Sony Pictures makes a very specific kind of superhero movie, and that has not translated well into a post-MCU era. Marvel’s own cinematic universe made all others feel superfluous — and while there’s definitely a market for a superhero franchise that doesn’t take itself too seriously, the movies within must actually be worth watching. Sony has struggled with the latter half of that brief for the past decade: the third reboot of its Spider-Man universe started strong with Venom in 2018, but the films that followed have each found new ways to redefine the word “flop.” Sony remained dogged in its quest to revive the Spider-Verse, going so far as to release a whopping three films in 2024. But if Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter, and Venom: The Last Dance proved anything, it’s that the Spider-Verse has been defunct for some time.
Insiders claimed that Sony shelved all the spinoffs it had planned after Madame Web’s box office failure, leading most to assume that the Spider-Verse was officially finished (at least on the live-action front). As the studio has been relatively quiet since, it wasn’t much of a leap — but the powers that be might have just directed their energy to yet another widescale reboot.
Sony’s Spider-Verse is about to be rebooted... again.
Sony CEO Tom Rothman recently appeared on The Town podcast, where he teased “plans” to potentially restart the Spider-Verse. Though characters like Mobius and Kraven were effectively wasted in their big-screen debuts, Rothman claims that Sony will “go back to those” villains down the line in a fresh reboot with a new team. Naturally, he didn’t reveal when fans could expect to see Sony’s anti-heroes reborn, but the idea that the studio is considering it at all is enough to raise some red flags.
This wouldn’t be the first time Sony has hastily rebooted its superhero properties: the studio has shown that it will do whatever it takes to retain its rights to the Spider-Man property. Those rights revert to Marvel if Sony doesn’t produce a Spidey movie every five years, and for a while, it didn’t seem to matter if the movies were good or bad. Now that Sony’s lost a lot of money at the box office, however, one would hope it’s finally rethinking its strategy.
If the true goal is to compete in such a saturated landscape, Sony cannot keep on its charted course. Another reboot so fresh after the last will only exhaust an already exhausted audience — but there’s a way for the studio to keep its franchise alive without really rebooting it at all. Sony already has a wildly popular and influential superhero universe thriving within a different medium: why not just take those failed anti-heroes and resurrect them in animation?
It’s time to abandon the live-action Spider-Verse and embrace animation.
Sony’s live-action Spider-Man films have been chasing the high of Sam Raimi’s celebrated trilogy for decades, and in doing so have totally neglected the studio’s best offering: animation. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse opened the Spidey property up into a whole new world, one that audiences took to immediately. By positioning a new Spider-Man, Miles Morales, as the hero in a parallel universe, Sony effectively updated the franchise for a new generation. As the Spider-Verse films also take place within the multiverse, familiar characters can come and go as they please. It’s an ideal foundation for a franchise that needs to set itself apart; Sony might even be using it for a new animated Venom film.
In a perfect world, Venom won’t be the only character from Sony’s failed films to make the jump into animation. Bringing Mobius, Madame Web, and Kraven into that multiverse would be the cleanest way to remedy the disappointment of their live-action debuts. A Spider-Verse treatment could lend to more intriguing and dynamic takes on the characters, and since anything goes within the multiverse, comic-accurate versions of these villains can easily co-exist alongside more artistic interpretations. Most importantly, it’d eliminate the confusion that another reboot would bring. The superhero world is cluttered enough as it is: it’s time to let one branch of this Spider-Verse fade so that the other can finally thrive.
