Disney isn’t Right

There’s been a lot of discussion about the potential split between Disney and Sony over Spider-Man. Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man and struck a deal with Disney a few years back that would allow Spider-Man to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel would help make each Spider-Man movie. It’s been a successful deal so far for both parties but now negotiations have fallen apart.

The story seems very calculated though. Marvel has the trust of the general public and the way the story has been reported it paints Disney as the good guy just trying to get a fair deal. They supposedly want to split production costs and profits on all Spider-Man related movies (like Venom and Into The Spider-verse) 50/50. Sounds fair right? Why won’t Sony let the people who’ve saved Spider-Man pay to produce it and get a fair reward?

But if you do the math it’s a terrible deal for Sony.

Currently, Sony pays 100% of the production costs and Disney gets 5% of the profits for helping produce. In return, Disney gets to use Spider-Man in their movies. Other Spider-Man related properties are made without any assistance from Disney and Sony keeps 100% of the profits.

Let’s look at Spider-Man: Far From Home
Gross: $1.1 billion
Production Budget: $160 million

If we ignore the costs of marketing the movie has made $940 million in profit.
Sony’s share: $893 million
Disney’s share: $47 million

Now if the deal were to play out as Disney wants
Sony’s share: $470 million
Disney’s share: $470 million

Sony saves about $80 million upfront but makes about half of what they would’ve otherwise.

BUT this deal would also apply to every other Spider-Man related movie that Disney had no involvement with before. Venom? Sony’s profit would’ve been half. Same for Into the Spiderverse. And unlike Disney Sony doesn’t have other franchises like Star Wars, animated movies, and a million other Marvel characters to fall back on.

Why would anyone accept that deal?

As fans, we tend to immediately side with whoever we trust the most. Disney usually makes better movies and have done a good job with the character. We want things to continue as is so Sony must be the bad guy for getting in the way of it. But in reality, it’s a situation of the goliath trying to get a better deal from a smaller competitor.

This will likely get resolved nicely and everyone will be happy. Disney will get a bigger cut and Sony will continue to get their support. But there’s no point in getting duped into this false narrative being laid out by our favourite corporation.