“I don’t want to go, Mr. Stark”

You know that the movie business is fast paced when you rock up at Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim this weekend only to find a Marvel poster with Spider-Man on it.

What a messy week it’s been.

On Tuesday, information was leaked regarding a breakdown in negotiations between Disney and Sony regarding the proposed renewal of their deal to share Spider-Man. As a result, the web slinger is declared “OUT” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and dropped back into the sole control of Sony Pictures.

The details have been well documented and this is meant to be an article where I throw in my two cents on the matter, so I’ll keep the exposition brief.

On the off chance that you’ve been living under a rock, Disney/Marvel’s deal with Sony was that it would take creative control of the character, initially dropping him into the MCU in five movies – three team up films and two standalone movies. In the team up appearances, Marvel scoops all of the profits and in the solo films, it bags a token five percent while Sony pockets 95 percent of the earnings.

According to the leaked information, the negotiations plummeted into a dumpster fire when Marvel requested 50 percent of the profits from the solo films going forward. Sony baulked and that is where the world now finds itself.

Contrary to what the #BoycottSony Twitter campaign would have you believe, Sony are not the villains of this story. In many ways, Marvel’s pulled a Mysterio.

Asking for 50 percent of the profits is outlandish when Sony provides the budget for the standalone films – all Marvel does in comparison is steer the narrative.

But, that’s not how the court of public opinion has seen the negotiations. Instead, the general consensus – at least on my timeline – is that Sony are villains hell-bent on ruining Spider-Man for the fans with it’s selfish agenda, which is astonishingly wide of the mark as the current situation is a lose-lose for both parties.

Sony has just funded and distributed a Spider-Man movie cracking one billion dollars, as part of an inter-connected universe that has delivered the highest grossing movie of all time in April, building to an MCU take-home total of $5 billion so far in 2019 alone.

But as much as it is a no-brainer to want to keep Spider-Man in the world’s most lucrative sandbox, being asked to give up 50 percent of profits to a company that would seemingly add nothing to the movie’s budget is just bad maths. Sony would effectively give up half of it’s earnings from it’s most profitable asset, which is simply bad business.

It’s highly unlikely that Marvel would have expected the proposition to stick and it reeks of an opening salvo at the negotiating table. It would not surprise me to find out that Marvel leaked the information in an attempt to use the court of public opinion as a bargaining chip, allowing leverage for a better deal with #BoycottSony fresh in the minds of the number-crunchers at Sony Pictures.

Admittedly, Marvel does deserve a bigger share of the profits going forward. Sure, Sony foots the bill for the standalone Spider-Man films, but Marvel’s creative influence is a huge driving force behind the success of the films. Far From Home hugely benefited from the $2.8 billion juggernaut Avengers: Endgame and Feige’s team of creatives have made Tom Holland the best Spider-Man to date.

I’m spit-balling of course, but I’d argue that 20-25 percent of profits would be a more suitable share and I’m confident that a deal of that nature will eventually be carved out, working in the interests of both parties as well as the fans moving forward.

Marvel has put too much emphasis in Spider-Man, building him up as “the next Tony Stark” to allow Peter Parker to leave the building without a fight, and Sony can’t afford to roll the dice on another Spider-Man reboot despite the recent surprise box office success of a critically criticised Venom.

This is a story which will continue to develop in the eyes of the public now that the genie is out of the bottle. Which sucks, because Twitter is a crap jury.