Sony, once a post-war electronics wunderkind best known for pioneering devices like the Walkman and the Trinitron TV, now finds itself tangled in a web of its own making – one spun not from copper wire or silicon wafers, but from red spandex and Hollywood contracts.
To understand how Sony found itself in this tangle of tights and legal timelines, we have to go back (way back) to post-WWII Tokyo. Founded in 1946 as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, the company that would become Sony was at the forefront of Japan’s economic recovery. It launched Japan’s first transistor radio, helped bring video recording into homes, and changed global pop culture with innovations like the Trinitron television and, later, the Walkman.
Sony wasn’t just good at making things; it was good at predicting the way people wanted to consume media. That foresight led it into music and movies in the 1980s, when it acquired Columbia Records (1988) and Columbia Pictures (1989), giving the company control of both content and the devices that played it. The dream was vertical integration: own the sound, own the screen, own the experience.
And for a while, it worked. Until the business of owning stories got a lot more complicated.
One man’s bankruptcy is another man’s gold rush
While Sony was riding high on its global expansion, Marvel was barely staying afloat. Founded in 1939, the comic book icon introduced a constellation of memorable characters including Captain America, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and of course, Spider-Man. But by the 1990s, comic book sales were in freefall, and Marvel found itself on the brink of bankruptcy.
To stay solvent, the company began licensing its intellectual property at bargain-bin prices. Toy Biz got the action figures. 20th Century Fox got the X-Men. Universal Studios took a swing at the Hulk. And in 1999, Sony Pictures swooped in and claimed the big-ticket item, buying the rights to Spider-Man’s film and TV appearances for a reported $7 million – a deal that would go down in entertainment history as one of the most consequential licensing agreements ever signed.
Sony wasted no time turning their new property into box office gold. The first Spider-Man film, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, was released in 2002 and shattered opening weekend records. It was followed by two more films in 2004 and 2007. Critics and fans largely embraced the trilogy, though Spider-Man 3, with its surplus of villains and eyeliner, showed early signs of franchise fatigue.
Then came the reboot era. In 2012, Sony reset the franchise with The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield. It performed well, but the sequel in 2014 underwhelmed audiences and critics alike. Sony, aware they had a box office titan in Spider-Man but no larger universe to support him, began searching for a way out of their creative cul-de-sac. Fortunately, just across the lot, Marvel Studios had cracked the code on interconnected storytelling and was building a little cinematic empire of their own.
Meanwhile, at Marvel
I did a deep dive on Marvel’s big bet – the cinematic universe model – back in October last year. If you’re feeling foggy on the details, you can find that piece here. The short version: while Sony was busy squeezing as much value as it could out of their Spider-Man rights, Marvel was quietly rewriting the playbook. Instead of standalone blockbusters, they introduced the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU, if you’re on nickname terms), built on the same crossover DNA that made their comic books work – recurring characters, shared worlds, and storylines that echoed across films like dominoes. The blueprint was simple: solo hero movies would build to an ensemble Avengers climax, then reset for the next phase.
Fans caught on quickly. Reddit lit up. Theory threads exploded. But one big question kept surfacing: Spider-Man is a core Avenger – so how was Marvel planning to assemble the full team without him, now that Sony owned him?
A marriage of convenience
In 2015, Sony and Marvel Studios (by then owned by Disney) struck an historic deal, allowing Spider-Man to join the MCU on what is essentially a complicated loan. Sony would continue to finance and distribute solo Spider-Man films, while Disney could feature the character in ensemble MCU projects. It was a win-win creatively and financially.
This third iteration of Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, joined the MCU in Captain America: Civil War and quickly became a fan favourite. He’s since appeared in six MCU films, including Spider-Man: No Way Home, which pulled off a multiverse hat-trick by uniting Holland, Maguire, and Garfield (three generations of Spider-Men!) on screen – a dazzling nostalgic spectacle that really is a testament to the intricacy of this IP dance.
But the partnership hasn’t always been smooth. In 2019, negotiations between Sony and Disney broke down, and Sony threatened to pull Spider-Man out of the MCU entirely. As you can probably imagine, the internet lost its collective mind. Hashtags trended, and Tom Holland reportedly cried on the phone with Disney CEO Bob Iger. Eventually, fan pressure (and logic) prevailed. A new deal was signed, and development began on Spider-Man: Brand New Day, starring Holland and due in 2026.
Can Sony keep spinning?
To Sony’s credit, some of its Spider-Man output has been brilliant. Into the Spider-Verse, the animated Sony film that followed Spider-Man’s stint in the MCU, is widely regarded as one of the best animated films ever made, with its groundbreaking visuals and emotionally rich storytelling. Its sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, doubled down on that performance. But other Spider-adjacent efforts – Morbius, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Madame Web – have landed with a thud, critically and often also commercially.
The company seems torn between genuine creative ambition and IP survivalism. Some projects feel like strategic world-building, while others feel like filler meant to hit a legal word count. And there’s a very good reason for that.
The 71-page licensing agreement between Sony and Marvel, which was unearthed in the infamous 2014 Sony hack, reads less like a casual IP deal and more like the cinematic equivalent of a hostage negotiation. Among the more revealing clauses is a strict set of deadlines. Under the terms of the agreement, Sony must begin production on a new Spider-Man film within 3 years and 9 months of the last release, and must get it into theatres within 5 years and 9 months. Miss either deadline, and the rights to one of the most valuable characters in pop culture automatically revert to Marvel.
There is some breathing room: if Sony manages to crank out three Spider-Man films within eight consecutive years, the timeline extends, but only slightly. They get up to 5 years to start the next production and 7 years to release it. Still, the fundamental rule stands: use it or lose it. And Sony, well, Sony really doesn’t want to lose it.
That ticking clock is a big part of why Sony’s Spider-Man output hasn’t slowed, even when reviews (and memes) suggest they maybe should’ve taken a beat. This is less about passion projects and more about portfolio management. Every film, whether good, bad, or baffling, resets the rights countdown. That’s why you’ve seen the studio invest not just in Peter Parker-led stories, but also in increasingly obscure spin-offs featuring in-universe characters like Venom, Morbius, and Madame Web. Even when a film flops critically (Morbius managed to tank twice), it still counts as another notch on the production timeline. From Sony’s perspective, that’s less of a failure and more of a renewal notice.
Unless the contract is radically renegotiated, Sony will keep making Spider-Man content (animated, live-action, cameo-laden, or otherwise) every few years to maintain its grip. It might be artistically uneven, but it’s commercially inevitable. One day, the rights may revert to Marvel. Or perhaps a more permanent partnership with Disney will emerge. But until then, Sony’s stuck in the Spider-Man spiral, forever climbing, spinning and rebooting.
About the author: Dominique Olivier
Dominique Olivier is the founder of human.writer, where she uses her love of storytelling and ideation to help brands solve problems.
She is a weekly columnist in Ghost Mail and collaborates with The Finance Ghost on Ghost Mail Weekender, a Sunday publication designed to help you be more interesting. She now also writes a regular column for Daily Maverick.
Dominique can be reached on LinkedIn here.
