Spider-Man Facepalm: Clueless Sony Pictures Executive Blames Critics For Marvel Movie Failures Before Stepping Down

Oh Sony Pictures... you're such a clueless movie studio with a bunch of clueless executives when it comes to how to use your live action rights to the Spider-Man franchise. 

I have not done an opinion piece here on the website for a long time, but this news really bites in the wrong ways so I'm bringing some opinion into this one.

Sony Pictures chair and CEO Tony Vinciquerra, who is taking his hefty year end bonus and stepped down from his position in January, spoke with the LA Times and placed blame on their recent Spider-Man-less movie universe failures onto critics instead of taking a look in the mirror and seeing that Sony does not know how to properly make any film under the Spider-Man intellectual property (IP).

"Let's just touch on 'Madame Web' for a moment. 'Madame Web' underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix. For some reason, the press decided that they didn't want us making these films out of 'Kraven' and 'Madame Web,' and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with 'Venom,' but the audience loved 'Venom' and made 'Venom' a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason."

Really?!?!

You're comparing a hugely popular Venom character, who is a top tier most popular Spider-Man villain and by that fact alone can print lots of money, to that of lesser characters like Madame Web, who no real comic fan cares about or wanted to see of movie of, and Kraven, who is more popular in comic fandom but still nowhere as popular as Venom.

He continued on what he thinks needs to be done moving forward with the IP.

"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."

Okay, he's not wrong about it being "snake-bitten" but that's not the fault of the critics. That's his own fault and that fault of those under him who are green lighting these projects and who obviously have zero self-awareness about how both critics and fans see the quality (or lack thereof) of these Spider-Man-less films.

Fans want Spider-Man, hard stop. Sony owns the live action rights and Disney/Marvel Studios cannot tell them no when it comes to any project under the IP that Sony might want to put into development. And while Sony has partnered with Marvel Studios for actor Tom Holland's MCU Spider-Man adventures, Sony could still try and make a real Spider-Man movie with actor Andrew Garfield coming back (fans would love this and he said if the story is right he is down to return) or perhaps a live action Miles Morales. 

Or just maybe it seems like the smartest resolution here is for Sony and Disney to finally sit down in a conference room and seriously talk about what it takes for Disney to re-aquire Spider-Man's rights from Sony. Sony obviously does not know what they are doing with the IP outside of the animated Spider-Verse films and it seems like the time is coming sooner than later where Sony needs to figure out if retaining these rights is even worth it since they have to put out a movie within the timeframe of the licensed contract of the live action rights, or they lose the rights if they don't and they revert back to Disney.

Maybe they should let the rights just revert back if they cannot come to a reasonable dollar amount to sell the rights back to Disney. But as of right now, each new release of these Spider-Man-less films only devalues the IP further... maybe that's Disney's thought and plan at the moment so they can get it at a discount.

One can dream of the day when Sony no longer controls the live action rights to the web slinger.