Sony Chose Not To Acquire Entire MCU When They Bought SPIDER-MAN...And It Would Have Only Cost $15 Million

Sony Chose Not To Acquire Entire MCU When They Bought SPIDER-MAN...And It Would Have Only Cost $15 Million

Sony Pictures acquired the cinematic rights to Spider-Man when Marvel was facing bankruptcy, but the studio actually turned down the chance to also nab all but the X-Men and Fantastic Four! Check it out...

News
By JoshWilding - Aug 29, 2023 10:08 AM EST
Filed Under: Spider-Man
Source: Bleeding Cool

With Marvel Entertainment facing bankruptcy in the late 90s, the decision was made to sell the rights to many of its most popular superheroes. Among them were Spider-Man (Sony Pictures) along with the Fantastic Four and X-Men (20th Century Fox). 

It was a decision that would come back to haunt the company and forced them to rely on characters like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man to launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Luckily, that paid off for Marvel Studios and they've since regained those two superhero teams thanks to the Disney/Fox merger. 

As for Spider-Man, he remains on loan from Sony, with the rival studio able to make pretty much anything they want with characters from the wall-crawler's world (Morbius and the upcoming Kraven the Hunter, for example). 

However, in The Wall Street Journal's podcast, The Journal (via Bleeding Cool), Yair Landau, a former junior business executive at Sony, reveals that the studio scoffed at the chance to not only acquire Spider-Man, but every hero aside from those already owned by Fox.

"[Marvel] had just emerged out of bankruptcy. They had no cash, and they knew we had a sliver of the rights. And they also knew, obviously, that we were very interested in making Marvel movies, so they came to me, and we negotiated a deal for 25 Marvel movies for $25 million. Every single character that they controlled was on the table as part of that deal."

"The collective [Sony] team decided they didn't care about the other Marvel properties, that they didn't want to invest in them. I was told, 'Nobody gives a shit about anybody but Spider-Man.' I thought they were idiots; that's what I thought. My marching orders were to go back and just get Spider-Man."

Sony ended up paying $10 million for Spider-Man but could have had The Avengers on hand for an extra $15 million. Had that happened, there's a very good chance superhero movies wouldn't be the dominant force they are today (Avi Arad's Iron Man, for example, was going to be dressed by his toaster). 

It sure is interesting to think about what might have been, though!

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Spoken
Spoken - 8/29/2023, 10:20 AM
Thank god for ignorance.
dragon316
dragon316 - 8/29/2023, 11:51 AM
@Spoken - and marvel is doing job good choice
Spoken
Spoken - 8/29/2023, 11:59 AM
@dragon316 - ...what?
VictorAlonzo
VictorAlonzo - 8/29/2023, 12:13 PM
@Spoken - OH that's just our Ole Draggy 🔥 🐲! Confusin as ever!!!
Arthorious
Arthorious - 8/29/2023, 5:47 PM
@dragon316 - as of late no. But that doesn’t erase the past decade of Marvel becoming a juggernaut in making good content for people enjoy thoroughly.
MasterMix
MasterMix - 8/29/2023, 10:21 AM
Can you imagine a Marvel Cinematic Universe with no rights issues from the beginning?
Urubrodi
Urubrodi - 8/29/2023, 10:27 AM
@MasterMix - It's hard to say what would have been. In one hand X-Men and F4 would have been part of the MCU from the get go. On the other hand we probably wouldn't have movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Shang-Chi, Black Widow and so on. So maybe it's not necessarily a bad thing that things played out the way they did. After Secret Wars if the MCU is still going, we will have a proper universe.
pitbull76
pitbull76 - 8/29/2023, 10:36 AM
@Urubrodi - Crap even at the time Ironman before the movie and the MCU blowing up I would argue in the comics was a b list superhero.
BizarroGrif
BizarroGrif - 8/29/2023, 10:45 AM
@Urubrodi - X-Men and F4 were Fox owned at the time and wouldn't have been part of the deal
Urubrodi
Urubrodi - 8/29/2023, 10:47 AM
@pitbull76 - True, sometimes it's easy to forget that the MCU basically turned the Avengers into A-list characters. Back then A-list was reserved mostly to Spider-Man and the X-Men (maybe F4 if you pushed it a bit).
Urubrodi
Urubrodi - 8/29/2023, 10:48 AM
@BizarroGrif - Well @MasterMix mentioned no right issues so I just assumed he meant everyone, including the Fox ones as well.
The1st
The1st - 8/29/2023, 10:49 AM
@MasterMix - I can imagine Sony Sonying.
pitbull76
pitbull76 - 8/29/2023, 10:50 AM
@Urubrodi - ya I mean the really rolled the dice on Ironman from the director to even RDJ who the studio did not want to touch.
MasterMix
MasterMix - 8/29/2023, 11:27 AM
@Urubrodi - Yeah, that's what I meant. This article just reminded me of the concept. Not excluding the Fox characters.
emptyatlasmusic
emptyatlasmusic - 8/29/2023, 11:42 AM
@Urubrodi - That's where I'm at, too. I think Sony would've just gone, "Oh. Okay, so more Spider-Man and X-Men movies it is." They're not traditionally a studio known for big risks, outside of their recent Sony Animation string.
Tpo81
Tpo81 - 8/29/2023, 1:37 PM
@Urubrodi - and it would've probably been terrible with Sony at the wheel
ShimmyShimmyYA
ShimmyShimmyYA - 8/29/2023, 10:21 AM
And done what with it ?

This is meaningless info using ultra 20/20 hindsight
Origame
Origame - 8/29/2023, 11:06 AM
@ShimmyShimmyYA - even if they knew marvel would be where it is now, they'd also need to know everything that went into its success. I'm sorry, but even marvel wasn't sure an iron man movie starring Robert Downey Jr would define the genre or even be all that profitable.
ShimmyShimmyYA
ShimmyShimmyYA - 8/29/2023, 11:30 AM
@Origame - considering he was still an exile in Hollywood no shot they give him a chance and probably would’ve pushed for that Tom cruise version
Origame
Origame - 8/29/2023, 11:38 AM
@ShimmyShimmyYA - hell, marvel only went with rdj because of Favreau pushed for it. So basically either of them not involved the mcu as we know just couldn't be.

It'd probably look more like incredible hulk tonally with Edward Norton front and center.
Ha1frican
Ha1frican - 8/29/2023, 10:21 AM
No chance it would have become what it is today though, sure it would have made them money, but not really MCU billions. It wouldn’t have made it out of phase 2 if Avi Arad was anywhere near it
Blergh
Blergh - 8/29/2023, 10:22 AM
The MCU probably wouldn’t have been such a hit under Sony,
with producers like Avi Arad and Amy Pascal running that ship the MCU would have been dead in its tracks.

What really gave it power was its non-value to Paramount that gave Feige the power he needed to steer the ship
MaxPaint
MaxPaint - 8/29/2023, 10:23 AM
Hum..Shouldn't we be glad this never happened? Imagine a whole MCU oversighted by Avi Arad.


Also classic studio executive arrogancy with the 'Nobody gives a shit about anybody but Spider-Man.' Even if that's the case (It wasn't) the fact that you could potentially have all the eggs in a basket is always better than having them separately. Anyways, glad that things turned out the way they did.
ShimmyShimmyYA
ShimmyShimmyYA - 8/29/2023, 10:31 AM
@MaxPaint - it wasn’t nobody cares about anything but spider man he just cared about toy sales and all that shit spider man sold a lot it didn’t matter who it was whoever sold he would’ve pushed
BassMan
BassMan - 8/29/2023, 10:26 AM
Praise the One Above All, because it would have been a shit show
pitbull76
pitbull76 - 8/29/2023, 10:32 AM
Talk about what ifs now Disney owns every character other then Spider-man now. paid what 4 billon and it took them how long to make their investment back?
TheManWithoutFear
TheManWithoutFear - 8/29/2023, 10:37 AM
Very misleading headline. They had the option to purchase the rights to make movies involving those characters. That is not the MCU. Marvel Studios built the MCU using those characters. There is no reason to believe Sony would have ever done that.
SorceresSupreme
SorceresSupreme - 8/29/2023, 10:42 AM
[frick] YOU [frick] YOU [frick] YOU FCUK YOU ALL
bobevanz
bobevanz - 8/29/2023, 11:06 AM
@SorceresSupreme - now now doc take your meds
BraveNewClunge
BraveNewClunge - 8/29/2023, 10:43 AM
It's crazy to think how broke marvel were back then.
S8R8M
S8R8M - 8/29/2023, 10:46 AM
Salt in the wound.
I think Sony would agree that the way Marvel went was the best option.
bobbo68
bobbo68 - 8/29/2023, 11:01 AM
Thank God they would have been as bad as the X-Men in the hands of FOX (maybe worse).
OrgasmicPotatoe
OrgasmicPotatoe - 8/29/2023, 11:04 AM
Let me guess, the "collective Sony team" was Tom Rothman ?

That's funnier than [frick]
eddyxx
eddyxx - 8/29/2023, 1:32 PM
@OrgasmicPotatoe - Tom Rothman was running fox back then.
RolandD
RolandD - 8/29/2023, 11:05 AM
bobevanz
bobevanz - 8/29/2023, 11:05 AM
Avi Arad in charge of the MCU.. kill me.
LeonNova
LeonNova - 8/29/2023, 11:25 AM
Thank God they didn’t
SheepishOne
SheepishOne - 8/29/2023, 11:36 AM
I am morbidly curious about what a Sony version of Iron Man, Cap, and Thor would look like in the early 2000s.

Thor would be like a construction worker who gets struck by lightning, which unlocks his dormant Thunder God powers, and the movie would be about the search for the hammer, which would be stolen by some suit who realizes he's Loki. The final fight would be Thor's blue lightning against Loki's green magic, which also looks like lightning.

Iron Man would basically be RoboCop, and it would involve Tony getting into an accident and having the military build a suit to keep him alive, because he's their biggest source of funding outside of the government or something. And it'll be revealed that Rhodey double-crossed Tony and caused the accident just to put the experimental suit on him, which Tony upgrades for the final fight of the movie. Rhodey fights him with like a tank or something.

Cap would be like G.I. Joe, where this low-level scrawny guy gets juiced up and put in a super suit to lead other soldiers on a recon mission to Red Skull Island, where he's told he's saving hostages but is actually retrieving vibranium for the government. The villain is an islander named Crossbones, who is king of Red Skull Island and uses a vibranium sword to fight Cap after telling them all they can't leave. He is only able to beat Crossbones after finding a vibranium shield in Crossbones' throne room.
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