New Insight on the Sony/Disney Dispute and How It May Be Disney Driving This Divide

The initial news of the Spider-Man departure from the MCU came as a shock and immediately made fans want to storm Sony’s castle to retrieve their friendly neighborhood Spider-Man from the grasp of a seemingly greedy company. But now we have a bit more details that may place more of the responsibility in the hands of Disney.

In a recent report from the Washington Post, they laid out the history of the deal between the two companies that put Spidey on loan to the MCU the past four years. Then, when the deal was up for renegotiation, terms could not be agreed upon, but this report says that money was not the only driving force. The reporter spoke with five anonymous producers and studio executives who don’t have skin in this particular game, and they pondered the question of whether it would be better to have one company in control of every character and story it touches, or if the properties should be scattered to give new perspectives and ideas and people involved.

The consensus was that when Disney wasn’t given the terms they asked for, they had to take a step back and decide whether to fight, and keep control under someone else’s terms, or walk away. Disney chose to walk away and focus on what they did have control over, which is a lot! The report says:

“If Disney was to become the behemoth it aspires to be, it needed not only to make the [Spider-Man] movie but to become a full partner in it. If it was to let [Kevin] Feige run the show, it had to make sure it owned the house. But Sony wasn’t having that. And thus Disney faced a quandary: Should it let Feige keep guiding the movies despite unfavorable financial terms? Should it keep its subject close, not allowing a studio in a far corner of its empire to go off and do what it would with an important property? Or should it walk away, letting the far-flung corners of its kingdom do as they please and just live off the licensing fee? Disney chose the latter. It opted, uncharacteristically, to give up control, believing the movies weren’t worth their effort for minimal return — and gambling the films may not succeed as much without them anyway.”

And while Disney hasn’t made a statement, Sony had this to say about the split, and Feige in particular:

We “understand that the many new responsibilities that Disney has given him — including all their newly added Marvel properties — do not allow time for him to work on IP [intellectual property] they do not own."

But that’s just crazy talk, because they’ve done a fantastic job over the recent years, so it’s not Marvel who would have an issue. It’s Sony that now has an issue creating something against all odds. I don’t think they’ll make a bad movie, I just think they’ve painted themselves into a corner, exing Marvel out of their back pocket. But like the article pointed out, Disney had a hard time in the past that another studio was making mediocre X-Men movies, so Disney fixed that problem by buying that studio. Do you think that could be a future move?

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