According to The Wrap, Sony has decided to cancel plans for further Spider-Man spinoff films in the studio’s Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU), after several flops and the looming disappointment of another SSU chapter next weekend.

Spider-Man villains bow

Sony’s Kraven: the hunter next weekend bows to the theatrical business’s otherwise strong performance in recent weeks, fueled by Disney’s record-breaking run Moana 2 in addition to the blockbuster revenue for Universal’s Evil.

The studio’s laborious attempts to build a Spider-Man spinoff universe of films based on villains and supporting characters, but without Spider-Man himself, sees this as their final attempt Kraven (However, if Sony comes back to it later, here are the best ways to save it.) For the most part, the approach worked well Poison trilogy, but even those saw significant declining returns, from a high of $856 million for the first film in 2018 to just $472.8 million for this year’s Venom: The Last Dance.

Then, Morbius And Madam Web performed terribly, grossing just $167 million and $100 million, respectively. And when Venom: The Last Dance When the first film suffered a 45% drop from the first film’s box office grosses, the evidence was too clear to deny: Sony’s Spider-Man universe has failed and is now in danger of doing actual damage to the rest Spider-Man Sony films (and superhero films in general, as I’ve already argued).

To increase Kraven’s To increase its box office potential, Sony released the first 9 minutes of the film online for free. Regrettably, it confirms that it looks and feels like a generic, also-released Marvel spinoff that’s more suited to TV and offers nothing new. It’s all about: “A super-strong, muscular guy kills a lot of people and no one can stop him, with obviously CGI gymnastics and over-the-top power fantasy.”

Spider-Man’s loss, Interstellar’s gain

The bad numbers for Kraven: The Hunter – and for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrimwith a low of $2 million overseas last weekend and $5 million domestic (give or take a few million) – could be good news for Interstellar.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary and with a major new home release for Christmas, Interstellar had a strong 10th anniversary re-release last weekend for $14 million. So it could benefit from an extended release if WBD decides to ease the pain The War of the RohirrimThe loss is perhaps even pairing the films together in the hope that Interstellar has enough power to elevate the animated fantasy prequel as well.

I could even imagine Warner making it even more of a challenge for newcomers by doing a week-long pairing Oppenheimer And Interstellar for example in premium formats – here too, it is important to take full advantage of the advantages Interstellar popularity and weak box office competition Kraven: The Hunterand to reduce the damage The War of the RohirrimThere is a risk of underperformance.

All of this finally made Sony give up and admit that their long-simmering plans for a major supervillain team-up movie and a crossover with Spider-Man were in vain.

Spider-Man becomes the focus of the Spider-Man films

It sounds a little strange to say that a studio has decided to focus its superhero franchise films on the superhero, but here we are. Consider that Sony has released more of these spin-off SSU villain films than the actual current Spider-Man solo franchise films – the MCU Spider-Man: Homecoming came out in 2017, and the SSU Venom came out the following year, and we’ve only had two more for Spidey since then four of these spin-off villains.

It only evens out when we take that into account Spider-Verse Animated films are also included, which puts Spider-Man himself on a par with the smaller villains and supports the characters’ own projects. It was a confusing situation in which ever-shrinking audiences – and mostly bad reviews coupled with low ratings – didn’t seem to dampen Sony’s enthusiasm to continue pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a plan that no one but them had any trust or interest in .

What made things even more confusing was the decision not to include Spider-Man himself in these spin-offs, and also the decision not to pit any of the villains against each other.

There’s no good reason for a studio with these characters to end up with a series of failed solo standalone spinoffs and not have a better plan to build and tie everything together or even get the most out of them in the best possible films. It has wasted so much potential and resources, not to mention the damage it causes by using these characters elsewhere, and the damage to superhero cinema as a whole when the genre’s reputation is damaged.

That seems harsh, but it’s the simple truth, and when talking about the business side of these things, the unvarnished truth is important. But also apart from artistic taste (which of course varies and many people, for example, love that Poison films), mathematics alone should have led to a course correction long ago.

These six films cost more than $600 million to produce (plus at least $300 million for marketing). But they have only generated a total of $2.1 billion so far (of which $1.8 billion came from… Poison films alone and almost half of them from the first film). Let’s assume generously Kraven can fit Madam Webs $100 million – a generous offer, because there are signs of it Kraven will be SSU’s lowest-grossing film.

At best, Sony pocketed about 40% of the eventual $2.2 billion, or perhaps $900 million. Now subtract the cost – around $900 million – from Sony’s share of ticket sales and the studio. What’s left? It looks like red ink to me. This doesn’t take into account that anyone received backend points, but we know that they did. While this is speculation on Kraven’s ultimate box office returns and does not take into account various aspects of production (such as tax credits, pre-sales, production placement, etc.) that help reduce net costs. But as mentioned, I don’t take back-end deals into account either.

Of course, merchandising – including home publishing and streaming, licensing and tie-ins, and overseas pre-sales – represents a whole additional revenue stream where profit margins are higher and opportunities for long-term passive income exist. But I just don’t think these SSU films directly generate enough merchandising revenue to justify the enormous resources everyone puts into producing these films and the long time it takes to recoup such large investments.

The road has been long, hard and costly for SSU. No matter what complaints and criticisms I have about how the last few years have gone, it’s also worth thanking Sony for finally – finally – recognizing that they’ve been doing a good job of making money after money and paying it forward the worst way to do it and that it was time to stop and focus on what they know they are doing Right.

Not exactly right, but unusual. Every live-action Spider-Man movie is at least good (I’m looking at you, flawed but entertaining). Spider Man 3) and usually great (Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, The Amazing Spider-Manand of course the entire new MCU Spider-Man films). The same top quality can also be found in the animations Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse And Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Sony’s Spider-Man plans will be in better shape if they focus all of their energy on the Marvel live-action Spidey films and the animated films Spider-Verse Movies. If at some point in the future they can reboot or revive the villains in other films in a superior way (read my examples of how to do this). Here), then it should only come after careful consideration and development on a par with that Spider-Man Movies. These characters deserve nothing less.