Spider-Man: Brand New Day, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, just had one of the biggest openings in box office history. The film pulled in $927 million worldwide over its opening weekend, which is the second-best global debut ever after Avengers: Endgame, according to Variety. It’s a staggering number for a character who, on paper, doesn’t even fully belong to Marvel Studios.
That right belongs to Sony Pictures — the result of a rights sale that traces back to Marvel’s near-collapse in the 1990s, and a decision now widely regarded as one of the most lopsided in Hollywood history. What started as a cash-strapped studio offloading a character nobody wanted has since turned into one of the industry’s most valuable, and most contested, film franchises.
A rights sale born out of bankruptcy
Marvel first put Spider-Man’s film rights up for sale in 1985, at a time when Hollywood had little appetite for superheroes following the disappointing Superman III, according to journalist Michael Hiltzik’s account in the LA Times.
The rights eventually landed with Cannon Films, a small studio that went bankrupt before a movie could be made. What followed was years of litigation as the rights bounced between multiple companies, keeping the character off screens entirely through the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Sony’s $10 million gamble — and the $25-million near miss
Marvel filed for bankruptcy in 1996, and by 1998, most of the disputed rights to the character had reverted to the company, per the Wall Street Journal’s account of Ben Fritz’s book The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies. Sony Pictures executive Yair Landau was tasked with negotiating the remaining film rights, the studio having already secured the DVD rights, the book notes.
According to the same report, then-Marvel chief Ike Perlmutter made a startling counteroffer: Sony could have nearly every other major Marvel character, including Iron Man, Thor and Black Panther, for just $25 million.
When Landau brought the offer back to his bosses, they turned it down, telling him “nobody gives a shit about any of the other Marvel characters,” as per the Journal. Sony instead struck a Spider-Man-only deal, reported at $10 million plus a share of box office gross and merchandising revenue.
The gamble on Spider-Man alone still paid off handsomely. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire, opened in 2002 to a then-record domestic weekend and went on to gross $821 million worldwide, according to CNN Money. Two sequels followed, and a 2012 reboot with Andrew Garfield extended Sony’s run with the character for another decade, well before Marvel Studios existed as an independent filmmaking outfit.
Marvel and Sony share custody from 2015
The landscape shifted after Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009. By 2014, with Sony’s Andrew Garfield-led reboot underperforming, Amy Pascal, then chair of Sony Pictures, reached out to Feige for guidance on the franchise’s future, she later recounted in a joint interview with the New York Times.
Their early meetings did not go smoothly: in a joint interview with the New York Times, Pascal recalled asking Feige for “help,” only for the conversation to end with her throwing a sandwich at him after he proposed Marvel take creative control. According to NPR’s Planet Money, Sony’s resistance softened further after a 2014 studio email hack exposed how few options the company had for building its own shared universe around Spider-Man alone.
By 2015, the two studios reached a licensing agreement under which Marvel Studios would help produce Sony’s Spider-Man films and could feature the character within the MCU, in exchange for roughly 5 per cent of gross revenue, per an account in the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.
Sony kept creative control, marketing and distribution, while Marvel regained merchandising rights the publication estimated at nearly $200 million a year for the company. The arrangement brought Tom Holland’s Peter Parker into Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, with Feige credited as producer on Sony’s Spider-Man releases.
The 2019 dispute that almost ended it all
The partnership nearly unravelled in August 2019, when negotiations over a renewed deal broke down. Disney reportedly pushed for a 50-50 co-financing arrangement on future Spider-Man films, while Sony wanted to continue under the existing terms, according to Variety.
When talks stalled, Feige was set to step away from producing future Spider-Man movies, effectively pulling the character out of the MCU. In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, a Sony spokesperson said the studio was “disappointed, but respect Disney’s decision,” while pointedly noting that Spider-Man: Far From Home had just overtaken Skyfall as Sony’s biggest release ever.
The fallout triggered a fan backlash strong enough to make headlines on its own. Within weeks, the two studios returned to the table, and by September 2019, Disney and Sony announced a new agreement to continue the partnership, though the financial terms were not disclosed, as per CNBC.
Feige returned as producer, and the arrangement has held through every Spider-Man release since, including this weekend’s record-breaking Brand New Day — proof that even a fragile, twice-renegotiated deal can still work when there’s this much money on the table.