By — Sally Bermudez
By now almost everyone knows that last week on August 20, 2019, it was announced that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man was leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This came as a shock to everyone considering that is has made so much more money than many other Spider- Man movies. Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home together reached 1.993 billion dollars in the worldwide box office. Holland also appeared in many other MCU films like Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame which reached 2.795 billion, the most money an MCU film has ever made. So, why all the sudden decide to take away Holland from the MCU? Is Sony or Disney responsible for this? Let’s start with the history.
In the 1980’s, super hero movies weren’t as popular as they are today, so Marvel decided to sell major comic book characters including Spider-Man, the X Men, and the Fantastic Four. When 1999 came around, Marvel sold Spider-Man to Sony for 7 million dollars. In 2002, Sony released Spider-Man played by Toby Maguire which made 114 million its opening weekend. After realizing their mistake, Disney, who has the rights to Marvel, wanted Spider-Man back.
In 2015, Disney and Sony came to a deal about letting Spider-man be a part of the MCU. At first, Disney wanted to split the money 50/50, but since Sony knows that Spider-Man is one of their biggest sources of income, they said no. Eventually they came to a deal where Sony would receive 95% of the profits, and Disney would earn a gross revenue, which is usually 5%. Since then, everything seemed to be fine. Sony was making 95% of the profits, while Disney received 100% from the merchandise. In 2019 Disney wanted to go back to their original offer where they split the profits of the Spider-Man movies 50/50. Sony immediately said no and some sources say they haven’t tried to put a new deal on the table. Marvel then pulled Holland from the MCU and pulled Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel, from producing any more Spider-Man movies.
After a week of silence, Holland said a couple things regarding Spider-Mans’ position in the MCU at D23 while he was supposed to be talking about his new Pixar movie Onward. “It’s been a crazy week, and I love you all from the bottom of my heart, and I love you 3,000.” Later during the same press conference he confirmed that he will continue playing Spider-Man, “Who knows what the future holds? But all I know is that I’m going to continue playing Spider-Man and having the time of my life. It’s going to be so fun, however we choose to do it. The future for Spider-Man will be different, but it will be equally as awesome and amazing, and we’ll find new ways to make it even cooler.” During Keystone Comic Con in Pennsylvania, Holland continued giving us hope by stating, “We sat down with some of our creatives. We pitched Spider-Man 3, which is going to be something very special, it’s going to be something very different.”
This leaves the whole world with so many questions. Will Zendaya continue playing MJ? Are they just going to forget the past five Marvel movies with Holland never happened? Is Marvel going to leave us with the unanswered cliffhanger from Far From Home? What about Ned and the rest of the academic team? The public won’t know until the third movie, or until another statement is said by both Sony or Marvel.
