation in Spiderman films. This transaction will allow us to control and fully benefit from all Spiderman merchandising activity, while Sony will continue to produce and distribute Spiderman films. We won't be specific about the economics of this 2-way transaction, but we expect it will drive attractive returns for Disney.

You will note he is not as forthcoming as the WSJ article and made it sound a little like Disney had permanently bought back the mechanising rights. They hadn't but almost every entertainment outlet thought they had and kept perpetuating this by referencing each other.

P.P.S Marvel press release:

Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel's Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.

Marvel and Sony Pictures are also exploring opportunities to integrate characters from the MCU into future Spider-Man films.

It also points out that back then Spider-Man was considered worth 4 Billion as a brand. It is probably worth much more now.

P.P.P.S Disney Annual Report 2018

Prior to the Company’s acquisition of Marvel in fiscal year 2010, Marvel had licensed the rights to third-party studios to produce and distribute feature films based on certain Marvel properties including Spider-Man (licensed to Sony Pictures Entertainment), The Fantastic Four (licensed to 21CF) and X-Men (licensed to 21CF). Under the licensing arrangements, the third-party studios incur the costs to produce and distribute the films, and the Company retains the merchandise licensing rights. Under the licensing arrangement for Spider-Man, the Company pays the third-party studio a licensing fee based on each film’s box office receipts, subject to specified limits. Under the licensing arrangements for The Fantastic Four and X-Men, the third-party studio pays the Company a licensing fee and receives a share of the Company’s merchandise revenue on these properties. The Company distributes all Marvel-produced films with the exception of The Incredible Hulk, which is distributed by Universal Pictures.

Note the Fox deal was not done then.

This one needs unpacking a bit because they are again as vague about merchandising as Iger was in the conference call. They are taking for granted that their MCU deal is in place, and in that financial year it was. You will also note that they mention specified limits for their box office share. This is contradictory of the "First Dollar Gross" claim that Deadline made, because that would mean 5% from day one until close of box office.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Logan isn't canon you know to the X-men continuity. But it was seen and accepted ais a great X-Men and Wolverine movie.

Logan is indeed canon to the Fox X-Men continuity as confirmed by the director himself.