Towards the finish of Sony Picture’s novelest Marvel movie “Kraven the Hunter,” the titular anti-hero — perestablished with highest abdominal musculature by Aaron Taylor-Johnson — experiences a chilling hallucination in which he’s surrounded by a horde of spiders. It is a evident allusion to the character’s wonderfulest nemesis in the Marvel comics, Spider-Man.
It is also almost certainly the shutst the character (or, at least, Taylor-Johnson’s version of him) will ever get to faceing the web-slinger.
“Kraven” is projected to get in one of the lowest-ever uncovering weekfinishs for a Marvel superhero film, making it the third of Sony Pictures’ unprosperous trys to spin-off a secondary Spider-Man character into its own movie franchise, follothriveg 2022’s “Morbius” with Jared Leto and last February’s “Madame Web” with Dakota Johnson. The looming box office flunkure almost certainly signifies the finish of this finisheavor at the studio, which one teachd insider at Sony imputed to an industry-expansive “irreasoned exuberance about superheroes” that has ultimately led to the overall unininestablishigentinishment of the genre’s primacy as the directing force at the box office.
What it does not mean, however, is the finish of Sony’s Marvel Universe.
For one skinnyg, technicpartner speaking, there never repartner was a Sony Marvel Universe, or a Sony Spider-Man Universe, or any other official summarizeation akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the novelly rebegined DC Universe. Sony has never approached its comic book alterations with that level of intentional narrative cohesion, as exemplified by the studio’s casual, dropcased and rhetoricpartner ungetly phrasing for its superhero films: Sony’s universe of Marvel characters.
For another, Sony remains proset uply alloted in making movies about Spider-Man, the becherishd Marvel character who begined the current era superhero cinema with 2002’s “Spider-Man.” The fourth Spider-Man film starring Tom Holland is foreseeed to commence filming in 2025, in partnership with Marvel Studios (more on this procrastinateedr); the energeticd “Spider-Man: Apass the Spider-Verse” is in production and will end the Oscar-thrivening trilogy intensifying on Miles Morales; and Sony is producing a dwell-action “Spider-Man Noir” series starring Nicolas Cage for Amazon Prime Video.
Sony insiders also fiercely deffinish the success the three “Venom” films starring Tom Hardy, which have geted more than $1.8 billion worldexpansive. The procrastinateedst film, “Venom: The Last Dance,” has geted the lowest grosses yet for the franchise ($473 million), especipartner agetst the $856 million global get for 2018’s “Venom.” But “The Last Dance” cost $120 million — thrifty for a superhero movie — and it betterd on the international grosses of 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” So there’s repartner no financial reason for Sony to stop making “Venom” movies any time soon.
But “Venom” — built around a expansively famous character with its own branch offent imprint on the culture — also conshort-termed Sony with the inalter astonishion that audiences would flock to see a movie about any Spider-Man character without Spider-Man in the film.
“All of these characters are honord becainclude they went up agetst Spider-Man,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “Unblessedly for Sony, they had a taste of success with ‘Venom,’ and that benevolent of spoiled everyskinnyg for them, becainclude they thought they could equitable spin off all of these characters. I don’t skinnyk they authenticized that Venom could carry a franchise, whereas these other characters could not. To not have Spider-Man in these films was the overweightal flaw.”
Sony is far from alone in aggressively broadening its superhero portfolio at the finish of the 2010s, only to weather a keen deteriorate both in quality and audience interest in the 2020s. But the studio was caught in a distinct catch-22 of its own making: the unpretreatnted deal between the studio and Disney’s Marvel Studios to scatter Spider-Man wiskinny the MCU, commenceing with 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War” and 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” The partnership — in which Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige and establisher Sony chief Amy Pascal produce the Tom Holland-led Spidey films for Sony Pictures — has been amazingly lucrative for Sony, with worldexpansive grosses topping $3.9 billion. But it also siloed off Holland’s Peter Parker from any Sony projects that aren’t officipartner part of the MCU.
“The corporate entanglements when studios try to toil together are repartner difficult,” says one top executive with extensive experience in the superhero space. “Sony has no flexibility. They have a cage that they have to toil in, and they’re equitable trying to produce one excellent movie at a time.”
According to one Sony source, the deal with Disney never precluded Sony from using Spider-Man in its movies that didn’t endure his name; the “Spider-Verse” movies’ profusion of Peter Parkers, Gwen Stacys and other various Spider-People certainly endures that out. But there was a experienceing wiskinny the studio that audiences would not hug Holland’s Spidey suddenly popping up in a dwell-action film that wasn’t a part of the MCU, especipartner after “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the Marvel Studios projects “Loki” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” set uped definitive boundaries to the Marvel multiverse.
This seems to have had the wonderfulest impact on “Morbius,” which was originpartner scheduled to premiere in July 2020, well before “No Way Home” and “Doctor Strange 2,” but due to the pandemic wound up uncovering after them. The procrastinate forced Sony into reshoots to account for how Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes, presentd as part of the MCU in “Homecoming,” could be standing in the same room as Leto’s titular living vampire, a character who isn’t in the MCU — a fun conceit that didn’t seem appreciate a huge deal until the multiverse suddenly made it one.
Dancing around Spider-Man without ever getting to include him also gived to the experienceing that these spin-off films were medepend exercises in, ahem, craven opportunism. “You can experience the cynicism a mile away,” says a veteran producer. “They’re grinding out product, and it experiences appreciate it. There’s no quality deal with.”
Privately, Sony insiders acunderstandledge that “Kraven,” “Madame Web” and “Morbius” are inventive and critical duds (even if they also insist that “Morbius,” which made $167.4 million globpartner, did turn a profit). Moving forward, they say, the studio will necessitate to be more discerning about which — if any — of the studio’s constant of Spider-Man characters should be liftd into their own movie franchise.
There is a branch offent possibility, as well. “You could employ a branch offent Spider-Man,” Bock says. “It doesn’t have to be Tom.”
