Sony's Spider-Man Deal With Marvel Just Shifted to a Picture-by-Picture Basis

I haven't done an update on the sharing agreement between Sony and Marvel over Spider-Man in quite some time, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day just kicked off what looks like another trilogy, and now Sony's top brass, Tom Rothman and Amy Pascal, have shared new details about exactly what's going on with that agreement. I want to break down what these details mean for Tom Holland's Peter Parker and how long this arrangement can actually be counted on to go for.

Sony Says It Is Done Making Spider-Man Spin-off Villain Movies

At San Diego Comic-Con in July, Sony president Tom Rothman admitted they were done doing the spin-off villain movies for Spider-Man. He said they didn't execute them as well as they had hoped and that there was really "no fan demand" for them, and no matter what the case was, they were finished making those movies.

Tom Holland himself recently admitted that the original plan was for his Peter Parker to appear in some of those spin-off films, though that never happened. Coming straight from Sony's chairperson, this means no more Kraven, no more Madame Web, and who knows what happens with the Venom franchise going forward, though at least the symbiote made it into the MCU before Tom Hardy was done playing the character.

Amy Pascal Reveals the Sharing Agreement Is Now Picture-by-Picture

The comments from Amy Pascal in early August are what make this really interesting. She's in charge of the Spider-Man IP at Sony, so she'd be the person in the know, and according to her, the current sharing agreement between Sony and Marvel Studios for Spider-Man is on a picture-by-picture basis. That's very different from the multi-film contracts they had laid out early on.

Amy Pascal also added that they want Destin Daniel Cretton to direct the second film of this new trilogy. Marvel and Sony are seemingly printing money with the franchise right now, and watching Brand New Day outpace No Way Home, considering what a massive movie No Way Home already was, is something I didn't see coming myself.

Why a Picture-by-Picture Deal Raised a Small Red Flag for Me

In a Hollywood landscape where the business model has shifted as much as it ever has, and maybe isn't finished shifting, hearing that this is now picture-by-picture rather than a longer contract raised a small red flag for me. You could look at the success of Brand New Day and ask why Sony and Marvel would want to mess with the formula at all.

But from what we've heard from industry insiders, including fellow YouTuber John Campea, the reason Sony's earlier spin-off plan with Tom Holland's Peter Parker fell apart is that Marvel wouldn't let Sony use him in their live-action spin-off franchises. Marvel didn't want competing Spider-Man movies as a brand under two different studio labels, even though the Sony and Marvel version is a co-production in the first place. That makes me wonder how long it will be before Sony decides it wants another stab at that, especially now that they're only locked in picture-by-picture.

How Long the Arrangement Can Last Once Tom Holland Moves On

I want to be as optimistic as possible here. Given what's already happened with Tom Holland mending fences and clearly wanting to be part of both studios, and given the relationship between Holland, Tom Rothman and Kevin Feige as basically a three-piece orchestrating this, I think as long as Tom Holland is playing Peter Parker, it'll stay under the MCU banner.

But after these next two films, if Sony and Marvel were to cast a new Peter Parker, or even cast a Miles Morales, I sincerely have to wonder what Sony's stance would be once they're not locked into a long-term contract. Sony Pictures is much smaller than people think, smaller than a lot of competitors people assume are on their level, and Spider-Man is an enormous percentage of their studio IP. Being locked out of using the one character that ties all their other IP together is a real problem for them.

If it takes another four or five years to get to Spider-Man 5, and then another three or four years to get to Spider-Man 6, that's another decade down the road, and by then Tom Holland might move on. Without him anchoring the relationship between the two studios, and with a possible new version of Spider-Man or Miles Morales in play, I have to think at least a couple of studio heads, the people answering to stakeholders and funding these things, will forget how poorly the spin-offs did. They'll forget Madame Web and Kraven's box office, and Morbius, which "took a place in the zeitgeist as an absolute joke," and decide to try the spin-off route again.

Nothing to Worry About Right Now, But No Guarantees

Is this something to worry about in the near future? Not at all. As long as Tom Holland is playing Peter Parker, there will continue to be a sharing agreement, because that's where Holland wants his Peter Parker to be. And as long as Sony and Marvel are making this kind of money off Spider-Man 4, there will be a Spider-Man 5 with Tom Holland, and if that does well too, a Spider-Man 6. That puts any real risk at least half a decade, if not a full decade, down the road.

Still, being on a picture-by-picture basis means things can get weird, and there are no guarantees from picture to picture. If the last five years in Hollywood have shown anything, it's that nobody knows what the future holds. Everything has been shifting, everyone has been downsizing, and margins are thinner than ever on these big budget productions, even as we move into the third decade of superhero cinema as redefined by the existence of the MCU in 2008.

At the end of the day, this is a business, and it's all about making money. With Brand New Day making what it's making, with these players in place and this sharing agreement, "there is nothing like a couple billy at the box office to make everything feel like, well, you can do no wrong." I don't see them moving away from that anytime soon. Sony has previously called its own connected universe the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters, or SUMC, a name that I think already says a lot about how well that alternative was working out.

How much of a tragedy would it be, in your opinion, if after Spider-Man 5 and 6 he goes back to being alone in Sony's own universe?