The Spider-Man Movie Deal With Marvel “Kept The Lights On” At Sony

Sony chair, Amy Pascal, on Spider-Man movies. “For many years, it was the reason that Sony kept the lights on. it was worth everything.” 

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Amy Pascal, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chair, talked about how she came to Spider-Man. “I knew that I had no actual artistic talent, but I knew that I was good with people, and I knew that I was interested in business. I was never a comic book person. I definitely was a big reader, but I read books as opposed to comic books. I didn’t know that I was going to love comic books, and I’m not sure that I’m a comic book person now. What I am now is somebody who loves Peter Parker. The idea of a young man who is an ordinary person that something extraordinary happens to and he’s trying to navigate through his life, how to be a good person, and how hard it is to be a good person. He was some kind of a cross between Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield and Hamlet; that just all appealed to me. He’s a character that’s constantly in conflict, which is what you’re always looking for when you make movies.”

Back in July, The Wall Street Journal’s podcast, The Journal, hosted by Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson, ran a series of episodes by Ben Fritz looking at the rise of Marvel Studios from comic book publisher to film studio to Disney purchase and the executive and creator battles within. It made a few headlines, but there are lots of gems that seemed to be missed, such as Marvel’s initial relationship with Sony Pictures, led by our favourite Marvel executives, Avi Arad, and Ike Perlmutter, two toy manufacturers who took over the comic book company and made it profitable again. Catch up on more of our coverage with this tag.

Amy Pascal recalled Sam Raimi’s casting process for the first movie. “Sam only ever saw one person. He only ever saw Toby, and he did a screen test with Toby, and we’re like, “Maybe.” And he did another screen test with Toby, and we were like, “Oh. Of course.”  It’s the most expensive movie, and I remember sitting in the editing room and saying, “We need another 20 million to finish the movie.”  I was petrified because I remember thinking, everyone’s going to think it’s not a big enough action movie. Everyone’s going to think it doesn’t have enough testosterone. I remember thinking, “Oh my God, we have made a really emotional comic book movie. I hope people are going to go for it.” And nobody knew who Toby was before that movie. Sorry, Toby, not that nobody knew, but he wasn’t the same Toby as he was after. When we walked in, nobody cared. When the movie was over, he was mobbed. It was very exhilarating…  Nothing had ever done that before. It was one of the most exhilarating moments of my professional life. Sony had never had that kind of a success before, but nobody had. It was the biggest opening of all time for a very long time, and that felt pretty good, especially because we made the movie that we actually wanted to make.”

Yair Landau, a junior business executive at Sony who pushed Sony to make a Spider-Man movie, remembers, “There was a window of time after Spider-Man came out where we gave everybody a bonus. We handed out a hundred dollar bills. Every employee in the company we handed out hundred dollar bills. That was really, really gratifying. It became and remains essentially the most significant piece of IP that Sony Pictures controls.”

And Amy Pascal, “For many years, it was the reason that Sony kept the lights on. It was worth everything.”

That deal with Marvel was $10 for the perpetual rights to Spider-Man and 5% of the gross receipts. It was a deal done at a time of bankruptcy by Marvel and very much regretted since... and one that, it seems, saved Sony. Yair Landau added, “We had made more money as a company than Sony Pictures had ever made, so the funny thing is, so we were so successful that Ike and Avi sued us. They felt like, “Hey, wait a minute. We didn’t get enough of this.”

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