Who Owns Spiderman?

If you grew up in the nineties like me, your first experience of Spiderman frolicking with alternate versions of himself was probably in Spiderman: The Animated Series. In the show's 1998 finale (spoiler alert), the “prime” Peter Parker, sent by Madame Web and The Beyonder, leads a team of Spidermen to stop a symbiotic-infected alternate version of himself dubbed 'Spider Carnage' from destroying the entire multiverse (whew, what a sentence).

As the last episode aired, I had no idea that the little Marvel logo in the corner of the show's title screen was the badge of a failing empire. Two years earlier, following a massive cultural disinterest in the medium of comics, Marvel Comics had filed for bankruptcy. But they weren't giving up.

The Theatrical Ownership of Spiderman: A Brief History

In the same year the animated series ended, A Sony executive met with the Chief of Marvel Entertainment to secure the theatrical screen rights to Spider-Man. In a shocking counter proposition, Marvel offered their entire catalogue to Sony for $25 Million.

When this proposal was brought back to the Sony higher-ups, their infamous response was: "Nobody gives a sh—about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man."

Sony reportedly bought the rights for Spiderman for $10 million (plus 5% of any movies' gross revenue and half the revenue from merchandise) with a contractual obligation to release a new Spiderman film every 5 years.

This deal birthed Toby Maguire’s Spiderman and the widely acclaimed Spiderman 2, which is considered by many, a quintessential film in the comic book movie canon. A year after the ambitious but ultimately incohesive failure of the Raimi-directed Spiderman 3—Iron Man kicks off the MCU.

To honour their half-decade obligation, Sony released The Amazing Spiderman in 2012. It was well received and would've been considered a conventional success… Had Marvel not released The Avengers that same year, becoming the third highest grossing film of all time. The Marvel Cinematic Universe had been established and was building a franchise unlike anything we'd ever seen before, a blow to Sony that was only made worse by 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, a film full of essentially unknown misfits to moviegoers, which outpaced The Amazing Spiderman 2 at the box office.

(Not bad for a bunch of characters "nobody gives a sh** about").

By 2015, Sony struck a licensing deal with Disney for Spiderman, loaning him to the MCU, and Tom Holland’s Peter Park slings over our screens in Civil War, Homecoming, Infinity War and Endgame.

Cut to now: And after a combination of

1. the MCU introducing the multiverse due to the events of Endgame and Loki

2. the surprising success of Sony's own Into The Spiderverse

3. the pending establishment of Sony's own Spider-man cinematic universe with Venom and

4. the release of the No Way Home trailer...

It’s starting to look like a live-action Spiderman multiverse is brewing, one that’ll probably fold Tobey Maguire’s, Andrew Garfield’s and Tom Holland’s Spidermen on a scale much larger than the 90's cult classic animated series.

That is all to say… There has been a convoluted battle over Spiderman’s soul that has shaped all his silver screen appearances up to now, and will continue to mould them in the future.

This impending Spiderverse looks like it’ll obscure the rigid thresholds of individual franchises, production studios and billion dollar corporations.

Through this, we can see a fascinating ecosystem between how emotions inform business (apparently, when Marvel's producer Kevin Feige initially tried to get Spiderman back to Marvel, he was told to "get the f*** out" and got a sandwich thrown at him) how business is informed by finances (the box office “failure” of The Amazing Spiderman 2 lead to Tom Holland’s Spiderman being introduced into the MCU) and how finances inform creativity.

But as fascinating an ecosystem it is, it’s punctuated by a horrible truth.

This messy web of who owns what part of Spiderman’s soul has undoubtedly affected the fans.

How great would it have been if Spiderman was in The Avengers? Or if Venom wasn’t released from an incubation chamber separate from the cinematic siblings of his comic book heritage?

The backing track of finance and business that milks the Spiderman for money has failed multiple times to consider, or know, or even care what the fans want (remember when Sony and Disney broke up for like a week in 2019?) and in being so disconnected from fans, it just ends up jeopardising their profits.

It not only affects the fans, but puts a restriction on the quality of the story.

With Spiderman’s theatrical ownership in Sony’s grasp, so are Spidey’s villains. I look at the quality of Homecoming and Far From Home and wonder how that limitation of bad guys to choose from must’ve affected the production of those films.

The character arc that Eddie Brock/Venom deserves, going from villain to anti-hero doesn’t materialise if Spiderman can’t be in the film (yet). And although Venom was a relative success, I can’t help but wonder how the film could’ve breathed under Marvel’s helm.

These are but small, narrative ways that this business affects content quality.

But in the end, doesn’t it strike you a little weird that Spiderman, a hero and icon for so many is batted around like a financial volleyball?

This character who is profound for so many is a cash cow for others, and a part of me wants to see this character treated with respect. The box office failures and fan disappointments of Spiderman 3 and The Amazing Spiderman 2 failed before they began, because they were spawned by a greedy monetary machine and a financial obligation of a contract. They have only begun to work out fortuitously because of the MCU and consistency of their quality.

Ultimately, Spiderman is a Marvel creation. He was conceptualised at Marvel and belongs at Marvel.

The financial understructure that has motivated this entire, convoluted history of the intellectual property of Spiderman, and is motivating this pending, cross conglomerate universe is as intriguing as it is infuriating. Intriguing because we might get the best crossover we’ve ever seen. Infuriating because all the handshakes it took to get here, probably never had to happen in the first place.