Spider-Man returning to the Marvel universe has been a hot topic for many years, and now reports are in that he may be headed back soon if Sony’s financial troubles aren’t alleviated.
Since Marvel’s The Avengers crushed box office records last year, the discussion concerning Spider-Man’s character rights has been brought back into the mix. For those who don’t know, the Spider-Man character is owned by Sony, and while we saw the reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man, become successful back in July, Sony’s financial troubles continue to haunt them.
Comic Book Therapy recently reported that Sony is considering a proposal from investor Daniel Loeb and his hedge fund, Third Point. Sony has been having financial difficulties for the last few years, and while we don’t imagine they’ll be filing for bankruptcy anytime soon, they could probably get a good chunk of change for Spider-Man now that director Marc Webb has started a seemingly profitable franchise with the character.
The groundwork has been laid out, and with a Rottentomatoes score of 73%, The Amazing Spider-Man was fairly well-received by Spider-Man fans and general audiences.
Despite Sony’s massive size, Daniel Loeb has reportedly suggested that they start selling off some of their entertainment properties, which could include Spider-Man’s film rights. He also suggested selling its film rights to the Resident Evil franchise. It’s been reported that Sony’s CEO, Kazuo Hirai, has relayed to investors that Sony intends to consider a proposal of sorts, and that they need to do this to focus on their electronics division which has been struggling to get a foothold in the smartphone market, and losing its chunk of the flat screen TV market.
Hirai was quoted saying, “Third Point’s proposal involves the way we manage a core business of the Sony group and the direction of our management. So the Sony board will give it thorough consideration before replying to Mr Loeb.” It’s definitely interesting to see that despite its recent success with The Amazing Spider-Man, that they’re still considering selling off the character’s rights to help right the financial ship.
They may realize that now would be the best time to throw Spider-Man into the open market, as Disney and Marvel have loads of cash due to the massive success of The Avengers, and their latest billion dollar blockbuster, Iron Man 3.
We imagine fans are really wanting to know if Spider-Man could end up in a later Avengers sequel, and right now the answer to that is – probably not. Moves like this take time, and even if the rumors are true about Sony and its financial situation, they’d probably expect quite a lot for the character rights and Disney/Marvel are doing just fine without the web-slinger.
We have to say, it would be great to see Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man alongside Iron Man or Thor, but for now we only have reports and rumors, none of which feel quite as solid as we’d hope them to be. For now, we’ll just have to enjoy the fact that we’ll see Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Shailene Woodley in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – which we recently saw on the set in New York shooting hoops with a couple of local kids.
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