I’ve heard about some poor Hollywood investment decisions, but this might take the proverbial cake. Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony had the chance to purchase almost the entirety of Marvel’s character catalog…and passed. Not only that, but they had a chance to buy it for dirt cheap. Granted, this all occurred back in 1998 when Sony was negotiating for the rights to Spider-Man and Marvel was nearing financial bankruptcy. The superhero film utopia of today was but a glimmer in Kevin Feige’s eye…
According to the report, during negotiations, Marvel themselves proposed that Sony could have the movie rights for almost every one of their future cash cows, including current box office monsters like Iron Man, Black Panther, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Marvel’s asking price was – and brace yourselves here – a measly $25 million. Somehow Sony thought that was too much of a risk and believed casual fans would only care to see Spider-Man on the big screen. The studio went on to pay $10 million for the rights to Spider-Man. Yes, that’s still a win, but Sony execs have to be yelling into their pillows every time a Marvel movie opens to record-breaking numbers.
Regardless of how dumb the decision seems in hindsight, the fact is that things went the way they should have. Sony nearly single-handedly killed the Spider-Man franchise with their creative missteps. One can only assume they would have had very few good ideas on what to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, the MCU wouldn’t likely exist at all if that had happened.
What do you think? Would the characters have been better off with Sony? Sound off below!
