Back in February, Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group CEO Tom Rothman implied during a conversation with Matt Belloni that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, home to such beloved films as Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven the Hunter, would be getting a reboot with new talent. Now, it seems as though even that might be wishful thinking.
In an interview with Variety, Rothman was blunt about the prospects of more Spider-Man-adjacent films. “Ultimately, the audience wasn’t satisfied enough with [Sony’s Spider-Man spin-offs],” Rothman said. “Whether that’s a fair assessment of those movies, who knows. That’s howling into the wind. The audience is the boss, and they didn’t respond. It’s as simple as that.” When asked about whether audiences could expect more films set in the extended Spider-Man universe, Rothman said, “Right now, we don’t know. We never looked at it as the ‘Sony-Marvel Universe.’ We looked at if there were worthwhile movies to make with other characters. At the moment, there are none in active development.” That second statement is particularly damning, as it seems like, at least right now, Rothman and his team don’t think there are worthwhile movies to be made about the small collection of Marvel characters to which Sony has the film rights. And while we’re all well aware of how bad Morbius and Madame Web were, surely that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to tell interesting stories about those characters, right? It just means those particular movies weren’t the right way to approach them.
