Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
For the past day, every Marvel Cinematic Universe fan has felt just like Bruce Banner after riding his tiny scooter into the Chitauri invasion of Midtown Manhattan: “This all seems… horrible.” Or perhaps they’ve felt like Peter Parker on Titan, turning to dust in Iron Man’s arms: “I don’t feel so good.”
The cause of all the horrible, no good feels is the bad news that Disney and Sony have reportedly called it quits, scrapping the partnership that brought Spider-Man and his amazing friends swinging into the MCU just a few years ago. Disney (which owns Marvel Studios and had creative control over the solo, live-action Spider-Man franchise) and Sony (which owns the wall-crawler’s film rights and agreed to the deal back in 2015 after the fiasco that was the Amazing Spider-Man series) couldn’t agree to a new deal. Marvel wanted a bigger cut of the Spider-Man movies moving forward and Sony, possibly feeling their oats after winning an Oscar for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the box office success of Venom, passed. And now the worst possible scenario has come to pass: the fates of Tom Holland and Zendaya are in Sony’s hands, and now it’s more than likely they’ll have to put up with Jared Leto’s method vampire antics on the set of the eventual Spider-Man/Morbius crossover movie you just know is going to happen. Sigh.
This is obviously bad news for Marvel fans, because Spider-Man quickly became an integral part of the MCU. Seriously, Holland popped up in five movies over the past three years! It’s not even a stretch to say that the MCU Spider-Man carries the torch for Iron Man, the very first MCU superhero. And now that torch has been snatched by the studio that made back-to-back movies wherein the big villain plan was building a big spire in the middle of Manhattan, and also Spider-Man 3.
This is also very bad news for Disney+, which launches on November 12 and is being touted as the streaming service for Marvel fans. The platform will have Captain Marvel available to stream on day one with Avengers: Endgame coming in December. And after all those lingering Netflix exclusive contracts wrap up, Disney+ will add Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, and Ant-Man and the Wasp to its lineup. The assumption fans have is that Disney+ will be the home of every theatrical chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe–but that’s actually not the case, and the Sony/Disney divorce only makes that more clear.
Heads up to everyone planning a MCU binge party on Disney+: Disney+ will never be home to Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home. That’s because unlike every other Marvel movie, these two and these two alone are actually owned by Sony. This split first became apparent last summer when Spider-Man: Homecoming didn’t pop up on Netflix as part of Disney’s now-concluded deal with the streaming giant. That let us all know that whatever deal Sony and Disney struck, it did not include streaming rights.
Before this split, one could dream that Disney might be able to strike a deal with their business partner Sony. After all, Sony doesn’t have a streaming service of their own to rival any of the majors (and most of the minors)–okay, Sony co-owns Crackle but Spider-Man: Far From Home is not going to stream on Crackle. If Disney ponied up the money, one could see Sony letting them loan the two Spider-movies. Maybe. But even that tiny hope has now been dashed as tensions between the two studios rise.
This is a major loss for Disney+, as it means the platform will have to continually find ways to tout their MCU collection without using the words “complete” or “all” or “entire,” words that sound mighty impressive and appealing. Disney+ will only ever have some of the MCU, not counting two of the biggest movies in the entire franchise (they’re currently #10 and #11 of the 23 MCU films, but Far From Home’s box office will probably pass Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 pretty soon).
Oh–and then there’s all the red tape surrounding 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, which was a co-production with Universal and may or may not be available on Disney+ at some point. That’s still unclear, although Incredible Hulk has always kinda plucked right out of the MCU. The Edward Norton void on Disney+ is minuscule compared to the Tom Holland one.
But y’know, maybe “never” is too strong a word. Right now it certainly seems like there will never be a complete MCU movie collection on Disney+, and the odds definitely seem slim. But that’s what we all thought about Spider-Man ever teaming up with the Avengers just five years ago, and look what’s happened since! Okay, that didn’t have a happy ending, but it was good for a while. Maybe something good can happen with all this streaming mess. Maybe this is all public negotiating, and Sony and Disney will work out a deal, after all. For the moment, though, I would pump the brakes on those Disney+ Marvel movie marathon plans.
