The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Palak Patel, who oversaw Sony Pictures' slate of Marvel movies for Columbia Pictures, is leaving the studio.
He's been named Chief Content Officer for Prime Focus Studios, the finance and production arm of visual effects company DNEG. It's unclear whether his involvement with a series of movies that were critical and commercial disappointments has in any way contributed to his leaving Sony.
Patel worked with Sony and Columbia for the better part of a decade; he oversaw Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Venom: The Last Dance, Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter. The Venom trilogy was a financial success but each instalment made less than its predecessor and received negative reviews.
As for the other three spin-offs, they rank among Sony's biggest box office flops.
It's worth noting that, according to the trade, Patel "acted as the studio's point man on the Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man films, which were co-productions with Marvel Studios."
Remember, Marvel Studios has been stopped from using certain characters and was likely forced to include Venom in Spider-Man: No Way Home, so Patel's departure could prove beneficial to Kevin Feige and company ahead of a new trilogy.
"Prime Focus Studios and DNEG joining forces as one company to offer full studio capabilities is game-changing – from acquiring IP, to developing scripts, to assisting filmmakers maximize their creativity while minimizing financial risk – with all the resources provided, from our state-of-the-art soundstages to utilizing DNEG’s artists early in the development process to deliver across all formats and genres," Patel said in a statement.
Another soon-to-be-former Sony executive who appears to be high on copium is departing CEO Tony Vinciquerra. He recently addressed the failings of the studio's Marvel movies and blamed critics for them not working out.
Acknowledging that Kraven the Hunter was "probably the worst launch we had in the 7 1/2 years [I’ve been at Sony]," he added, "That didn’t work out very well, which I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film,"
"Let’s just touch on Madame Web for a moment," Vinciquerra continued. "Madame Web underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix."
"For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of Kraven and Madame Web, and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with Venom, but the audience loved Venom and made Venom a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason," he concluded.
For the time being, it's believed that Sony's Marvel Universe has been put on ice as the studio looks to focus on its partnership with Marvel Studios, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, and Spider-Noir.