The Crossover of Two Studios: Sony & Marvel/ Disney
The Guinness World Records recently announced that the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home has broken the record for the most viewed movie trailer in 24 hours. With the infamous return of Doc Ock’s “Hello, Peter.”, the trailer garnered 355.5 million views on its first day and was trending worldwide. Many anticipate that this movie will bring to reality the classic Spider-Man pointing to Spider-Man meme by having different Spidey’s incarnations, played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. This is only made possible because of Spider-Man’s unique relationship with Marvel and Sony.
Back in 1994, Marvel sold the film and merchandise rights of Spider-Man to Sony while they kept the comic rights. This meant that as long as Sony produces a new Spider-Man movie every 5 years, they can keep the rights to Spider-Man. That is how the Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), The Amazing Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield), and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse all came to be. However, in 2011, Sony was dealing with some financial issues, so it sold the merchandising rights back to Marvel. This is why we are able to see Disney branded merchandise on movies they didn’t produce such as Into the Spider-Verse. The problem is that Marvel wanted to start incorporating Spider-Man in their own films, which led to another deal. With this new 2017 deal, Marvel can start producing their own Spider-Man movies but Sony will have the “creative control, marketing, and distribution” rights and will receive a portion of the movie profits. This shed a light on Captain America: Civil War, Avengers, etc. In 2019, Sony ended Marvel’s involvement with Spider-Man. However, given the public backlash and disappointment, they came to another deal. With this newest deal, Sony and Marvel have come to a “content license agreement” in which both studios will continue to collaborate in the foreseeable future. Disney will also start to bring Sony’s theatrical releases to Disney-owned platforms and Disney will have the right to add Spider-Man movies to Disney+ to join the rest of the Avengers.
Now that we have gone through the entire history of Spider-Man, how does that relate to Networks? As previously mentioned, Spider-Man is in an extremely unique position due to the various deals with Marvel and Sony. Spider-Man, specifically the one played by Tom Holland, is a bridge, and the removal of that connection would disconnect the network. In this case, Sony is one cluster and Marvel is the other. The one node connecting these networks is Spider-Man. If this new deal didn’t happen and Spider-Man was under the complete control of Sony, then Spider-Man would never be able to be involved with the Avengers or the MCU universe again because they are now in different networks. However, since the bridge between Marvel and Sony still stands, it allows any character from any of the Spider-Man movies, both Sony and Marvel produced, to potentially be in the latest Spider-Man film. Keep your eyes peeled for the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home because we might see the clash of some Marvel characters and some Sony villains all thanks to the Spider-Man bridge.
References
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/alfred-molina-spider-man-no-way-home-doc-ock-1234953527/
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22396430/disney-plus-sony-pictures-marvel-deal-spider-man
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2478884/spider-man-movie-rights-the-history-of-sonys-deal-with-marvel