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Spider-Man Leaves MCU After Surprise Sony-Disney Split Announcement
In a surprise move, following the news that Spider-Man: Far From Home has become Sony Pictures' highest-grossing release of all time, with a worldwide haul of $1.109bn (£914.33m), surpassing 2012's 007 outing Skyfall, the company have announced they are to end the rights agreements which allows the character of Spider-Man, the rights to whom are owned by Sony, to appear in Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe productions.

The character, now played by British actor Tom Holland, first appeared in Disney's 2016 production Captain America: Civil War, through a deal between Sony and Marvel which allowed the character to appear in Marvel Studios films such as Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, seeing Marvel co-producing the Spider-Man films, beginning with Spider-Man: Homecoming, with Sony.

The decision to re-cast and to approach Marvel was made after the reaction to 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, starring Andrew Garfield, which took $708.98m (£576.87m) globally but was badly received and reviewed, causing the cancellation of a third Garfield / Spider-Man film.

The breakdown between the two companies seems to have come through Marvel, and parent company Disney, wanting a larger share of the franchise, while Sony wanted to stay with the current arrangement, which saw Disney getting 5% of 'first dollar gross', meaning from all theatrical and ancillary takings before the production budget is recouped, as well as the very lucrative merchandising rights.

Sony film studio chief Tom Rothman and Marvel president Kevin Feige are believed to have been discussing the arrangement for months but neither party was willing to concede enough to come to an agreement, leading to the breakup of the partnership and Feige leaving any producing role on any future Spider-Man movies from Sony, for which Tom Holland is apparently contracted but has not yet been scheduled.

Sony has had the film rights to the character since 1999, bought when the pre-Disney Marvel was restructuring after bankruptcy and had sold the rights to a number of its characters to different film studios, with rumours that at one point the complete Marvel library of characters was on sale to producers for what now seems to be a rock-bottom fire sale price of $25m (£20.34m), but no studio at the time wanted to buy the entire inventory.

In the years since Marvel has gained the film rights back to most of its characters, and with the purchase of Fox by Disney has regained both X-Men and Fantastic Four, but Spider-Man is by far the most popular not held by the studio. In addition to Sony has the rights to a number of Spider-Man-related characters, such as Venom, which featured in 2007';s Spider-Man 3, and was recently in a stand-alone feature with Tom Hardy in the title role, and which earned a surprisingly strong $856m (£696.5m) globally after very mixed reviews. A sequel, with Hardy reprising his role and Andy Sirkis directing, is set for 2021. In addition the studio is in production with Morbius, a vampire character from the Spider-Man comics, starring Jared Leto, set for release in June 2020.

Sony also announced yesterday, the 19th, that Far From Home would be rereleased over the Labor Day weekend at the beginning of September in the US with an additional four minutes of footage, reputedly an action set-piece. So far the two Tom Holland-starring films have grossed $1.99bn (£1.619bn) globally.

20 Aug