The recent success of Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Uncharted must have been a huge relief to Sony boss Tom Rothman, not that he’d ever admit it publicly. Outside of Dwayne Johnson’s Jumanji sequels, the studio had been struggling to find high-profile IP that wasn’t connected to Spider-Man, and even then they’ve had to split the profits with Marvel Studios.
To put that into perspective, 10 of Sony’s 15 top-earning movies of all-time are either Marvel Comics adaptations or the aforementioned Jumanji continuations, so it’s not as if the company has a Disney-esque volume of properties to fall back on. That being said, nothing at Rothman’s disposal comes close to matching the popularity of Tom Holland’s web-slinging superhero.
After the $1.9 billion monster that was No Way Home, expectations for the inevitable Spider-Man 4 are going to be through the roof, even if Morbius made it clear that Sony doesn’t exactly have a solid handle on its Marvel movies without Feige’s cinematic universe leading the way.
Nonetheless, Rothman confirmed in an interview with Deadline that he’s intent to continue expanding Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, with Holland, Zendaya, and director Jon Watts all expected back.
“We have our Marvel business, which breaks into three tranches. There are the Spider-Man movies, and we’re currently at work on two Spider-Verse sequels to our Oscar winning animated movie, with Lord and Miller. We hope to get working on the next Spider-Man movie. That whole group [Holland, Watts, Zendaya], we hope.
Then there are movies I would call adjunct to the Spider-Man universe. That’s Kraven, which we’re shooting now, and Madam Web, which we’ll start in the spring with S.J. Clarkson directing. And then there are many Marvel characters that are standalone.”
It wasn’t exactly a bonanza of new information, but it nonetheless signaled that Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is here to stay, for better or worse.