By Juan Ibarra/editor-in-chief
The film industry has recently started to go through a cleanse of sorts with Disney purchasing and evolving the Star Wars and Marvel labels, as well as the most recent acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox.
Enough is enough. Disney has put their hands into enough cookie jars, and they need to stop forcing other companies to fold..
Recently, Sony and Disney had a split after their most recent contract ended regarding the use of Spider-Man and his continued participation within the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise of films.
Unlike the comics, the film rights to the Spider-Man character are owned by Sony Pictures and required a contract with Disney/Marvel to allow him to be used in all Disney/Marvel films.
After the contract ended and the deal was up for renegotiation, reports were saying that Disney’s offer was to receive 50% of the revenue from any Sony-produced Spider-Man films on top of the already agreed upon 100% revenue on Spider-Man merchandise.
Although Disney agreed to co-finance the Spider-Man films with Sony, this offer was declined.
Not only is it an lackluster offer, but it is also almost guaranteeing that Sony barely makes a profit from those films.
In August it was confirmed that “Spider-Man: Far From Home” is now Sony’s highest grossing movie worldwide, so if you halve those profits it just isn’t enough and would lead to a slow-drip death for the Sony Film Division.
Disney has a large reach, and it is spreading even more as Disney+, Disney’s streaming service scheduled for release later this year is looking to be the most affordable with the highest amount of content for any digital streaming service on the market.
It’s inescapable and although it may seem impossible, buying and streaming more original content that is not from Disney is the simplest solution possible. More should be done to support the companies and creators who don’t have a multi-billion company killer behind them.
