We have two questions to answer here, one of which leads pretty seamlessly to the next. First up is this one from Al Grasshoff…
I saw an old ad about a company named Cannon Films announcing they were making a Spider-Man movie. This is years ago. Did this movie ever come out?
It was never made and if it had been made, it might not have been about the Spider-Man we know and love. What in hindsight was probably a very bad deal for Marvel stemmed from the fact that until fairly recently, Marvel was generally desperate to sell the movie rights (and at times, the TV rights to certain properties) to anyone who seemed like they'd actually get a film made or a TV show on TV. This was true regardless of who owned the company or ran it at any given moment, dating back to 1944 when then-owner Martin Goodman gave Republic Pictures the right to make a Captain America movie serial (which they produced) for either zero dollars or a token amount that wasn't much more.
Goodman got much the same terms for those Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons made in the sixties. The thinking (if you can call it that) was that the films would enhance the merchandising value of the characters — more toys, t-shirts, etc. In the sixties, Goodman also was out to sell the whole friggin' company and he felt that a Marvel-based TV series, even if it wasn't lucrative for the company, would seriously up the sales price of the whole firm.
He may have been right about that. In any case, subsequent owners tried the same strategy. In 1985, the movie rights to Spider-Man were acquired — for "next to nothing," Stan Lee told me — by a low-budget/lower-prestige company called Cannon Films. This was probably a very dumb move on Marvel's part because even if Cannon had made a Spider-Man movie, it wouldn't have been very impressive and might not even have been about the character we all know as Spider-Man.
I'm serious. At one point, they decided to just use the name and they developed a screenplay about a guy (not Peter Parker) who turns into an actual giant spider the way David Hedison turned into a fly in the movie, The Fly. That idea was finally abandoned and they tried to put the comic book Spider-Man on the screen…but that hadn't happened by the time the company went bankrupt in 1988. This led to all sorts of lawsuits and court battles over its assets and for over a decade, when a lot of studios wanted to, no one could make a Spider-Man movie.
Which brings me to a question that my old pal Joe Brancatelli sent me…
So how does Sony have the rights to Spider-Man films and not Disney, which owns Marvel? Can you write us a primer explaining it all? Signed — Confused ex-comics fan in New York…
Real simple. After many legal proceedings and fights, Marvel reclaimed the movie rights to Spider-Man in 1999 — a period when Marvel was in a lot of financial trouble. To raise fast cash, they turned around and sold said rights to Sony for, if we are to believe the press reports, $7 million. Further revenue was raised by also selling the movie rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four to 20th Century Fox.
So the answer to your question, Joe, is that that Spider-Man deal is still in force. Since Marvel got into the business of making movies themselves, all sorts of co-production deals have been arranged like the one in 2015 which allowed Spider-Man to turn up in some Disney/Marvel-produced movies…but Disney and Sony are always renegotiating or talking about renegotiating or calling the deal off or not calling the deal off and…who knows? By the time I post this message in five minutes, it could all be different.
But Sony has the rights to Spider-Man because Marvel sold them…a move that many regret. They also regretted the sale of the X-Men and Fantastic Four to Fox but those rights have come back in-house since earlier this year, Disney bought the film and TV assets held by what is now called 21st Century Fox.
One of these days, Sony will buy Disney or (more likely) Disney will buy Sony and all the Marvel movie rights will be in one place. I expect some fans of the movies will rejoice but to me, it will be small comfort. Whichever company acquires the other will essentially own the world and all of us in it. There's no telling what kind of crossovers they'll devise for us.
