ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - How MADAME WEB Would Allow Marvel to SUE SONY for the Rights to SPIDER-MAN

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died. Hey, welcome back Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Erie. Guys, we have to talk about the aftershocks of Madam Webb. The movie was Beyond a Bomb. Theater owners were actually saying that they could literally track people returning their tickets

after the reviews came out. The movie might end up being a camp masterpiece you watch because it's so bad it's good, but like for casual Marvel fans, this has tainted the Marvel brand. The damage is so bad, it has us thinking, could Marvel actually sue Sony over how bad Madam Webb is? Later, I'm going to bring on a friend of the channel and lawyer Mike Mazzella to discuss how all this could really play out. Wait a minute, why would Marvel want to sue Sernie? Well, buddy, there have been reports for a while now that Marvel and Sony are disagreeing over Spider-Man's future in the fourth time. Tom Holland movie. Now look, much about this new dispute is unknown right now, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Sony is not good in making standalone Spider-Man movies and that they are overall harming the Marvel brand.

Now Marvel has been trying to repurchase Spider-Man from Sony for years, and with the news of this latest spat, fans are going to be wondering what it's going to take for Sony to finally cave and let the wallcrawler go home to his own universe. So today, we're going to ask, what would happen if Marvel pushed the envelope by suing Sony over the Spider-Man IP? and if Marvel sues, would they have a case? Would they be successful? Now, you probably already know a bit about the history between... Wait, I don't understand. I thought Marvel earned Spider-Man. Okay, well, look, a lot of you probably already know about the sorted history between Sony and Marvel, but just in case, here's a quick recap of how we got to this very messy place. In the 1990s, the comic book industry hit a pretty big slump, causing Marvel to actually file for bankruptcy.

And then Marvel started selling off the film and television rights of their most popular characters, including Spider-Man. Sony bought the exclusive rights to make Spider-Man movies and TV shows. Wow, I mean, Spider-Man's pretty popular. That must cost them a fortune. Actually, no, Marvel was desperate for cash, kind of like if you've ever had to pawn your comics to pay your rent. All I got is this 20 for the rest of the week.

Sorry, it doesn't pay the rent. So, Marvel sold the film and TV rights for Spider-Man to Sony for only $7 million. $7 million. In 1999, money, that must have been a gazillion dollars. Nah, man, that may sound like a lot of money to you and me, but for a major movie studio like Sony Pictures, it was a drop in the bucket. Even adjusted for inflation, by today's dollars, Sony only had to pay a little over $13 million

for the right to control and profit from every Spider-Man movie and TV project forever, with a few requirements that we're going to talk about later. You got more than you gave. And I wanted what I got. This deal applied to not only Peter Parker Spider-Man, but also to more than 900 Spider-Man-adjacent characters. Or like Venom and Morbius and Madam Rip. That's right, high-five.

If I can editorialize a little bit here, it does seem like making Spirderialize a little bit here, it does seem like making Spider-Man adjacent films that stretch out the IP are becoming like an addiction for Sony. And I can relate. I have struggled with a variety of oral fixation habits for years, like stress eating or just like constantly snacking on sweets. Oh, you do like a sweet tooth, don't you? I do. I do like a sweet tooth, thanks Doug. But now I've replaced my bad, gross habits with a positive one by switching to fume. They're the sponsor of this video.

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You see, guys, fume makes switching easy and even fun. They have thousands of five-star reviews from there more than 150,000 customers who have used fume to change their lives and switched when other solutions just didn't work. So head to tryfume.com slash screen crush and use the code screen crush to get 10% off your journey pack today. The journey pack comes with your choice of three or six unique cores and everything you need to finally be free of or bad habit. That's try fum.com and use the code screencrush to save an additional 10% off your order today. Now back to the history of Spider-Man and Sony. So in the early 2000, Sony began making Spider-Man movies and the first few were really great. But as the years went on, the movies

got worse. I'm going to kill the light for everyone in this city is going to know how it feels to live in my world. At the same time, Marvel Studios was formed and they set a new industry standard for what a great superhero movie could be, and how much they could gross. Sony's failures, combined with the MCU's historic success, motivated Sony to negotiate a sharing agreement with Marvel in 2015, whereby Marvel can include Spider-Man in the MCU movies, but Marvel would only get to keep 5% of the initial box office returns. So after releasing Homecoming and Far From Home, with, by the way, Far From Home being the first Spider-Man movie to ever gross over a billion dollars, Marvel felt like they had breathed new

life into the character, and that the 5% they were receiving was not enough. Where's the money? Sony. So Marvel proposed changing the terms of the deal so both studios would receive a 50-50 split of the profits. Sony did not like this idea and rather than renegotiate, Sony canceled the deal entirely. Now you remember here on the channel, we were outraged, all fans were outraged over the news that Tom Holland's Spider-Man would no longer be in MCU movies. And we were not quiet about that. We actually made a whole video about how much it sucked. Now in response to the backlash, Sony decided to return to the negotiating table and a new sharing agreement was executed giving Marvel Studios 25% of the profits. So this deal is what allowed Marvel Studios to make No Way Home, a film that not only grossed over a billion dollars again, but epitomized what can happen when a filmmaker has access to a broad catalog of past work.

No Way Home wasn't only a good Spider-Man movie, but also a showcase to celebrate the Sony Spider-Man movies and characters of the 2000s and 2010s. It demonstrated that great things can happen when these two studios play nice and work together. Sounds okay, then what's the problem? Well, now they are not working so well together. New reports out of Hollywood are saying that Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman is pushing Kevin Feige to speed up the production and release of the MCU's fourth Spider-Man film, and demanding that Feige bring back director John Watts, even though Marvel wants to go in a different creative direction. Reportedly, Sony wants to bring back Toby and Andrew for a kind of live-action Spider-Verse, while Marvel wants a street-level movie where Spider-Man and Daredevil fight the kingpin.

These rumors ring kind of true to me because Sony has shown in the past that they are willing to overstuff a Spider-Man movie with too many characters. It also makes sense that they would want to try to repeat the success of Spider-Man No Way Home in the end of the Spider-Verse films. And reportedly, the failure of Madam Webb has Sony panicking, and they are desperate for a hit. Sony wanted their own cinematic universe. But I think a bunch of guys like us should team up to do some good. But now they have to realize that they need Marvel for these films to be successful. And this is ironic because the theme of Madam Webb was, with great responsibility, great power will come.

But that's clearly not the case for Sony. I mean, they own Spider-Man, and with that is a great. responsibility to make top-notch movies that do that character justice. But despite this great responsibility, Sony appears powerless to make a decent film without the help of Marvel Studios. So why doesn't Kevin Faggy just tell Sony, hey buddy, take a hike? Because Sony still owns the rights to Spider-Man movies, and they're not willing to give those rights back without a fight. The business relationship between Sony and Marvel has always been strained. But now, the combination of Sony's movies performing poorly, mounting pressure from fans, and new disagreements over the business and creative

aspects of Spider-Man 4 might finally push this sharing agreement to its breaking point. But since Sony will likely refuse to sell Spider-Man back to Marvel, could Marvel force a sale? Could Marvel sue Sony for misusing and degrading the Spider-Man IP? And could they succeed in their goal of reacquiring their star character? Here to discuss is Screencrush contributor, Spider-Man Superfan, and lawyer Mike Mazzella. So, Mike, tell me what, what, this is the weirdest deal ever that Marvel has with Sony. It seems like Sony just got everything out of it. initially. Can you walk me through how this works and why Sony has to keep pumping a Spider-Man

movie out all the time? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, again, we don't have an exact copy of what the agreement is between these companies. We are kind of piecing together what we can glean from the internet, from reports, and from the leaks that came out a few years back. The North Korea, yeah, yeah, yeah, after the interview. Oh, some of those emails are so embarrassing. Very embarrassing. And not great, not a great look for Marvel or for Sony. One of the things that got a lot of attention at that time was this requirement in the contract. They called it a character morality trait requirement, saying that Peter Parker couldn't torture people or couldn't murder people. And then there were also some other ones in there about what his race or sexual orientation or gender had to be. And that drew some ire. Yeah. But the thing that's important in that part of the contract, as it applies to this is that it actually gave Marvel the right to enjoin Sony from putting out movies if they violated those character morality traits. And so typically in the law, you would have different types of remedies, right? So there's financial remedies. You can get damages. You can have

them pay you money. But another type of relief is injunctive relief, which basically means you go to a court and you ask the judge to issue an order preventing someone from doing something. And so Marvel. You're telling me that there was a clause in this contract, per the leaks, the 2015 and other information we've claimed. Yeah. As far as we know. Where if Sony were to make Spider-Man gay or black or torture people and presumably a list of other things that, you know, I mean, the first two are pretty horrible for that to be mentioned in there, but that they could actually get financial compensation from Sony for this. Not only financial compensation,

But again, that injunctive relief, that they could prevent Sony from releasing a movie. And I should say there, too, that those specifically applied to Peter Parker's Spider-Man, not other variations of Spider-Man. Okay. So Miles Morales could, okay. Of course. That's better. Yes.

Okay. So the injunctive relief is really important, though, because if Marvel can say to Sony, you just spent all of this time and money producing this movie, you put all this money into the marketing, and now we have a court order saying you can't release it. set, they're losing money on that movie. Although at this point, Sony's Spider-Verse movies all, not the animated Spider-Verse movies, but the live-action movies all seem to be losing money anyways. But there is a requirement in the contract when they bought the rights from Marvel initially in the 90s saying that there's this release schedule. You need to release a movie

every so often or the rights are going to revert back to Marvel. We saw the same thing with, you know, the Fantastic Four agreement, which then led to, you know, not the best movies. And that's the problem with these. And I think all those movies had a similar clause, right? Some of them are different. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's what then causes studios to say, okay, well, we need to rush and we need to get

a movie out quick or we're going to lose the rights to this character. And weirdly enough. Which is why they made Ramey rush Spider-Man 4 and he walked off the project. Okay, gotcha. Exactly. And weirdly enough, I think that, in Madam Webb, the reason why we have just a little hint of Peter Parker, just a little Peter Parker baby in it, is that if Marvel does not bend the knee to Sony and push up the release date of Spider-Man 4 with Tom Holland, that they could arguably go back and say, oh, no, we had Spider-Man in a movie. We had him in Madam Webb. He was a baby. He didn't have any lines, but he was there, you know? It was like a, it's like a Spider-Man La Croy, just a hint of Spider-Man. But he's in that movie, though, they never actually

Spider-Man Lookroy. Yeah. And I like Lookroy, though. In that movie, though, they never actually say his name. They have this whole guessing the baby's name, and they're really coy about it. So that is a whole thing, too, where imagine we get a situation where Marvel and Sony are in court, which I want to touch on in a second if this is also how it can work. Imagine they're in a situation in court where it's like,

You ought to never address the infant in the movie as Peter Parker, this could be. easily idiot the baca baby we just you know like the fact that it could be in a court of law the highest court in the Supreme court has to hear about Sony v marvel re Peter Parker and madam webb it's so strange that would be amazing honestly that's that's the whole reason i became a lawyer just for that one specific possible instance so uh marvel Sony if you're out there and you're listening hit me up uh be the first supreme court hearing with a cosplay with a cosplay audience Okay, so now, if I'm understanding right, they have all these clauses that Marvel could, you know, do an injunction and sue them. We think.

We think, yeah, it seems like. And some of them make sense. Like, you don't want Peter Parker to be an anti-hero bad guy who tortures people. That would definitely hurt the brand, right? How, I mean, Madam Webb's a bad movie. Oh, it's horrible. It's awful. But in what way would this movie be so bad it could merit a lawsuit for, for Marbleb?

Marvel or Disney to sue Sony pictures. So, again, again, we were just talking about the injunctive relief. That's for very specific violations. If it violates something that's specifically enumerated in the contract, then they could get that injunctive relief. There's other theories of how Marvel could potentially sue Sony, although these are probably a stretch and a little far-fetched, but I will say at the top, Disney has the best IP lawyers in the world.

And if anybody can pull it off, it's definitely them. But here's the stretch of a theory that I want to run by you. is that Marvel could say Spider-Man, the character of Spider-Man and the brand of Spider-Man is so integral and integrated with the brand of Marvel that in the minds of the general consumer, the general movie-going audience, they are essentially one and the same. And don't forget here that while Sony owns the movie rights to Spider-Man, Marvel retains all of the other rights. So Marvel still owns the character Spider-Man himself, the brand,

all of those 900 plus ancillary characters that are surrounding Spider-Man, Marvel still owns them, and Marvel still gets all of the merchandising and everything else that comes along with Spider-Man. So they could say these movies are harming the Spider-Man brand, whereas in the contract before, they said, we don't want you to damage the character himself, like Peter Parker's integrity. Here they could say, we don't want you to damage the Spider-Man brand. Because what's happening to a lot of people happened to me and my girlfriend just the other week when we went to go and see Madam Webb. I wasn't planning on going to see it in the theaters.

My girlfriend said, I bought us tickets to go and see Madam Webb. Because it's a Spider-Man. Was this one Valentine's Day? No, no. This was, I think it was the day after Valentine's Day. She goes, you know, I know you love Spider-Man. Yeah. And this is a Spider-Man movie, so let's go see it.

And then as we're sitting in the theater is the opening title card with the flip book, and then where it slowly says in association with Marvel at the top in very tiny letters, we both kind of bust out laughing. with that. It was one of her first times actually seeing that on the screen. But that's what's happening. People in the general movie going audience are being confused. If you don't follow these movies very closely, if you're not a super fan and know which characters go in which universe, you're just thinking, oh, Madam Webb, Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Marvel. And then, go ahead. Is there a case there for consumer confusion? Consumer confusion is when, tell me if I'm wrong here,

It's when you deliberately try to make your brand look like another brand while passing off something like a Kirkland brand or something like a generic. Right. Correct. So there's two kind of avenues or theories for relief here. One is brand confusion, saying people want to go and see an MCU movie, but instead they went to go and see a Sony movie because they thought that it was part of the MCU. The tail end of that is brand dilution. So after people leave the theaters from seeing Madam Webb, they go, God, that sucked. That was so bad. I don't think I ever want to see another Marvel movie ever again. And now they're not going to go. and see, you know, whatever's the next big Marvel MCU movie that's coming out. People who, again, who are not well-versed in this stuff, who don't know the difference between the two studios, are liable to think that they are all part of one big studio. And they might say, yeah, well, you know, I really loved Endgame, but I really hated Morbius. And I can't swear in my mind how the same people could make these two movies.

Well, they didn't, but you don't know that. And you wouldn't know that because of the way that Sony has been marketing these movies, right? You remember when the trailer for Morbius came out, there was the mural of Spider-Man. Yeah, the mural of Spider-Man. Yeah, which made people think it was going to follow up far from home, because that was before No Way Home came out. Yes, so I'm sorry, no, Morbius would have come out in 2022. That's my fault. So, yeah, that's totally true. Clearly piggybacking off of the end of Far From Home and the goodwill that had been built up amongst the fans for

that movie. And then I think Madam Webb, in either on the posters or in the trailers, they said something like, don't miss the one that connects them all. And there was none of that in the movie. There was no crossovers. There wasn't even a post credit scene. There was nothing to connect it. We don't even know if it's connected to Venom or Morbius. Like, we don't know if it's connected to the other movies within its own universe, let alone other cinematic universes. So they tried to market it as it's going to connect everything together, which ties into the MCU's early slogan. and it's all connected. So there's definitely, it sounds like consumer confusion there.

Were the act, there was a whole thing too where like Dakota Johnson fired her team like right away. And there's a lot of speculation that she signed on thinking that she was in the MCU, their agents told her, oh, you're going to be in a Marvel. And they somehow didn't even know the difference. Yeah. So I actually, I heard this for the first time on another channel, uh, Cosmic Wonder, Warren reported that. Warren, great guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love Warren.

Great guy. Warren, if you're watching, come on the show. Big fan. So apparently Dakota Johnson, Sidney, the other actresses in this movie, when they heard that they got the role, posted some type of announcement about it to their Instagram,

and tagged Marvel Studios in it. So here's the argument for Marvel. If the actors in a Sony movie don't know that they're in a Sony movie, how is the audience supposed to know? I mean, it's just, it's like now Sony's not only trying to trick the fan base, They're trying to trick the actors. They're trying to say, I suspect, you know.

Again, I don't know. Don't sue me, Sony. So you've outlined a case for potential, again, we don't know what we're talking about here. You know, we're spitballing. It's theory, law theory. Yeah. You've outlined a case for potential brand dilution and consumer confusion, right? Right.

Both pretty serious in the corporate world. Can it happen? How would it happen? Or even if the lawsuit doesn't have merit, could it still result in Disney getting the rights to Spider-Man back? Sure. So I do think that this would be quite a stretch. Again, it'll probably depend heavily upon what are the specific terms in the agreement between Marvel and Sony. But the important thing to remember here is Sony owns the right to make these Spider-Man films.

It's not as if they're licensing it from Marvel. And when they make these Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, it's actually sure. Sony licensing Spider-Man back to Marvel. So it's a little bit different. Usually, whoever holds the right, like the person who holds the right to the IP can exclude other people from using their IP and can prevent them from putting out something like a fan-made film or something of that sort. And it's specifically over the concerns that we just talked about, confusion and dilution.

But here, you know, Sony actually owns the right to make Spider-Man movies and TV shows. And so their justifications, like they wouldn't need to defend themselves as much over, you know, what they do with the character. Again, as long as they're not violating the specific character morality traits that were laid out in the contract or that we think are laid out in the contract. So I don't know that Marvel would ultimately be successful. However, this would be a very big and very involved lawsuit that would take a very long time. And if Marvel is arguing that this injunctive relief that they wrote into the contract for themselves does somehow apply, it's not unreasonable to think that while the lawsuit is playing out, they're going through discovery and objections and that whole pre-litigation stage,

that they could ask the judge for a temporary restraining order saying, prevent Sony from releasing any of these movies until this lawsuit is resolved. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's assuming that it doesn't immediately get thrown out of court or get dismissed on a 12b-6 motion for failure to state a claim, right? So remind me to never go up against you in court. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm not, I just kind of know what I'm talking about. Take the compliment. Keep going.

Like, I can sue you right now for having the same mug as me. What is this? Hey, this guy. Not quite. Yours is a little shinier. Mine's a little gold. I got mine at Disneyland. Yeah.

Are your gyms falling off of yours? Oh, yeah. I lost my time stone entirely. Yeah, I've lost three of them. But I just look at it like it's going back. Yeah, it's, okay. So to answer your question, like, ultimately, I don't think that from a legal standpoint, if that's, if they're trying to get a judge to order Sony to sell the IP back to

Marvel or really they would go and get somebody to appraise it and determine what the fair market value of the IP is, like a third party independent person, and then that would be the sale price. I don't think they would be successful in the long run with that. However, just the threat of litigation or the prospect of their films being joined for an extended period of time could motivate Sony to come to the table and sell the IP. And I think that if they're going to do it, they got to do it soon. You've got to strike while the iron is hot.

Because if these reports that are coming out are to be believed, Sony is panicking right now. They're going, we lost money on Morbius. We stupidly re-released it into theaters thinking that the memes, online meant that people liked the film. Madam Webb, abysmal, like, super low. I think it's got like a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, the worst of any of those movies.

Fantastic Four, yeah, I think so, yeah. Right. Also, lowest grossing. Again, obviously, all of the box office numbers for it aren't in, but it doesn't look very good. Venom 2 made money domestically. I think it made money internationally. Craven.

Yeah. You know, and we've talked about this on the channel before. If there's one thing, you know, Captain Midnight had this great quote. He said, who has watched the Spider-Man movie and thought, God, this would be good if Spider-Man just wasn't in it. Wasn't in it? Yeah. It's a bad model to begin with for fans, right? Like, we don't want to see these movies. We feel like they're getting forced down our throats. They're deluding the brand. Let's just say that Sony decides to cut their losses. If they know they can make a Spider-Man movie and sell it for a billion dollars, even if they have to share a part of the profits with Marvel like they're doing now, what kind of deal would possibly benefit them? What would you realistically see? taking shape. What would it take for them to come to the table and sell these rights or transfer them or however the language is back to Marvel? So Spider-Man comes down to the MCU.

Right. So I don't know if I can put a dollar figure on it because I don't have that kind of inside information into what that IP is actually worth, but I got to think it's worth north of $100 million. Sony initially bought the rights for $7 million in 1999, which by today's is what, maybe like $14 million. So really, yeah, no matter what they sell it for, they're going to be making a huge profit. And at this point, movies like Madam Webb, Craven, and Likely Venom 3 are going to be losers for them.

So at this point, you can look at it and say, if you're not going to make Spider-Man movies with Spider-Man, this is really just more of a liability than it is an asset for you. Why not get rid of it? Sell it for a massive profit. And here's the thing. I think the only reason they are hesitant or reluctant to do that. do it is because, well, one, you know, it's super valuable. It's probably the most recognizable

fictional character in the world next to Superman. Spider-Man is extremely popular. But two, they have had some success lately with their animated movies, right? They won an Academy Award for Into the Spider-Verse. They're probably going to win another Academy Award for Across the Spider-Verse. And that is a, yeah, that is a feather in the cap of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and they don't want to let go of that golden goose. So what I would say to them is, cool, bifurcate the animated live action rights, or I'm sorry, the animated feature film rights from all of the other rights, sell the live action rights back to Marvel. And then you can keep doing into the spiderverse, across the spider verse, beyond the spider verse, under the spider

verse, above the spider verse, beside the spider verse, whatever. You know, they could do any number of those that they want to do. All right, Mike, I have one more question for you, But first, I want to hear about, like, what you got going on right now? Like, where can the people find you? What is it you do when you're not on our show? Yeah. So, in addition to being a huge nerd and a lawyer, I'm also a stand-up comedian and an improviser in Chicago. So if you're in Chicago and you'd like to come and see a live show, you can follow me on Instagram at Mike M. Comedy.

If you're not in Chicago, you can follow me there, too, because I post clips and stuff all the time if that's the thing that you're into. Yeah, Mike's a great IG follow. We're going to have his link below in the description. Thanks. So, last question, right? It's fun for us to lay out this, like, fairy tale world where Sony, you know, gets the right space to Marvel, and then Marvel has them all. And, yeah, but they're not going to do the right thing.

They're a giant corporation whose job is to make money for their stockholders. They don't care about the nerds. They want to use us. And I get, and I'm fine with that. I've come, over the years, I've come to be okay with corporations using my enthusiasm to bolster their stock price. I welcome it. It gives me great movies. It's fine. Oh, yeah. So, realistically, though, this IP, you know, they may be in a slump now, but they've got to be thinking, like,

it's going to be worth so much money over the next few years. Is there any, what would be their impetus to sell? Would the rights ever expire? Like, what's the future of this look like? Right. So eventually at some point, Spider-Man will enter the public domain. I can't give you an exact date on that right now. But it's going to be something. something like 70 years after the death of the author. So whether you're tracking that from when Stanley or Steve Dickko or Steve Dicko. Maybe Jack Kirby depended on the lawsuit. Okay, sure.

Yeah, it would probably be whoever was the last of them to pass away. But, you know, those deaths happened recently. So we're talking decades and decades and decades into the future. So I don't think their present concerns are with the rights expiring. And they're still thinking about how much money can we milk out of this character until those rights eventually expire. And that's probably a pretty huge figure because even if they're making bad movies, people are still going to go see them. I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to go see them.

Like if they put out an awful stiltman movie, I'm going to go see it. I'm going to go see. I'm going to hate myself, but I'm going to go see it. This guy wants you to follow him on Instagram, but also telling you that he's going to go see Madam Webb, too, on opening day. Oh, 100%. I'm going to go to the premiere. I'll be there on the red carpet. So again, you can follow Mike on his socials or listed below.

Thanks very much for your legal counsel here. We always appreciate it. And we want to hear from you guys. What do you want to see happen here? Do you want Sony to keep making movies like Madam Webb? Do you want Marvel to have the rights? What kind of Spider-Man for do you want to see from Tom Holland? Let us know in the comments or you can at me on Twitter.

And if it's your first time here, please subscribe and smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie. Thank you.