BY BENICIAPAW
By Angela Cezile Nabong
The shocking news of Spider-Man leaving Disney has swept the internet, causing many Marvel fans to be outraged. On August 20, 2019, Sony announced that they are going to dissociate with Disney after they could not come to an agreement and are taking Spider-Man along with them. Sony, who controls the movie rights to Spider-Man and 900 other related Marvel characters since 1998, wanted to keep their terms the same which kept Marvel to 5% of first-dollar gross and to all of the merchandise income. However, Disney wanted a 50/50 stake in the character, which apparently Sony didn’t agree to.
Sony bought the rights to the Spider-Man films in 1999, releasing their very first movie directed by Sam Raimi in 2002 starring Tobey Maguire. Sony successfully started to produce Spider-Man sequels in 2004 and 2007. Sony then rebooted it in 2012 with “The Amazing Spider-Man” which starred Andrew Garfield who played Spiderman, and Emma Stone who played Gwen. The film and the sequel made a dent on box office collections, which decreased it’s movie returns. In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Studios for $4 billion dollars, allowing them to have access to a lot of superheroes except Spider-Man. The tides changed when in 2011, Sony sold Spider-Man merchandising rights to Disney.
On Tuesday night, Sony announced that they were “disappointed” by Disney wanting a bigger stake in the Spider-Man movies, along with them wanting Marvel President, Kevin Feige, to not be involved in the franchise. “We are disappointed, but respect Disney’s decision not to have him continue as a lead producer of our next live action Spider-Man film,” Sony said in a statement. “Kevin is terrific and we are grateful for his help and guidance and appreciate the path he has helped put us on, which we will continue.” Sony hope things “might change in the future;” despite the broken deal between Marvel Studios and Sony, the young actor, Tom Holland will still be playing as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, though it will only be for Sony without any connections to Disney.
