Avengers Star Jeremy Renner Invokes Stan Lee In Response to Marvel/Sony Spider-Man Split
It has only been about six hours since reports started leaking out that Marvel Studios and Sony [...]
It has only been about six hours since reports started leaking out that Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures had broken up, and would no longer be producing jointly-controlled Spider-Man movies, but it has been a long and fraught six hours. There are already fan petitions to halt it, rumors that it isn't entirely true anyway, and a pretty impressive social media meltdown. At one point tonight, variations on "Spider-Man," "Spidey," "Marvel," and "Sony" were taking up four of the top five U.S. trending spots on Twitter. So it was only a matter of time before some of Marvel's own started to respond to the rumors.
This response comes from Jeremy Renner, who plays Hawkeye in the Avengers films and who has his own series coming to Disney+ next year in which Clint Barton (Renner) will train Kate Bishop (to be determined) as the next Hawkeye, in a series that appears to be heavily influenced by Matt Fraction and David Aja's fan-favorite run on the title from a few years ago. Renner, knee-deep in Marvel at present, invoked the name of Stan Lee when he called on Sony to help resolve the dispute. You can see his post below.
According to the initial report on the breakup, the bone of contention is a deal would give Disney its stake in the Spider-Man franchise while also bringing Sony's extended universe of Spider-Man movies such as Venom into the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper. Sony turned the offer down outright without so much as a counteroffer. Sony seems not to want to share what is its biggest film franchise. It instead preferred to keep the current arrangement intact, which sees Disney receiving an approximate 5% of each Spider-Man movie's first-dollar gross. Marvel chief Kevin Feige may depart as an adviser on the Spidey films, since some are seeing this split as less-than-amicable. Historically, though, Feige has been one of the Marvel Studios representatives who chipped in feedback on movies where he wasn't officially credited or had little to no official role, simply because it is in his and Marvel's best interest to make sure those movies are as good as they can be.
For now, Spider-Man: Far From Home, the highest-grossing film in Sony's history, is still in theaters (which explains the dip in their stock price after everything blew up online), and will return with a new scene that expands the runtime by 4 minutes in time for a final Labor Day Weekend hurrah.
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