The fallout between Sony and Marvel Studios is coming dangerously close to being reduced to childish name-calling. Sony’s decision to effectively take their ball and go home, ripping Spider-Man out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the process, has been dominating the headlines in recent weeks and despite fans hoping that a new deal could eventually be reached, recent comments from Chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra have made it clear that Sony have no plans to let the iconic comic book character out of their sight.
As well as confirming that the door was well and truly closed on Peter Parker’s tenure in the MCU, Vinciquerra also found the time to have a little dig at Marvel in the process, making a point of saying Kevin Feige wasn’t solely responsible for the success enjoyed by Tom Holland’s version of the web-slinging superhero. The Sony executive has now hammered his point home even further, claiming that his studio is more than capable of handling Spider-Man without the involvement of their former co-dependents.
“We had a great run with [Feige] on Spider-Man movies,” Vinciquerra said at Variety’s Entertainment & Technology summit. “We tried to see if there’s a way to work it out … the Marvel people are terrific people, we have great respect for them, but on the other hand we have some pretty terrific people of our own. Kevin didn’t do all the work.”
“Spider-Man was fine before the event movies, did better with the event movies, and now that we have our own universe, he will play off the other characters as well. I think we’re pretty capable of doing what we have to do here.”
Someone should probably tell Tony Vinciquerra that Sony have completely mishandled the Spider-Man franchise twice already. The studio’s heavy-handed interference was all over Spider-Man 3 and ultimately led to Sam Raimi abandoning the series, while Marc Webb’s not-so Amazing reboots were far too focused on building a wider cinematic universe at the expense of Spider-Man himself.
Venom might have been a success at the box office, but the reviews weren’t exactly kind, and with spinoffs like Morbius, Kraven the Hunter and others all in various stages of development, it certainly looks as though Sony were dead-set on building their own Marvel universe with or without Spider-Man.
Now that they’ve reacquired full ownership of the character, it seems increasingly likely that Tom Holland is going to be parachuted into Sony’s MCU at some point in the near future, and we’ll all just need to pretend that the events of Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Homecoming and Far From Home never happened.