How Sony Rehabilitated Their ‘Spider-Man’ Franchise At Marvel And Disney’s Expense

Spider-Man: No Way Home has earned $671 million domestic and $1.54 billion worldwide in just under four weeks. The film has created a “rising tides lifts all boats” situation, whereby the existing Spider-Man and Venom movies are currently ruling over the various VOD charts. As of yesterday, ten of the top 22 titles over at YouTube were compromised of the earlier Spider-Verse flicks. That includes Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Amazing Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man 2, Homecoming, Far from Home Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Into the Spider-Verse. They were all in the current top-40 over at iTunes, the top 49 at Amazon (the top 29 if you only count movies) and the top 32 at Google. It furthers the notion that Spider-Man: No Way Home is a bigger win for Sony than for Disney and Marvel.  

First, left to their own devices, I’d argue that a Marvel-specific sequel to Spider-Man: Far from Home likely would have been pretty much the story we expected in summer 2019. With Mysterio setting Spider-Man up for his own murder and outing him as Pater Parker to the world, Peter would deal with life as a fugitive superhero with most of his MCU pals no longer of aid (since they barely knew him even before Tony Stark died). Kraven the Hunter may or may not have been involved, but the theoretical Spider-Man: Run from Home (or whatever) would have cleared an easy $1.1 billion, and everyone would have been happy. However, No Way Home used the existing MCU continuity and fan base to craft a Spider-Man movie that can, if necessary, remove Spider-Man from Disney’s MCU franchise.  

That’s the skewed victory Sony scored by first latching its newest Spider-Man reboot to the MCU and then by bringing in the earlier franchises’ respective continuity. Whether or not the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home makes The Amazing Spider-Man 2 or Venom “essential MCU continuity,” the film acted as a 2.5-hour advertisement for Sony’s non-MCU superhero movies. Prior to last month, the Andrew Garfield-led reboot duology stood for the nadir of arbitrary “reboot for the sake of reboot” thinking as well as a once-trendsetting franchise chasing its cinematic rivals (Amazing Spider-Man wanted to be Batman Begins and Amazing Spider-Man 2 wanted to a Dark Knight that set up Sony’s own Avengers). As of today, they are retroactively popular and a possible lynchpin for how Sony makes its own non-MCU Spider-Man movie alongside however Holland fits into Marvel’s world. 

I’m not saying that an Andrew Garfield Spider-Man versus Tom Hardy’s Venom movie would be a good or artistically valid idea, but it would probably be an easy commercial success. Thanks to Garfield’s winning supporting performance in No Way Home, the bad financial choices (spending $235 million on a “cheaper” reboot, just making a grimdark remake of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man) and artistic whiffs (killing off Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy to appease a vocal minority, marketing Amazing Spider-Man 2 as a Sinister Six backdoor pilot) have all-but-dissipated in terms of their legacy. They are now newly must-see movies, especially for those who avoided them in 2012 and 2014. In a world where marquee characters rule, the only thing that matters about the Amazing Spider-Man movies is that they feature Andrew Garfield’s now-popular interpretation of Peter Parker.  

This, in a film which ended with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker being essentially removed from the broader MCU continuity. I’m not the first person to describe Spider-Man: No Way Home as a metaphorical divorce. Sony produced a sequel to Spider-Man: Far from Home, a film whose $1.131 billion-grossing (including $199 million in China) success was partially predicated on its existence within the MCU (and coming right after Avengers: Endgame), that used its in-universe cliffhanger to hawk its prior Spider-Man franchises, including the failed one. It then turned those films into rediscovered gems and climaxed with an ending (everyone forgets that Peter Parker ever existed) whereby Spider-Man is now a lone wolf with zero interaction with the larger MCU. This, after the much-publicized brokered peace concerning Holland’s Spider-Man continuing to exist within the MCU. That’s chutzpah. 

Those negotiations were implicitly predicated on the notion that Sony’s Spider-Man outside the MCU was far less valuable than one within. Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film with a small supporting turn from Doctor Strange but otherwise entirely set within the world of Peter Parker, and one which uses franchise nostalgia from prior non-MCU Spider-Man movies, is going to earn more worldwide (around $1.7 billion), without China no less, than any superhero movie save for the last two Avengers movies ($2.048 billion and $2.8 billion). Oh, and in a year where Marvel ruled the box office, Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage earned $212.5 million domestic and $505 million worldwide. That’s just below Shang-Chi ($225 million) but well above Eternals ($164 million domestic/$399 million worldwide), Black Widow ($185 million/$380 million) and Shang-Chi’s $430 million cume.  

Disney is absolutely entering 2022 on the defensive, although I’m still expecting grandiose things from the next two years of MCU sequels to Doctor Strange, Thor, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man (also… I believe in James Cameron). Moreover, I’m not expecting Sony’s Kraven the Hunter (starring Aaron Johnson) or Morbius (starring Jared Leto) to set the global box office on fire. That said, it may have looked “better” for Disney had Spider-Man: No Way Home performed on par with pre-Covid expectations (think around $1 billion) or under-performed. Such a circumstance would have suggested a ceiling for non-Disney MCU movies and the very idea of global theatrical releases (which plays into the current Disney+-centric strategy). With five Marvel movies released in 2021, the two biggest were the Sony titles. 

No Way Home rejuvenated interest in the blockbuster Sam Raimi-directed/Toby Maguire-led trilogy and spawned retroactive nostalgic interest in another Andrew Garfield-led installment, especially one teaming him with Tom Hardy’s currently popular Venom. Sony used the MCU as a vessel to rehabilitate the image of their earlier failed Spider-Man franchise. They used the third film in the trilogy to metaphorically justifying keeping Holland’s Peter Parker outside of the larger MCU. I’d argue it overperformed in terms of pre-Covid expectations had it opened in July 2021 sans pandemic circumstances, and now No Way Home leaves the “burden of proof” on Disney rather than Sony. When Venom 2 tops $500 million and Sony’s Spider-Man 3 version 2.0 tops $1.5 billion, over/under $400 million isn’t good enough for Disney’s MCU to still be considered the king of the world.