Late last year came some very welcome news – Sony’s Spider-Man Universe was being put on ice after the release of “Kraven the Hunter” in December.
The shared universe, known as the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters (SPUMC) before changing to the less memorable SSU abbreviation, involves characters commonly associated with Spider-Man in Marvel Comics.
It began in 2018 with Ruben Fleischer’s “Venom” and continued through 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” 2022’s “Morbius,” and last year’s “Madame Web” and “Venom: The Last Dance”.
With the “Venom” trilogy done while “Morbius,” “Madame Web” and “Kraven” were all considered disasters. Appearing on Thursday at the Bank of America conference (via The Wrap), Sony Pictures CEO Ravi Ahuja acknowledged that they couldn’t afford to put out half-baked superhero films anymore as the market is no longer there:
“There was a period of time where anything superhero was almost guaranteed to do well. I think [the bar] for superhero movies, it was relatively low. In the mid-2010s pretty much all of them would do incredible business, but now even superhero movies have to have a degree of originality. They have to add something different. They have to have emotional connection. They have to be cultural events that can be marketed that way… you can’t make a bad movie.”
When it comes to superheroes, Sony is now focusing its efforts on the currently filming “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and the Amazon “Spider-Noir” television series featuring Nicolas Cage with both due out next year, along with the animated “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse” feature coming in 2027.
As for the overall Sony Pictures slate, Ahuja says big box office hits these days have to be ‘events’ to get people out to the cinema: “making it an event that people want to go out to theaters and watch together as well. That’s always been the case. I think it’s just even tougher than it used to be.”
