It's hard to process exactly what that means to webheads like me. For years, we've been resigned to the fact that Marvel forever lost the ability to put its most popular character on the silver screen thanks to what started as a savvy business move - pawning off film rights to its characters that it would never use - and blew up in their faces TREMENDOUSLY. We enjoyed the Raimi trilogy, we ate up The Avengers and we tolerated the reboot, but the whole time this image remained:
This hurts way down deep. RT @devincf: Poor Spidey pic.twitter.com/af9VTpuUUz
— Derek Beigh (@derekbeigh) October 28, 2014
Even when rumors started last year that Sony might let Spidey out of his cage (hat-tip to Ben Fritz of the Wall Street Journal, who was on top of this from the start), I didn't believe it. Couldn't. The idea that the studio behind The Avengers and both Captain America films would make Spider-Man stories was too powerful for me to consider without immense pain unless it were true.So, now that it's true, let's consider what "The Deal" (I've decided this is what I'll call it) really means:
1. "The new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel's Cinematic Universe." Smart money is Captain America: Civil War, the next big team-up movie to go into production. (Some are speculating about a post-credits scene for Avengers: Age of Ultron, but that would require superhuman speed or an immense amount of corporate foresight/hubris to pull off.) Spider-Man is a huge part of that comic-book arc, but Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige previously said the creative team won't hesitate to move pieces around. I expect a small cameo.
2. Feige will be a producer alongside deposed Sony exec Amy Pascal on a 2017 Spider-Man film with "a new creative direction," which probably means bye-bye to The Amazing Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield, co-star Emma Stone and Director Marc Webb - who, aside from having a very appropriate name, never seemed to excel at (or even like) making Spider-Man movies. So much the better for all of them in their freedom to do other, likely better, things, and for us to see new blood and a fresh start. (Side note: Leave Donald Glover alone. Dude has got stuff going on, and not every talented person needs to play a superhero.)
3. "Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films." This is, in real-life terms, the most important sentence in this press release. Spider-Man is Sony's golden goose, and not only do they have no intention of letting him get away, they're in no way interested in sharing the eggs. This deal is a straight-up service trade: let us use Spidey in a movie, Marvel says, and we'll help you fix this brand. The real dream, Marvel Studios using Spidey when and how it pleases, remains elusive and probably impossible. (My dream, Joss Whedon directing a movie with Spider-Man in it, will apparently be an agonizing near-miss.)
4. Speaking of the brand: Sony's new Spider-Man movie is slated for July 28, 2017, without any other details attached. (Which is a problem in itself, but let's just grit our teeth and move on.) This will almost certainly be the start of a new franchise - hopefully with Feige on board all the way - and mean delays if not outright cancellations for Sony's Spider-universe projects, including the interesting-but-odd Venom movie, strange Sinister Six film and downright baffling Aunt May solo joint. It's hard to care too much about those, but I will legitimately miss the Amazing series, which was narratively sloppy but well-produced and acted, especially by the leads and Green Goblin Dane DeHaan. A lot of the discussion since Marvel and Sony's announcement has been about Marvel saving Sony from itself, but let's not insult a ton of hardworking people who put together two immensely-profitable movies that, while never as good or interesting as Raimi's trilogy, rose above the vast majority of Hollywood drek that gets released every summer. The Amazing team deserved a chance to finish the overarching story (so aggressively shoehorned) in Amazing Spider-Man 2 on their own terms.
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| No more tomorrows, Amazing team. |
6. Perhaps the most important part of this agreement: for the first time, I have faith in the future of not only Spider-Man comics but X-Men too. Consider what Marvel has to think about from a corporate standpoint with that endeavor: comics make money, sure, but the most profitable part of the Spider-Man brand is controlled by Sony, probably forever. Disney didn't pay $4 billion for Marvel to increase visibility for another studio's characters, and while stopping production of Spider-Man comics would produce a massive backlash now, slowing them down and letting Sony continue to twist in the wind is a realistic way to take us down that road. This deal shows Marvel is willing to make compromises and not shut out any property it doesn't 100 percent control. If Fox is willing to let X-Men characters appear in Marvel films, my nightmare scenario of watching Marvel cancel that comic and promote the living daylights out of Inhumans instead will become nothing more than a paranoid delusion. It may be already - but The Deal reassures me anything is possible.
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