It's been more or less a week since the bombshell dropped that Sony Pictures Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures have had a major falling out over their contract negotiations for the continued shared use of Spider-Man, the result of which is that Spider-Man will no longer be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and enough has been written about the controversy to fill yet another 23-film saga. In short, pretty much everyone's weighed in by now, and I wouldn't be inclined to write about it at all but for one thing: apparently, the failure of last June's X-Men: Dark Phoenix to make any sort of impression on the global box-office is being blamed for Marvel's decision to pull out of the Sony deal and focus on their newly-acquired Fox properties instead. To put it differently; Marvel would rather have Kevin Feige revive the now-moribund X-Men franchise than keep the once-moribund, now-vibrant Spider-Man live-action franchise going.
To me, the fate of X-Men: Dark Phoenix is precisely one of the reasons why Marvel should have stayed (or should stay, depending on what reports one believes) at the negotiating table with Sony until something mutually acceptable is worked out between them.
In the 21 years that have passed since Blade first showed franchise-hungry Hollywood that movies based on Marvel Comics characters are viable investments, we have seen the stumbling or utter failure of a number of film franchises based on Marvel characters, some of them even before Kevin Feige ever set foot in the offices of the Walt Disney Company. For one, the Blade franchise itself, after two commercial successes, flopped in ignominious fashion with its third movie, stopping the series dead in its tracks all the way back in 2004. More prominently, though, pre-Disney 20th Century Fox produced three Fantastic Four movies, all of which were critically thrashed, and the last of which did so badly at the box office that the property's rehabilitation at Marvel is yet another priority for Kevin Feige. Finally, Sony itself has nearly killed the Spider-Man franchise on two separate occasions, without any help or interference from anyone, once with the awful Spider-Man 3 and again, less than a decade later, with the even worse Amazing Spider-Man 2.
And that's just the stuff that got off the ground. Examples of would-be franchises that stalled after one or two installments abound, like the 2003 failures Daredevil and Hulk, Sony's Ghost Rider franchise, which tanked after two movies, and the three separate attempts by two small-time studios, New World and Lionsgate, to get a Punisher film franchise off the ground, one in 1989, one in 2004 and one in 2008, the last attempt crashing and burning the very same year that Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And let's not forget that not even George Lucas, arguably still riding on his Star Wars fame three years after the release of Return of the Jedi could sell Howard the Duck.
The bottom line is that coming up with a sustainable franchise, contrary to popular belief, is nowhere near as simple as slapping the word "Marvel" on the title card and waiting for the money to come pouring in, as all of the aforementioned failures, whether right out of the gate or after "x" number of installments, amply demonstrate. The X-Men film series showed that even a creative team with bona fide success under their belt, like the first two Bryan Singer movies, 2011's X-Men: First Class and 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past, can still fall by the wayside.
That's basically what can happen to Sony's Spider-Man series once Kevin Feige's gone; it's happened not just once but twice before. Heck, Spider-Man 3 was the follow-up to what is still regarded as one of the greatest comic-book-based movies of all time, and it still managed to sink that iteration of the franchise.
In terms of sustainability, Marvel Studios really ripped up the form book in terms of what a studio can accomplish with film franchises over an extended period of time. Sure, they've had their misfires over the years, but they've shown they can bounce back from them (e.g. from Thor: The Dark World to Thor: Ragnarok). They've shown that whatever tropes they may lean on from time to time, they're not afraid of pushing boundaries here and there, or changing formulas to ensure a better product. For example, who would have imagined that taking Peter Parker out of not only his beloved New York but out of the United States altogether would result in his highest grossing movie of all time? That's not a gambit Sony Pictures would have taken on their own. Things like this are why Marvel is justified in not only wanting to work on more Spider-Man movies, but also to have a measure of creative control over the rest of Sony's Marvel-related slate as well.
Sure, Spider-Man movies without the Marvel Studios banner will make money for Sony. I mean, the aggressively average Jumanji sequel came within a hair's breadth of a billion dollars two years ago. History has shown, however, that even when Sony (and other studios for that matter) have Marvel's crown jewels fronting their films, they simply cannot maintain a consistent standard of quality for very long. Only Marvel and their brain trust headed by Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonso, Louie D'Esposito and Nate Moore have shown that they are capable of that.
And personally, I hope that both executives at Sony and Disney look past the bottom line and realize this.
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