SPIDEY 4 becomes AMAZING becomes Marvel's SPIDER-MAN

[Dacey]

Smurfpussy

[Ben]

Yes...I went there...

[Dan]

With Amy Pascal stepping down as co-chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment and chair of its motion picture group, the future of the Spider-Man franchise under Sony once again is rumbling with doubt as she was the biggest champion for the spin-offs and sequels that would try to rival Marvel and what DC/Warner is trying to achieve. Depending on who succeeds her will determine what the new "next-move" is going to be.

[Dan]

It's official: Marvel and Sony have struck a deal that will see Spider-Man part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

Source: http://marvel.com/news/movies/24062/son ... spider-man

As noted in the opening paragraph, Spidey will first appear in an MCU film before his next solo venture, scheduled for July 28, 2017, with Marvel taking over the creative end. Interestingly enough, exiting Sony honcho Amy Pascal will be producing with Kevin Feige.

[Ben]

That headline is wrong: it's Marvel bringing Spidey into their world, not the much bigger MCU being "invited" into Sony's Spidey "world"...! But, anyway...

Honestly...I think Spidey at Sony is dead. Amy Pascal won't be at the studio for long, whatever her producing pact says, and as soon as a better executive gig comes along she's off to that, leaving Spidey with no clear sense of direction...

Nowhere is this more apparent now than with the announcement of this deal.

Pascal may well be there, but it'll be in name only. She'll be the "Sony rep" that keeps an eye on the character for the studio, but this is in Disney/Marvel's hands now. And anyone can do that job for Sony...she'll be gone as soon as something comes along where she's more than just a supervisory cog in a much larger wheel.

What this means: Marvel will make the movies, Sony will distribute the stand-alones, although I woildn't be surprised to see them concentrate on Spidey in the MCU rather than his own movies. Marvel knows it's too soon for another reboot. The question will be if they take on Raimi's films as being a background to the character (remember that Feige started on those films) or if they follow off from Garfield's versions (unlikely, since they're going to recast) or if they do just start again.

It's a bit of a shame for those that won't now get a conclusion to the not-so Amazing story and the whole baggage of Richard (not the tiger) Parker, but at least we dodge the Sinister Six and potential Aunt May/female Spidey movie bullets!

I think this was pretty much a dead cert as soon as those emails came out and Pascal lost her grip at Sony. Without any other direction, the Marvel proposal suddenly looks very promising to a bunch of executives with a franchise (that they don't outright own) in trouble, and they've taken the easy and likely most profitable option (their choices being to run the series into the ground and have it revert to Disney or to make a pact now while they still have some bargaining power and the character isn't completely played through).

Marvel shows how smart they are again, though...bringing Spidey back to his rightful home in the MCU will certainly give the character a huge boost (I can't believe how excited I am for this news, actually), bringing with it the built-in Marvel crowd (some of whom stayed away from the Amazings) plus the general audience that stuck with Spidey through those films.

Prediction: the end of Age Of Ultron will see a little tease...it's probably too late to add extras scenes in that suggest Spider-Man is already around, but a post-credit hint? Yeah, that's totally possible now...

[GeorgeC]

After the first ASM movie, I frankly didn't care what Sony would be doing with Spidey afterwards. Apparently the bad feeling that I felt from the first ASM film carried over onto the second one and was magnified.

I think the good Marvel films have been helmed and written by people who have an affection for the original comics or characters at least. Sam Raimi and his brother seemed to understand Spider-Man and all their films had heart and worked; even the very imperfect Spider-Man 3 worked better for me than The Amazing Spider-Man. Likewise for the first two Superman movies with Christopher Reeve. The guys doing the Marvel live-action also generally know what changes have to be made to make the characters work within live-action (even though I think CG-produced characters like the Hulk still look fake as heck).

I still think these characters work better within traditional animation where they don't have to make as many changes to make the costumes and character designs work BUT the general public wants live-action...

Let's hope they keep the committee meetings to a minimum. You know what that did to theatrical traditional animation. I'm still surprised that the superhero film train is rolling over a decade later. I would have expected it to have petered out well before now but somebody's doing something right...

[Randall]

This is awesome news. Spidey is Marvel's number one character, and he's coming home.

Today, the word is that they will squeeze him into CapAm: Civil War (we'll see if it happens), which would be a nice nod to the comics, even if they can't do the whole "Spidey unmasks" storyline. It'll just be great to see him playing off other Marvel characters. I always loved Spidey best when placed alongside other big-league heroes, with their various reactions to the little weird guy from Queens.

OTOH, Sinister Six may still be a go.

I do regret that we'll never see Webb finish his storyline. With less tinkering from the studio, his films might have had a better chance to connect with audiences, even though a reboot was fully unnecessary.

[Dan]

According to The Hollywood Reporter, here's the breakdown of the deal as we know it:

- Disney/Marvel is not paying a penny.

- Sony will receive all the grosses from the stand-alone Spider-Man films going forward.

- Disney/Marvel do not have to pay Sony anything any time Spidey appears in any of the other MCU films.

- Disney/Marvel now have full merchandising rights over the Spider-Man films and his appearances in the MCU.

- Sony will ultimately have final say creatively over the Spider-Man films, but Kevin Feige being producer allows him to determine whether or not to include other characters from the MCU. Marvel gets all the say in what MCU films Spidey can appear in and in what role.

- Marvel will have no creative involvement in any spin-off films Sony could plan to have, thus ideas for Sinister Six, Venom, and others are still in play, they're just shelved for now pending the way the first Spidey film goes.

- The Amazing series has been scrapped completely, so both Andrew Garfield and director Marc Webb are out.

- Sony gets to make casting decisions and it's already been made that they're looking for someone who's younger than Garfield with the intention of the new direction keeping Petey in high school (so we're likely getting a soft-reboot, I imagine similar to what they did for Incredible Hulk).

- With Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal as producers, Amazing series producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach have been dropped down as Executive Producers, thus having virtually no say creatively.

The rumor rumbling is that two things can be taken away from this: either this is part of an elaborate plan that sees Marvel eventually getting Spider-Man back in full... or it hints that Disney could consider acquiring Sony's film division if the latter treads on bankruptcy like many believe they're heading towards.

[Ben]

I think it would be pretty cool if they just work Spidey in as existing already, and then we can use the Raimi films as the character's backstory.

Of course, either way will need to explain why he's not turned up for any of the previous movies yet...

[Dacey]

I don't think they need to look to either franchise for the character's backstory. All that matters is that Peter gets bitten by a spider, gets his powers, loses his Uncle Ben, and voilà. All the background you need.

The tragedy of all of this, though, is that we never got a Spider-Man 4 from Sam, which would've been a much better alternative to the fake "reboot" franchise we ended up getting. The story Sony likes to tell about how there was "nowhere to go" with Spider-Man 4 is total bull. They wanted to "start over" because they were greedy and wanted to make the money they were making off of Spidey, but with a cheaper cast and director (Ironic, of course, since Webb's sheer inexperience caused the production budgets on those movies to skyrocket...and you don't even see it onscreen!).

[Randall]

Yeah, Spidey is Spidey. We don't need any extra backstory. We all know who he is by now. Just shoot some webs, make some wisecracks, catch some bad breaks, and we're good to go.

[EricJ]

Yeah, Spidey is Spidey. We don't need any extra backstory. We all know who he is by now. Just shoot some webs, make some wisecracks, catch some bad breaks, and we're good to go.

Even though the Ang Lee Hulk movie "didn't exist" by the time the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk came out, Marvel's version assumed we already knew the origin from the TV show, and just covered it in a Bixby-esque montage.
I don't think Marvel objects to our remembering the Raimi canon exists, so it would be good if they just similarly moved on from there.

[Ben]

Exactly...although I always felt the Incredible movie basically was more of a follow-up to the Lee film than, it was made both as a reaction to it and because of it, and as a Marvel co-pro it kind of exists in the MCU as something of a warm-up or prequel to it. If I was going to run a whole MCU marathon, I would certainly include Lee's Hulk in there. The same might now be said for Raimi's Spidey...at least the first and maybe second films, anyway, depending where they pick up the story.

[Dacey]

The origins were completely different, though. In The Incredible Hulk, we saw Bruce Banner be a willing but unaware participant in the experiment. In Lee's film, it was because he "inherited it" from crazy Nick Nolte.

[James]

Every time there is a new spy movie we don't automatically think "but how did he become a spy".

Do we really need to know the origin story? We've established this is a world of super-serum, radiation powers, mutants (kind of!), god-like aliens, and preternaturally smart and otherwise talented people. If some new superhero shows up I think people in that world would just say "here comes another one" by now.