Geekville Radio #243: Disney vs. Sony plus D23 News

A ton of news to go over in this jam-packed episode! In the first segment, Seth and Crazy Train talk about the problems between Sony and Disney over Spider-Man. The second half is devoted to Star Wars and Marvel news coming out of D23.

(3:03) Sony vs Disney and Marvel

Unless you’ve been out in deep space for the last week, you’ve probably heard of the split between Disney and Sony over Marvel’s Spider-Man in The MCU. To fully comprehend what happened, we have to take a step back and look at how we got to this point in the first place.

Attempts at making a Spider-Man feature film date back to the 1980s. But over the years, the film companies set to make the picture would go under or were bought out. This made deciding the film rights a real nightmare. Eventually, Sony got the rights in the late 90s.

Around this time, Marvel opened their own film studio. Once Marvel Studios was created, Marvel no longer needed to shop around film rights. They could control their own properties when it came to the big screen. This is one of the reasons Marvel was able to make successful films that pleased fans and critics alike.

So here are the main talking points of the Disney vs. Sony fiasco.

The previous deal between the two had expired – When Sony and Disney agreed to share Spider-Man, it was for a certain number of films. Sony would produce the stand-alone films, with Marvel and Disney helming Avengers and other crossover films.

Sony was happy with the previous deal – It looks like Sony would have been happy with a continuation of that agreement. They weren’t necessarily looking for a bigger or better deal.

Disney was asking for a larger cut – Under the old deal, Sony got the profits from the stand-alone Spider-Man movies, while Disney kept profits from any cross-over. The 50/50 deal proposed by Disney would see both companies sharing equally in cost and profits.

Sony has tried to control Spider-Man films before –