Why does sony own the rights to spiderman

The deal would grant Sony the opportunity to produce as many Spider-Man or Spider-Man -related movies as it so desired. The only stipulation being that it had to produce a new movie every five years. Publishers selling movie rights to characters is not uncommon, so it was not out of the ordinary in for Marvel Comics to make a deal with Sony.

In fact, at the time, Marvel Comics made a number of deals with movie studios to help put characters into cinemas, including the X-Men , Daredevil , the Hulk , Ghost Rider and many more. As mentioned above, in Marvel did not have a film division and therefore needed the help of a studio to produce movies based on its characters.

Had the company not made this deal, or any other deal regarding Spider-Man , then from onward the character could have appeared in movies produced by Marvel Studios. As part of a licensing deal, when studios option a character from a publisher they have a certain amount of time with which to produce a movie.

If they do not produce a movie within this allotted time then the rights to the character revert back to the owner. In the case of Sony and Spider-Man , the studio has a five-year window with which to make a Spidey movie.

So long as Sony continues to produce Spider-Man movies every five years it is able to retain the rights. If you have ever wondered why there have been so many Spider-Man movies over the past few years it is because of this contractual obligation. The moment that Sony fails to meet its production window is the moment that the rights to Spider-Man revert back to Marvel. Ghost Rider , the Punisher , Man-Thing and a number of others have all found their way back to Marvel after their respective deals came to an end i.

Unless anything significant happens to affect the financial situation of the studio, Sony is unlikely to stop producing Spider-Man movies. All of the films have been box office successes, even if some of the movies i. The Amazing Spider-Man movies did not do as well as the studio had hoped. The film was viewed by Sony as a springboard for various Spider-Man movie spinoffs, but none of them came to pass when it was met with a lukewarm reception.

Continue producing Spider-Man films that may not succeed at the box office or take a break and potentially lose the film rights to the character — what was the studio to do? In an unexpected move, a decision was made to work with Marvel. Sony partnered with Marvel Studios to produce Spider-Man movies, therefore maintaining its association with the character. It was a win-win situation for both studios. Now of course, Marvel Studios could have simply left Sony to its own devices in the hope that eventually the studio would give up the rights, but this was unlikely.

Spider-Man movies — even potentially bad ones — have the power to make money, so Sony could have simply carried on rebooting the character over and over again in order to retain the rights. It also knew that having some access to Spidey was better than having no access at all. Spidey would appear as a guest star in the movies not as the lead , but Marvel could pretty much use the character however it wanted. In exchange, Marvel Studios would co-produce a series of Spider-Man solo movies in association with Sony.

In essence, Marvel would get Spider-Man back on a temporary basis and Sony would benefit from having Spidey associated with the MCU — a multi-billion dollar success story. Sign up for the newsletter Verge Deals Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week.

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Loading comments Share this story Twitter Facebook. In , superhero movies weren't considered solid box office bets as they are today, so even though Spider-Man was incredibly popular most studios passed on making a film on him.

Hiltzik for the LA Times in The Superman franchise, launched to huge success in , appeared to have suffered premature arteriosclerosis with the release of the dreary 'Superman III' in Fact check: Sony Group still owns Spider-Man film rights, despite online claims.

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