By: Russ Burlingame on June 12, 2012
Okay, so that’s maybe an unfair interpretation of events, but hear us out: the folks over at Latino Review are reporting today that they’ve discovered there were negotiations between Sony and Disney to “unify” the Manhattan skyline in The Avengers, including the Oscorp Tower in the film, before timing concerns scuttled the move.
J. Michael Riva, the production designer on The Amazing Spider-Man who designed the building in question, also worked on the Iron Man films before moving over to Sony and was reportedly the link that almost made it happen before his untimely death last week. Both Sony and Disney agreed that it would be an entertaining Easter egg for the fans to include the Spider-skyscraper in The Avengers, but before it was fully rendered, The Avengers had to be sent for 3D conversion and the scenario never came to pass.
Amazing Spider-Man producer Matthew Tolmach told the site that he would be interested in doing something similar in the future, including small, subtle crossovers between his films and the Marvel films owned by other studios. It’s just a business impossibility to cross over the characters themselves, the story says, but perhaps things like buildings, vehicles, newspaper articles and the like can link the films. The real takeaway from the story is that two major motion picture studios actually worked together to make this little Easter egg happen, came to agreeable terms, and would have made it work if not for an approaching deadline.
A minor crossover, to be sure, but if the studios came to an agreement on the matter does that mean this is technically, as far as anyone in charge is concerned, the same Marvel Universe?
