Spider-Man and The Avengers may all live in the same comic book universe, but rights to make movies based on those characters are currently owned by different studios. Sony has the Amazing Spider-Man franchise, and Marvel Studios/Disney owns the rights to The Avengers. And yet that hasn’t stopped fans from dreaming of a crossover movie event that would join the two franchises so far.
But maybe this will: Amazing Spider-Man 2 producer Avi Arad has just told IGN that although he isn’t ruling out a crossover somewhere down the line, he doesn’t want to resort to a marketing stunt unless they run out of ideas for Spider-Man and his expanded universe on the big screen.
“I think I’m probably a little bit of the militant here,” Avid Arad says. “I think it will take a moment in which we’ve run out of ideas. There’s so much to tell about Spider-Man. There’s so much to tell about the Sinister Six. The relationship between Spider-Man and Venom will bring a whole other world in.”
Arad’s co-producer Matt Tolmach backed up Avi Arad’s position with the following:
“Stunts can be cool but it’s also a business, and so the other side of the answer is they’re owned by different companies. And there’s a ton left in Sony’s world; there’s a lot of business left because there’s a lot of story left. So for them to want to take this character and put it with Marvel and Disney is a huge undertaking and probably, as Avi’s saying, isn’t necessary until you feel like, ‘Wow, we’re sort of out of ideas. What should we do?’ And we’re far from out of ideas.”
Nobody could have known how much of a headache these superhero rights would be when Marvel sold their characters to different production companies, years before the superhero movie boom of the 2000s. And it seems like it’ll be a cold day in Hell before Sony lets their rights to Spider-Man lapse and fall back into the hands of Marvel Studios, who would probably like very much to get one of their flagship characters back, and into the same cinematic universe as their many other heroes. So if you’ve been holding your breath for a Spider-Man/Avengers crossover movie, you may want to stop right now. Apparently t’s going to be a long wait.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
