Great news, MCU fans: there’s word of Spider-Man returning to Marvel! They’re getting the rights back off Sony!
Possibly! In the future! Under a very specific set of circumstances involving corporate buyouts by multinationals!
To recap: many many many many years ago the then-struggling Marvel sold the film rights for Spider-Man to Sony Picture for a staggeringly tiny $7 million American dollars.
Marvel then watched as it made mad bank for Sony off the largely-beloved Sam Raimi trilogy. Well, the largely-beloved first two movies and the rightly hated third one.
And Marvel did fine from the deal because it still had the merchandising rights to the character, but once the Marvel Cinematic Universe was built there was a Spidey-shaped hole in the line up while Sony rebooted the franchise with Andrew Garfield.
And thus was a deal made to borrow Spider-Man back for some Marvel films, with Tom Holland in the role. But that has all come crashing down with Sony and Marvel (and their owners, Disney) unable to come to a deal to continue the relationship, meaning that Spider-Tom is off to Sony from here.
Except… except that Marvel might be about to get him back after all.
See, according to We Got This Covered, there are a bunch of conditions on the Sony deal, similar to the deal Marvel made with Fox over the X-Men and Fantastic Four.
One is that the studio can’t just hang onto the rights but has to put out material with the character within a certain timeframe.
That’s why all of those characters have appeared in obviously undercooked sequels: when it’s use-it-or-lose-it things like “let’s wait until there’s a good script” become secondary to “when’s the absolute latest that we can legally release this?”
But another condition is reportedly that if the company is sold, the production rights revert back to Marvel. And there’s a strong rumour that Sony have a suitor in the wings.
See, Apple have announced that they’re jumping into the content game with their streaming service, for which they are commissioning a bunch of shows. But the hot tip is that they’re also looking to buy up a studio and thus have a nice library of content for said service.
And Sony Corporation have toyed with the idea of selling off their entertainment division in the past, since it’s a relatively small section of their global business.
After all, they’re an electronic equipment manufacturer first with successful divisions for video game consoles and publishing, a massive section dedicated to financial and medical equipment and IT development, mobile phones and other telecommunications manufacturing and so on – with the entertainment biz a ways down the list.
So if Sony Pictures was part of a deal with Apple, then Marvel could potentially have Spidey back home in time for Phase Five.
So yes, we can dream of Spider-Man returning to Marvel, assuming some hardcore corporate dealery. But oh, the nerd-joy that would ensue!