Sony’s Spider-Verse Coming to an End?
Sony’s Spider-Verse – the one that doesn’t have Spider-Man in it – may finally be closing down or at least going into hibernation. According to The Wrap (who put their article behind a paywall, so here’s ComicBookMovie.com with the details), Sony is going to stop making films centered on Spider-Man’s villains or obscure supporting characters, with a talent agent and a studio insider telling The Wrap Sony is going to focus on Spider-Man 4, which they’ll co-produce with Marvel and will take place in the MCU, and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse, the latest in the animated film series focusing on Miles Morales. This week’s Kraven the Hunter (can’t wait!) will be the final installment of the loosely-connected series that includes the Venom trilogy, Morbius, and Madame Web; not coincidentally, Kraven the Hunter is tracking to earn around $15 million this weekend, which will be less than Madame Web and a sign of financial doom for a film that cost $110 million.
Who’d have thought leaving Spider-Man out of movies that should be about him would be a bad business decision? I mean, it’s not like he’s one of the most popular superheroes of all time. But when Venom did well, Sony decided to try their hand at making their Spidey-less Spider-Verse, and it was a disaster. Each subsequent Venom movie made less money (probably because the first one sucked, and so did they – even if Venom: The Last Dance had some good moments), and Morbius and Madame Web bombed because, unlike Venom, nobody outside of hardcore fans ever heard of those characters, and the movies looked bad on top of that. Is it a big surprise that nobody wants to see Kraven the Hunter, either? The jig is up; everyone knows these movies are supposed to be about Spider-Man, and they’re tired of watching his villains and backup dancers take center stage while they wait for Spidey’s next adventure.
It would seem to me that Sony will probably allow Marvel to use these characters – some of them, anyway – in Spider-Man movies, and Marvel will be only too happy to do that because they love the multiverse more than those two poison-drinking teenagers loved each other. They’ve got their Venom, their Kraven, their Rhino, some more villains set to debut in Kraven the Hunter (I won’t tell you in case you don’t know), and probably not their Madame Web or Morbius because nobody cares. And, after Venom: The Last Dance, they’ve got Knull, a cosmic threat they’re itching to use as the villain in an upcoming film. The God of the Symbiotes will probably be Spider-Man 4’s villain, with Spidey teaming up with Tom Hardy’s Venom to stop him. (This is massively shortchanging Knull’s power and threat level; it should take every superhero the Marvel Universe can muster to counter Knull, and even then, it’s a long shot.) This will also probably lead to the other already-established Spider-Man villains entering the MCU, giving Marvel the storytelling shortcut they crave nowadays. I guess that’s better than seeing all these villain solo movies that are just wastes of time. But I wanted to see Tom Holland’s Spider-Man meet his villains organically and form relationships with them in a more natural way. It doesn’t look like that will happen now, and while it’s amusing to see Sony’s terrible idea fall flat on its face, it still undercuts the potential for a great Spider-Man series, especially now that they’re probably dropping the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man narrative teased at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home. I still like the MCU Spider-Man movies a lot, but even so, this could have been so much better, and both Sony and Marvel share the blame for why it isn’t.
Let us know what you think of Sony’s Spider-Verse ending in the comments!
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