Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) is a film franchise centered around characters from Spider-Man-related Marvel Comics. It began in 2013, with Sony planning spin-offs from ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2,’ including a ‘Venom’ movie.

After ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ underperformed, Sony partnered with Marvel Studios to bring Spider-Man into the MCU, while continuing to develop a separate ‘Venom’ universe.

The SSU included the ‘Venom’ franchise (which recently released its final installment, ‘Venom: The Last Dance’), ‘Morbius,’ ‘Madame Web,’ and ‘Kraven the Hunter.’ Most of these films received poor reviews, with ‘Morbius’ and ‘Madame Web’ and ‘Kraven’ being particularly criticized.

‘Kraven the Hunter’ bombed in every imaginable way, and some recent reports claim that it was SSU’s final movie as the studio no longer wants to invest in a franchise with desperate ratings that frequently serve as nothing but net loss.

Sony CEO Tony Vinciquerra recently sat down with the ‘Los Angeles Times’ and commented on his career at Sony.

He was asked how he felt about the film studio’s performance during his time as CEO. He said the studio mostly had great results, even exceeding budgets and giving employees bonuses in several years, despite challenges like strikes and COVID.

However, he admitted that the recent launch of ‘Kraven the Hunter’—his final film release as CEO—was their worst opening in his 7.5 years, which he found puzzling because he didn’t think the movie was bad. Overall, he viewed his tenure as successful.

We’ve had mostly very, very good results. Unfortunately, [“Kraven the Hunter”] that we launched last weekend, and my last film launch, is probably the worst launch we had in the 7 1/2 years so that didn’t work out very well, which I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film.

But we’ve been very successful. We’ve beat our budgets every year I’ve been here, even through strikes and COVID, and max bonuses several of the years for all the employees. It was a good run, and the film studio was a big part of it.

Vinciquerra asked if the strategy for the Spider-Man universe needed to be rethought. He agreed, saying it does need to be reconsidered because the franchise seems “snake-bitten,” meaning it’s facing persistent bad luck or challenges. He added that any new release would likely be harshly criticized, regardless of its quality.

I do think we need to rethink it, just because it’s snake-bitten. If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is.

Source

This is partially true as every subsequent SSU release was met with groans even before the trailer and promotional materials went online, mostly due to the catastrophic legacy of past releases. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!