Written by Wyatt Garlow, Staff Writer
Spider-Man: Far from Home came out only four months ago, yet the sequel to Queen’s friendly neighborhood crime fighter has made waves in the box office. If you know anything about Spider-Man, you know about the recent Sony/Disney deal or the lack of a deal.
So what exactly happened?
In 1999, Sony Pictures bought the lm rights for Spider-Man from Marvel, meaning that Sony could freely produce any Spider-Man or Spider-Man related movies. We’ve actually seen this twice, with Sam Raimi’s trilogy starring Toby Maguire and The Amazing Spider-Man movies starring Andrew Garfield.
In 2015, Disney acquired Marvel and had made a behemoth of a cinematic universe, but it didn’t have Spider-Man. Disney offered to help produce and get a small amount of box office money from Sony if Sony allowed Spider-Man to be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Obviously the deal was made and Tom Holland was signed on by Sony for a six-movie deal, three main movies & three tie in’s with the MCU.
As of now, five of those six movies are out and Tom Holland only has one movie left. Around August of 2019, Disney allegedly asked Sony for a 30 percent to 50 percent cut of box office money for helping less with production. If you didn’t know, Spider-Man: Far from Home took $160 million to produce and earned more than $1.1 billion at the box office. Sony refused the deal, so Disney took Spider-Man out of the MCU.
In an unexpected turn, the person to mend this deal is actor Tom Holland. Holland reportedly was talking to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Sony lm chairman Tom Rothman in attempts to save the Spider-Man deal, showing the moguls the flood of support from fans. The resolution was announced Sept. 27 that Spider-Man would appear in at least one more MCU lm as well as have Disney nance 25 percent of the third Sony lm for 25 percent profit.
The ironic part of this whole problem is that Disney could make as many Spider-Man movies as they like if not for one thing they did in the past. In 1976, Disney successfully remade copyright law to ensure that Mickey Mouse wouldn’t go into public domain in 1984. In the original law, Spider-Man was supposed to go into public domain as of January of 2019, meaning Disney and Sony could compete to create Spider-Man movies. The only upside to Disney’s new copyright laws is that in 2024, Mickey Mouse’s Steamboat Willie design is going into public domain. We may not have the spider but soon the rat will be ours.