Sony Realizes There’s Money To Be Made In Sharing Spider-Man With Rest Of Marvel Universe

The dream of having all the Marvel heroes in the same film universe is getting closer to a reality, though Fox still controls the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises. (Michael Saechang)

While Disney-owned Marvel Studios has Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and The Avengers to play with, one marquee Marvel character, Spider-Man, is controlled by Sony, which hasn’t been eager to share its lucrative toy with others. But Sony is apparently in a more generous mood after seeing a string of Marvel movies make boffo box-office returns and is willing to let their web-slinging superhero play with his pals.

Marvel announced the news last night that Spider-Man, who has grossed some $4 billion for Sony, will cross over into a Marvel Studios-produced movie involving the existing “Marvel Cinematic Universe” before showing up in his next film for Sony in 2017.

That film will be produced by Marvel’s Kevin Feige and recently deposed Sony studio head Amy Pascal, but Spider-Man films will continue to be financed, distributed, and controlled by Sony.

This news opens the door for Sony and Disney to benefit from sharing the same source material rather than having Spider-Man movies unable to tap the vast array of Marvel comics characters, or have Marvel Studios movies missing one of their biggest names.

With Sony and Disney playing nice about Spider-Man, it’s caused some ripples in the release schedules of upcoming Marvel movies. After his appearance in a Marvel movie, the next Spidey-centric film will now open July 28, 2017. That was supposed to be the release date of the third Thor movie.

So instead Thor and his hammer have been moved to Nov. 3, 2017, which nudges the planned Black Panther film to July 6, 2018, the Captain Marvel movie to Nov. 2, 2018, and Marvel’s Inhumans to July 12, 2019.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist