Sony was offered deal to the film rights to almost every Marvel character for 25 mil

MilesMorales1

https://twitter.com/benfritz/status/964162218823577602/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2Ftwitter.min.html%23964162218823577602




I thought that was hilarious. If that was me, I'd still be kicking myself.

astrofool

If Sony had bought them, they'd have contrived a way to lose money on the purchase.

branie2

Good grief!

jaykhunter

it's tough though, you know? What if FOX bought the rights and kept churning out s*** like Fantastic Four, like that level of quality but for Iron Man and Captain A films...you'd never make it to the Avengers!

TheIrishGrover

jaykhunter wrote: »

it's tough though, you know? What if FOX bought the rights and kept churning out s*** like Fantastic Four, like that level of quality but for Iron Man and Captain A films...you'd never make it to the Avengers!

^^^^^ This ^^^^^

While this was a huge mistake (huge!) there is no guarantee that the rest of the films would have been a huge success (Or even made).

Take their first Spiderman movie. This may have been around the time that James Cameron was toying with the idea. Cameron had quite a serious take on Spiderman. Even the Rami versions that came out. The first two were hugely successful and certainly paved the way for a resurgence in interest in proper, big budget superhero movies. But, as enjoyable as the first two were, they were very much prototypes: Standalone films with no glimpse of a bigger universe. Hell, they were standalone from eachother pretty much.

Marvel's shared cinema universe (Now universally known as MCU) was a bold move which was almost undone by the relatively lackluster box office/reception of Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk (Remember, Tony Stark turned up at the end). But, I suppose, by that time they were well into developing The Avengers and Thor and Captain America were well into production.

Sony's Spiderman was probably the "easiest" to develop. It had a teenage protagonist, internationally known. And yet the tone was still pretty serious and straight laced. I like them but compare them with the fun of "Homecoming".

Imagine what they would have done with Iron Man: Adult alcoholic weapons manufacturer having a crisis of conscience. They would have skewed it "darker - more adult". (IM3's my favourite IM movie. Purely due to Shane Black)

Captain America: Potentially jingoistic "'Murica First" character way out of date with then-current thinking. Possibly would have gone a "Dark Knight" tone.

Thor: A god? Pass.

I believe they would have struggled like DC is currently with their own Cinema Universe. Too-serious tone. Very little entertainment (Apart from Wonder Woman).

So, while it was a HUGE mistake (That I'm sure caused a few heads to roll some years later). I'm glad for it. I don't think they would have had nearly the success that Marvel have had by keeping control of the reigns themselves.

Foxtrol

The rights would probably have ended up sitting in some desk gathering dust.

No studio has shown any ability to create a functional universe aside from Marvel. It has really driven the superhero movie market. We'd get the odd movie from each studio in the genre but it would be no where near the scale and quantity.

Another impact would have been that without the movie rights Disney would never have bought Marvel and then without that success would they have ventured into buying Lucasfilm?

Fysh

Let's look at this a different way:

At the point the offer was made:

• Batman & Robin was the most recent WB superhero release.
• Iron Man was known, if at all, from the pretty crummy animated series from the early 90s.
• Thor was known from one of the live action Hulk TV movies, and guest appearances in other animated series.
• The Avengers had had only that one decades-before-motion-comics outing in 1966, "The Marvel Superheroes", and there wasn't really any indication anyone cared about them. (Certainly that "cartoon" wouldn't have changed anyone's mind!).
• Blade was probably being considered as a Marvel comics property to be adapted - loosely- to film.

It's easy to sit here, ten years after Iron Man was released, and treat it like it's some sort of total foul-up of the most elementary kind, but Iron Man (and Downey Jr) did a lot of heavy lifting to establish the idea of a film series sharing a setting as something that audiences might like.

Also important to remember that Marvel were basically a new corporate entity rising out of the ashes of the previous iteration with a lot of IP whose media rights were ripe to be exploited, and not a lot of money. So of course they were going to go into every negotiation trying to sell as much as they could. If you're told "go get the rights to Character X" and you come back saying "I spent five times the original budget but I also got the rights to characters from A-Z", things are unlikely to go well in the business world....

If only they had bought all the rights and then buried them. Such a utopia could only be dreamed of!

brianregan09

They would have definitely blown it , even now there on the cusp of blowing the remaining Spiderman Licenses by making a Venom film with out Spiderman , A black cat and Silver Sable film with spiderman villains in it ....

Grayditch

"Guitar groups are on their way out, Mr Epstein."

Ridley

Sony stumbling with Spider-Man 3 then forgetting how to make good Spider-Man films at all as part of the scramble to get Avengers money has been... interesting.