The Spider-Man Problem (update)

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Listen now on the Up First podcast on the NPR app. This is Planet Money from NPR. The biggest superhero blockbuster of 2023 is not Marvel's newest Ant-Man movie. It is also not Marvel's newest Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

No, no, it is the newest Spider-Man movie. What's the guy got to do to join the Spider-Z? You can never be part of this. Stop Spider-Man!

Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse made $120 million last weekend in the US, making it the biggest comic book movie opening of the year. But notably, a comic book movie that was not made by Marvel Studios, the biggest most successful superhero movie company in history. Nope, because Marvel does not own the film rights to its own most popular character. Sony Pictures owns the Spider-Rites.

And a while ago, we dedicated an entire episode to the surprisingly epic saga of Sony and Marvel and the Spider-Man film rights. Today, we're going to rerun that episode because this new movie's success kind of redefines what our original story meant. Yeah, so this new Across the Spider-Verse movie, it is an animated film. It's the sequel to that Miles Morales into the Spider-Verse movie.

But before these Spider-Verse movies, like all of the big expensive Spider-Man blockbusters were live-action movies, where an actual human actor had to, you know, put on an actual Spider-Man costume or whatever. Yeah, and that is why in our Planet Money episode, we are only talking about the live-action movies. But at the very end, we're going to come back and explain how these new animated movies are like the perfect surprise Hollywood ending to that original episode. Okay, here's the original episode.

Marvel Studios now makes some of the biggest movies in the world, but that is a relatively new business model for Marvel. For most of its history, Marvel was a company that sold paper or plastic to people, paper comic books or plastic toys. Selling physical retail products was the Marvel business model. And, you know, that arguably started to change a little bit in 1993.

This is when Marvel Films was created, not to make movies, but to license Marvel superheroes so other companies could make movies. The idea was that Marvel would go find some big Hollywood studio, that studio would pay Marvel some money to use a superhero, and then make a big, expensive superhero movie. Which conveniently would also be like a big, expensive superhero commercial for Marvel's comics and toys, the real Marvel business back in the 90s. And so licensing superheroes to movie studios was this low risk, no brainer for Marvel.

And license they did. To 20th Century Fox, Marvel licensed the movie rights to the X-Men. Mutant and proud. Mutant.

Universal Pictures, The Hulk. And to Sony Pictures, what Marvel's most popular superhero of all. I will never forget these words. Spider-Man.

With great power. Comes great responsibility. Our episode today is born from this Spider-Man movie deal made around the year 2000 between Marvel and Sony Pictures. And the basic details of the deal are this.

Sony would pay Marvel $10 million for every Spider-Man movie that Sony wanted to make. Marvel would get 5% of the movie revenue. Sony and Marvel would split money from the Spider-Man movie toys. It was the right business decision in the moment.

Marvel didn't make movies, they sold comic books and toys. What do they need the Spider-Man film rights for? Of course, later they may regret this decision. And this is what we shall henceforth call the Spider-Man problem.

The Spider-Man problem is not unique to Marvel. Any company can make the right decision in the moment without knowing the mess it will create in the future. It just so happens, Spider-Man turned into a particularly entertaining mess. Hello and welcome to Planet Money, I'm Waylon Wong.

And I'm Kenny Malone. Now, perhaps you've heard there's a new Spider-Man movie in theaters and it has earned the box office numbers. You're all of the money, $1.7 billion and counting. But for Planet Money's purposes, the bigger Spider-Man story has been happening offscreen for the past 20 years.

It has questionable contracts, international espionage and exactly one food fight. Today on the show, we untangle the Spider-Man problem. You will never see a Spider-Man movie the same way again. On NPR's Wild Card podcast, musician Noah Kahn says he's learned to live with depression.

I think depression and anxiety give you sneaky superpowers in a lot of ways, like the power of understanding and intensitimitizing, being able to talk about my flaws without having to be like this terrible taboo thing. Watch or listen to that Wild Card conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube, at NPR Wild Card. If you're a casual movie watcher, it maybe feels like there's been a new Spider-Man movie every other year for the last 20 years. And that's because there has been on average.

Yeah, so many Spider-Man movies, sorry, so many different Spider-Man, Spider-Man. Who am I? First we got Toby McGuire. I'm Spider-Man.

Then there were some Andrew Garfield movies. Hey, buddy, Spider-Man, you can call me a man. You can call me a man. Now we are in the Tom Holland era.

I'm just a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, sir. Please, you've been to space. Untangling the Spider-Man problem will help explain why it feels like Spider-Man keeps starting over and over and over again. And to do this, we have brought in my personal favorite Marvel expert.

What is the nerdiest Spider-Man fact that you love? Originally, Spider-Man was not going to be a Spider-based hero. What? Stan Lee wanted to make him a fly.

But the... So, Fly-Man? Fly-Man. This is Joanna Robinson.

She's senior writer and podcaster over at the Ringer. And yes, apparently a literal fly on the wall inspired Stan Lee to eventually create Spider-Man. I think Spider-Man is a really good way to take a tour of the history of Marvel Studios. And this is his own little like Marvel drama, but the McGuffin is not an infinity stone.

It's poor Peter Barker. Yeah, that's right. And so, which Joanna's helpful. We're gonna go Spider-Man by Spider-Man to tell this Maker story.

We pick up that story in 1999, which is when Marvel and Sony strike their Spider-Man deal. Sony Pictures gets to work, and about three years later, they have their first Spider-Man movie ready to go, starring Toby Maguire. Alright, here we go. Okay.

Can you see my screen? Okay? Look at little baby Toby Maguire. Hey, so tiny.

Uh, can I take your picture? I need one with a student in it. Sure. Now, important backstory here.

Hollywood wisdom for basically all of time. Said that to be con-box office hits. Movies need superstars. Like, maybe Sony would need Leonardo DiCaprio to play Spider-Man.

I would not have minded seeing a Leo Spider-Man. However, Sony went a different direction. They instead hired Toby Maguire. And this was a bit of a gamble.

Because he was not a superstar in 2002. Wait, I'll feel free to disagree. I know you have strong Toby Maguire feelings. No?

I just think Spider-House rules us like a major movie. Okay, sure. He had been in that, but he was not Leo. And yet, everyone, probably including Leo, went and saw Toby Maguire's Spider-Man movie anyway.

Thanks. And there's a spider. And there's a spider. And a bite.

And a bite. And a tell-tale bite. And I know that there have been a million origin stories since, and so my little thing kind of... Yeah, it might seem kind of wrote.

But I think it's really interesting in terms of not being afraid to lean into what makes that comic book appealing, which for Spider-Man is sort of a wholesome, real story about a real kid. Really, it is that for Spider-Man, which makes a mind-boggling amount of money. It really does change and kick off something new, a new wave. Sure, there had been superhero movies before, but Spider-Man kicks off a new magnitude of thing.

It makes like double what any other superhero movie had made before. 800 million dollars. And again, starring a not very famous actor. All of this revealed a massive change happening in Hollywood.

That old industry axiom that you would need superstars, maybe that did not apply to superhero movies. Maybe the real star of a Spider-Man movie is Spider-Man, the character, the intellectual property, the IP. We are moving out of the era of movie stars. It no longer makes sense for studios to have sort of a resonant movie star or to what becomes king as IP over stars.

Is Marvel mad at this point? Like, what are you thinking of your Marvel as the Spider-Man is ascending to the ranks of superhero greatness? I don't know if I would say mad, but I do think that this example of Spider-Man of like, okay, sure, we're making plenty of money off the toys. Yeah.

But think of all, look at this box office. Why aren't we getting any of this money, you know, or more of this money, etc. I imagine in a boardroom somewhere, this is about the moment Marvel starts to realize they have created the Spider-Man problem. Back when they sold the Spider-Film rights, they were just a company that sold comic books and toys, but now it seems like the better business was actually making superhero movies.

And if so, then maybe selling away the movie rights to your most popular characters, maybe not the greatest idea in hindsight. But Sony Pictures did have the rights, and of course they kept making movies. They had two more Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, one great, one less great, and then in 2012, Sony introduced a completely new Spider-Man. You were comp?

Really? You sure you think I'm a cop? Andrew Garfield. And it's Ken Tyrell and Blue's, so you know, you're, you're, you're tough.

Now, I feel like it was this Andrew Garfield movie where the general public started to wonder, but is there more to this Marvel Sony deal than we know about? Because this Spider-Man movie appeared to be the same Spider-Man movie we had already signed. We had to watch Peter Parker and get the buy Spider again. We had to watch his poor uncle then die again.

Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben. And then we had to watch Peter learn how to like use webs and sling and stuff again. It was like Sony had forgotten it already made a bunch of Tobey Maguire movies. Why does this film exist?

I mean, Andrew's fans talk to the web games. It's Spider-Man. We're Sony. Just write whatever.

So I'm given this terrible movie a two out of ten. It was confusing to me, to the general public. Like what is happening? Yeah, again, I am defensive of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man, but I remember being in a bar across the street from a movie there as we were about to go watch the amazing Spider-Man and a friend of mine, he asked me, he's like, why?

Are we getting Andrew Garfield Spider-Man? We just said goodbye to Tobey, what's happening? And I said, yeah, in order to keep the rights, they have to keep making them in a timely clip club fashion. For Sony to keep the Spider-Man rights, they apparently have to keep making Spider-Man movies per the contract.

Here's a part of the Sony Marvel contract. I'm going to read, I'm going to hit you with the contract verbiage. Oh, this is it for us. We love reading from a contract.

All right, let's lay it on us, Joanna. All right. Sony must commence production on a new Spider-Man film within three years, nine months, and release it within five years, nine months after the release of preceding picture. Translation, if Sony does not release a Spider-Man movie every five years and nine months, the movie rights go back to Marvel.

And Sony loses one of the most valuable pieces of intellectual property in the world. Question mark, I'm going to go and sit. So if you wondered why there always seems to be a Spider-Man movie, it's because there kind of has to be one if Sony wants to keep the rights. And does this go on for eternity?

Yes. What? This is the contract. This is what the Devil's bargain that Marvel's made with Sony.

I remember what made the Spider-Man problem seem particularly bad, was that at the exact same time the sad, confusing Andrew Garfield Spider-Man came out, the following movie also came out. Call it, Captain. All right, that's enough, Stark. You got to burn it, Thor.

You got to try and bottle it like that, Thor. And Hulk. Smash. Marvel's Avengers.

Yes, Marvel, of course, it started making movies, and now their superheroes were in a movie together fighting bad guys in New York City where Spider-Man lives. But Spider-Man could not be there to help, which only made sense if you understood the eternal legal contractual Spider-Man problem Marvel had created for itself. After the break, Marvel tries to solve its eternal problem and gets in a food fight, a literal food fight. This week on sources and methods, every White House has an official Counterterrorism plan, a strategy document basically, but President Trump's new 2026 plan shifts focus to left wing extremism.

We're unpacking what's in the document and who influenced it this week on sources and methods. You can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2005, Marvel took out a giant loan from Merrill Lynch to start Marvel Studios, to start making its own movies. The problem for Marvel was, at this point, they had licensed out most of their best characters.

Spider-Man, of course, as we talked about for the past 10 minutes, but also, X-Men, Fantastic Four, gone. And so, Marvel Studios was built from the Benchwarmer superheroes, easily forget now, but Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, these were not breakout comic book stars. No, Marvel Studios turned them into giant stars by making amazing movies, and as Marvel Studios got more powerful, and then it was purchased by Disney, it has been able to bring back home its other characters. For example, the movie studio that was sitting on the X-Men in Fantastic Four writes, Disney just bought that studio, problem solved.

It's really just Spider-Man out there swaying in the wind that Marvel wants to bring home. So... One final toy that they went around the neighborhood, and they just are still knocking on the door saying, Jimmy, can I have my toy back? Yeah.

And the story of how Marvel did kind of get Spider-Man back is a doozy. This is where the food fight happens. And just as I've seen here, the year is 2014. Marvel is making tons of movies that people love, though it certainly does suck that Spider-Man cannot show up in those movies because Sony has the rights.

And to keep those rights, Sony is stuck rebooting Spider-Man like Sisyphus. The confusing Andrew Garfield movie does not do great. The sequel to it does even less great. Marvel starts to wonder, maybe, maybe now is our moment to try and get a little control back over Spider-Man.

A couple of names we have to introduce here. Number one, Marvel's big, important movie producer, Kevin Feige. Kevin Feige calls an emergency meeting over at Marvel to say, okay, what if we got Spider-Man back? What would we do with him?

Feige goes off to meet with Sony Pictures, which not unusual. He often went to talk strategy with a big, important movie producer over there, Amy Pascal. Spider-Man played a big part in the fact that Amy Pascal rose to the ranks at Sony. Her association with Spider-Man is a part of her career's legacy.

And so Amy Pascal sits down with Kevin Feige over lunch, sandwiches are ordered in her office, I believe it is. She talks to him and she's like, okay, what are we going to do next? We would like to keep going with this current arrangement. How's that going to play out?

And Kevin basically said, that doesn't work for us. You know, this doesn't work for us anymore. And then Kevin Feige basically says to Amy Pascal, we know that you technically have the rights to Spider-Man. We're not just using that.

But Marvel is very good at making superhero movies now. Maybe you should let us make the next Spider-Man movie for you. Amy Pascal has recently described her emotions here as resentful. She says she cried and she threw a sandwich at Kevin Feige.

You said she threw a sandwich at Kevin Feige? She threw a sandwich at Kevin Feige in this moment. Listen, I've never thought of saying that to someone, but maybe I would if they came in and told me that I wasn't doing a good enough job with this kid. They asked me to babysit.

I hope it wasn't a hot sandwich. We don't know. No, Amy Pascal has confirmed this story. But look at this from Sony's perspective.

Giving Marvel creative control is embarrassing. It's publicly admitting that they need help, which maybe is the kind of thing you'd say privately. Maybe in some emails too, your colleagues. Not the kind of thing you really want getting out in the public.

Tonight, Sony Pictures is flying back against what they say is a brazen attack on their computer systems. At least, I'm not happy. Yeah, Sony got hacked. Lots of private thoughts and private information were suddenly very public.

And for Joanna Robinson covering entertainment at the time, this was a humongous story. It was just, oh my god, I was at home. It was like, is this real? Yeah.

Oh my god, this is real. The best theory is that North Korea targeted Sony because of a Seth Rogen movie. Which is still one of the strangest senses that is ever set out loud. And the hackers leaked all kinds of very important and very embarrassing Sony emails.

And these emails gave us a peek inside Sony and revealed that being a Spider-Man movie company was not always amazing. Yeah, for starters, the emails showed that Sony was jealous of Marvel. Like they had watched Marvel Studios build a whole cinematic universe where superheroes can cross over into each other's movies and fans now expected that kind of thing. But Sony was not in a position to offer it.

In one of Amy Pascal's leaked emails, she basically says, all I have is Spider-Man, his enemies, his relatives, and his girlfriend. How am I supposed to build a whole universe out of that? Also in the leaked emails, we learned that Sony had been looking to create a universe out of the non-Spider-Man intellectual property that it did have, but... They've got Ghostbusters.

They've got Men in Black. Okay, they've got Men in Black in 2014. Sure. And I don't know if you recall, but what do we jump-street was a thing?

Oh, hey. So we start reading about all these bizarre plans that they have, Men in Black in the Ghostbusters Firehouse, or 21 Jump-Street and Men in Black. How can we make mix and match these various IPs? Oh, no.

It's so sad. It's tough. So the Hackmates Sony looked desperate at best, incompetent at worst. Yes, and one other huge thing, the Hack did, was confirm these rumors that had been circulating.

You know, not everybody knew about the sandwich throwing incident, but there had been whispers that Marvel was trying to bring Spider-Man back into the Marvel universe, and these emails seemed to show it. The fans of the world catch wind of this idea that Marvel wants to get more involved in Spider-Man, and so that pushes some pressure on Sony, because all of a sudden, like the fandom's like, well, of course, of course we want that. Oh, but a flagship character, you the fandom and their webcam. Sony from all of our boys had no...

... what they were doing with this franchise. Give the rights back to Marvel Studios, who actually cares about their characters. For me, that's the dream.

So fan pressure is mounting on Sony. Meanwhile, Marvel would still really like to bring Spider-Man back home somehow. And so Marvel goes back to Sony with, it sounds like a variation on the original deal. Basically saying, look, again, we know you're not going to give up the Spider-Man rights, but we are here to help you make Spider-Man movies.

We can co-parent him, collaborate on your next movie, and we Marvel will barely even take any of the money. Marvel puts the full production force behind making Spider-Man films, and only takes 5% back for themselves. And Sony has a 95%. I'm going to go ahead and call it a bad deal with Sony.

It's a great deal for all of us. It's a great deal for Sony. It's technically a bad deal for Marvel, and that is how this deal gets made. Is it a bad deal?

But it was a deal that cracked open the door, just a little, to bringing Spider-Man home into the Marvel universe. It was a pretty clever solution. Marvel would let some of its characters show up and hang out in a Sony Spider-Man movie, which is good for Sony because they're desperate to create a bigger universe for Spider-Man. And then in return, Sony agreed to let Spider-Man show up like a kind of guest star in at least one Marvel movie.

Together, they find a new actor to play Spider-Man, our final Spider-Man, Tom Holland. And the way that we've met this new Spider-Man was very fun, because it was in a movie trailer. This job. Now, notably, this trailer is for Captain America, Civil War, a Marvel movie trailer, previously legally no Spider-Man allowed here.

And at the very end of this trailer, we get a close-up of Iron Man, who says... All right, I'm gonna go to the patients. Under the roof! And the webbing comes out and Spidey drops onto this, you know, and you hear Tom Holland's adorable sort of like squeaky voice or whatever.

Hey, everyone. What are people? What's people's reaction when this happens? Is this a big deal?

Oh my god! This is the biggest deal of all time. The Spider-Man people lost their mind. That's nice!

They showed this to you! This is happening! It's happening! Okay.

The new Spider-Man movie in theaters, the one that's making preposterous amounts of money right now, that is a Tom Holland Spider-Man, part of this new Sony Marvel Co-parenting agreement. And part of the appeal of the movie is this whole strange Sony Marvel history. This is not a spoiler, but one of the co-stars of the new Spider-Man movie is a Marvel character. Dr.

Strange, even though technically the Spider-Man movie is a Sony movie. Lots of fans know that it is a minor miracle we are seeing two studios share their most valuable currency, their intellectual property. One movie studio, allowing one of its characters to be used by another movie studio in their movie. How strange is this?

Look, bizarre. So like, I was trying to look through it to see if there were other instances of this, and you've got like Alien and Predator. There's got like some various things, but nothing touches this. Here's where the Spider-Man deal stands.

Sony still has a film rights. Marvel worked with Sony on the three Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, but they are Sony movies. You won't find them on Disney+. Remember, Disney owns Marvel.

However, Sony let Spider-Man show up in three Marvel movies. Captain America Civil War, Avengers Infinity War, Avengers Endgame. Those are Marvel movies, are on Disney+. It is a little over the place.

Spider-Man is now a little bit like the child of separated parents. It is not always easy on Spider-Man. There have been negotiations between Sony and Marvel, and complete splits, and renegotiations. But so far, they've always worked things out.

For the Spider-Kid. Was selling Spider-Man the worst dumbest thing in the world in the end for Marvel? I think you want my answer to be yes, but I just think it's no. I think no, because I just think the landscape was so different for them then, that it's just like, it was a smart deal at the time.

Yeah. And how can you, how can we look back on the things that we did 20 years ago, and say it was the dumbest thing we ever did when the landscape was so different at the time? For now, the solution to Marvel's Spider-Man problem is this wonderfully bizarre intellectual property dance between two gigantic companies. It is a dance that, as long as there's money to be made, I think we may be watching For Eternity.

Okay, it's Wayland and Kenny in the year 2023 again. And you know how sometimes in a movie they'll replay a moment, but from a totally different perspective that sort of changes everything, we're going to do that for a second. Yeah, yeah, okay. So the moment we're going to rerun is when Sony is in the depths of despair.

Marvel Studios is rising, it's redefining cinema by having all of its superheroes cross over and hang out in each other's movies. And meanwhile at Sony, there was that leaked email from Amy Pascal that said basically, all I have is Spider-Man, his enemies, his relatives, and his girlfriend. How am I supposed to build a whole universe out of that? Yeah, you can sort of see what she means, I guess, because Sony has the rights to this one really famous Peter Parker Spider-Man.

And then I guess technically they do also have the rights to like a mishmash of bench-warmer versions of Spider-Man as well that had been created over time. For example, Sony had Spider-Lizard, which is basically a crocodile in a Spider-Man costume who only ever spoke the words Spider-Lizard. They also had a man-Spider, which is Spider-Man, but further mutated into half-man, half-Spider-Monster. And then Sony also had the Spider-Amoeba, which was created when someone mixed Spider-Man blood into a clone of a guy named Randy.

Yeah, you know, it's not the Avengers. And when we talked to Joanna Robinson about all this, she said, it's funny, you can see all these weird names laid out in excruciating legal detail when you look at Sony's Spider-Man rights contracts. And in them you can see the list of characters that they have access to. And there's a lot of Spider-Man permutations, there's a lot of villains, and then, you know, all of Spider-Man's relatives and stuff like that.

So yeah, technically Sony does have access to this list upwards of 1,540 supporting characters, villains, and Spider-Man permutations. And for years, it appears that Sony looked at that list and thought, I don't know, let's do Peter Parker origin story again. But at some point, someone finally realizes, oh wait, maybe there's a way to go further with the story. Maybe to build a universe out of just Spider-Man, what Sony needed to do was start using all those weird Spider-people.

They just needed a way to bring them all into the same story. And this Joanna Robinson says, this was the genius of Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, that animated movie that seemed to come out of nowhere five years ago. It introduces the concept of the multiverse, which is a bunch of different dimensions stacked on top of each other. And when you look at that list of characters that they have access to, if you're thinking multiversely, all of a sudden, the options are endless.

Hey guys, who are you? I'm Gwen Stacy. I'm from another dimension. How many much better people are there?

Then you got a team, team of Spider-people. Into the Spider-Verse, had a film no-ar version of Spider-Man. Hey fellas, is he in black and white? Hanging out with an anime version of Spider-Man.

Hi guys, look! This could literally not get any weirder. Hanging out with a pig version of Spider-Man. It can get weirder.

My name is Peter Parker. Plus, this movie seems to finally recognize that some of these non-Peter Parker versions of Spider-Man were, in fact, amazing. The Miles Morales version of Spider-Man, of course. Mr.

Morales, moving in the dark. You're late again. Einstein said time was relative, right? Maybe I'm not late.

Maybe you guys are early. Sorry, it was just so quiet. And then Spider-Gwen, who comes from a different version of Earth, where Gwen Stacy, who is typically written as a supporting love interest character, has to be a Spider-Bitten superhero. Yeah, yeah, and now, in this newest Spider-Verse movie that's making all the money, it's got even more miles and even more Spider-Gwen and even more weird Spider-people hanging out together.

And $120 million last weekend seems to suggest that Sony has finally figured it out. And perhaps even learned a thing or two from Marvel, you know, that Sony can also construct a whole cinematic universe out of a mishmash of what appeared to just be a bunch of bench-warmer superheroes. Who all happened to be wearing weird Spider-Man uniforms? Exactly.

Our original episode was produced by Nick Fountain with help from Taylor Washington and Dave Blanchard, who was engineered by Isaac Rodriguez, who was edited by Jess Jank, who was also Planet Money's acting executive producer. This rerun was produced by Emma Peasley and edited by Keith Romer, and if you would like to learn even more about all of the Marvel drama, well, Joanna Robinson has a new book called MCU, The Rain of Marvel Studios, co-authored by David Zollis and Gavin Eddle's. I'm Kenny Malone. I'm Waylon Wong.

This is NPR. Thanks for listening.