Sony Pictures CEO Admits the Superhero Bar Has Been Raised After Its Spider-Man Universe Faltered

It looks like Sony finally gets it when it comes to superhero movies, and particularly Spider-Man movies. Sony Pictures CEO Ravi Ahuja has acknowledged that the bar for superhero films has been raised, and that you can't make a bad movie.

You could question whether Sony's recent films even count as Spider-Man movies, because Spider-Man never appeared in any of their Spider-Man adjacent projects. Sony was torn apart for building a Spider-Man universe without Spider-Man, and big surprise, it didn't really work. These new statements sound good, but they also left me baffled about how Sony could have thought certain things about its movies before. Honestly, that thinking is part of why those films were bad.

Ravi Ahuja admits superhero films now need originality and emotional connection

Venom is the possible exception, because Venom is a popular and cool enough character on its own to make people care and draw a crowd at the box office. The Venom films are totally fun and enjoyable, but they're not exactly the best films. You wouldn't put them on par with Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Infinity War. Sony did pause everything it was doing with its Spider-Man universe because it clearly realised what it was doing wasn't going to work, which I saw as great news and a sign Sony might be catching on.

A new article pointed the same way. Its headline read: "The bar for superhero films has been raised. Sony Picture CEO says you can't make a bad movie." The article noted that after Sony's Marvel universe sputtered out the previous fall with Kraven the Hunter, Ahuja acknowledged the bar for superhero box office success had risen. He said: "There was a period of time where anything superhero was almost guaranteed to do well. I think the bar for superhero movies, it was relatively low. In the mid 2010s, pretty much all of them would do incredible business."

He went on to say that superhero movies now have to have a degree of originality, add something different, have emotional connection, and be cultural events that can be marketed that way. Ahuja became president and CEO in January 2025, so I'm not putting the entire blame on him. But how could Sony not have realised this before? There is definitely truth to what he said, and to me it explains why Sony just threw movies out there. On top of that, Sony has to keep making films to hold on to its Spider-Man rights, which is another big problem. Over the past few years the studio seemingly released whatever it could to satisfy that contract, while assuming anything superhero would do well.

Venom's success may have hurt Sony

The problem is that the superheroes Sony chose weren't very good. Venom was great, but I honestly think Venom doing well hurt Sony, because it seemingly backed up exactly what the studio believed: that it could throw out any superhero movie and it would perform. Venom came out in 2018 and grossed 856 million worldwide. But it arrived after Avengers: Infinity War, which came out that April, at pretty much the peak of superhero movies between Infinity War and Endgame.

Of course Venom did well. Everything kind of did well at that point. Captain Marvel grossed over a billion at the box office, and Ant-Man and the Wasp, a relatively smaller superhero, did 622 million. It was a stellar time for superhero movies, and because the hype was so big, anything would have done at least decently. If it was a relatively known superhero, you could pretty much have success with whatever you put out.

Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter proved you can't release just anything

Sony quickly learned otherwise. The sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, came out in 2021, and later the following Venom film did almost 500 million worldwide. From there, things tanked. As the article put it, the Jared Leto fronted Morbius limped to 167 million globally with a historic 74% second weekend drop that became a social media punchline. The critically savaged Madame Web grossed just 100 million worldwide, and the Aaron Taylor-Johnson led Kraven the Hunter managed a mere 62 million globally.

I actually didn't know Kraven did worse than Madame Web. But that is what happens when you consistently release bad movies in a Spider-Man universe without Spider-Man. We could spend a while tearing Sony apart, but I think they finally get it now. They stopped what they were doing, halted the universe they were trying to build, and the new CEO seemingly understands that they actually have to make a good movie.

Ahuja says you can't make a bad movie and points to cultural events

According to the article, Ahuja noted that you can't make a bad movie. "Well, yeah, when would you ever really think you could?" I get it to an extent. If it's a low budget movie, you can write it off for some tax purposes. And before, Sony kind of just had to make movies to keep its Spider-Man contract, which we assume it still has to do. Hopefully the mindset has changed.

The article pointed out that the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, creatively produced by Marvel Studios but largely financed and distributed by Sony, have been a bright spot, with 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home grossing nearly 2 billion. On big box office hits generally, Ahuja said you have to make cultural events, pointing to Weapons, Sinners and Sony's own 28 Years Later, where Sony has indeed had great success. He said: "It's a bit of marketing, but it's making it an event that people want to go out to theaters and watch together as well. That's always been the case. I think it's just even tougher than it used to be."

Audiences wait for streaming because they are used to middling films

The issue is that it's tougher now because we are used to a lot of mediocre films. If people have only a little interest in something, they just wait for it to come to streaming. That's especially true in Sony's case, where what it produced hasn't even been mediocre but really bad, with Venom again the exception.

I've said several times that I miss when superhero films were giant cultural events. Marvel didn't produce a lot of movies back then, releasing two or sometimes three a year, so each release was a big event. We didn't have Disney Plus or an excess of superhero projects. When they came out, they were about pretty big heroes and part of a connected universe, something Sony wanted to do but really failed at.

Sony's next universe needs Spider-Man in it

Sony has had major success with 28 Years Later, and it seems the studio now understands what would make a good superhero movie. I had no doubt Sony would try again. It isn't going to let go of Spider-Man, which is such a big cash cow, so it was really nice to hear all of this from the current CEO. It's nice that somebody over there, and it happens to be the person in charge, understands what needs to happen.

It's a great thing Sony ended what it was doing. Hopefully, during this pause, it learns from Marvel Studios, the new Spider-Man film, and the connectivity of the MCU and the new DCU, and builds a connected universe that has Spider-Man in it. It doesn't have to be Tom Holland's. Sony could even do Miles Morales or Spider-Gwen, or bigger villains people actually want to see, like Kingpin or Norman Osborn. We know Sony wanted to eventually do a Sinister Six movie, but what's a Sinister Six movie without Spider-Man?

In an ideal world, Marvel Studios would get Spider-Man and all of those characters back. Unfortunately, I don't think Sony will ever give them up. So the best we can hope for is good movies about characters we actually want to see. Perhaps Sony will strike another deal with Marvel so these characters can exist in the MCU instead of their own universe, which would probably make a lot more money than Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter did. The article shows Sony is at least coming to its senses a little. Hopefully it goes further, and if it does build its own universe again, hopefully it's better than last time.

Should Sony keep trying to build its own Spider-Man universe, or let Marvel fold these characters into the MCU?