New Report Suggests Marvel's Requested Stake In Spider-Man Was Less Than Initial Reports

More details are coming to light regarding the Disney and Sony impasse that led to a deal not getting done between the two studios, at least at the moment, and there one discrepancy seems to be what Disney actually asked for. Initial reports stated that Disney had asked for a 50% stake in regards to upcoming Spider-Man movies, but in a new report from THR that number isn't as high. The number cited here is a 30% stake, which is still significant but 20% can make a world of difference when you're talking about over a billion dollars made at the box office, which Spider-Man: Far From Home achieved.

Here's how the numbers would work if that deal was in place for Far From Home (on its simplest terms by the way, as there is plenty of smaller details in contracts that could shake this final number up). The budget for Far From Home was $160 million, and you often double that for advertising costs. If you double it that number becomes $320 million. Subtracting $320 from the box office pull of 1,110,357,640 billion leaves us with $790,357,640, and a 30% cut of that is $237,107,292 million for Marvel and the rest for Sony ($553,250,348).

For Sony, it seems even the 30% number cuts too far into their profits for their liking, and any studio would rather have that $790 million over the $553 million amount, especially since they don't get any of the merchandising money or money from the MCU films. It's also one of Sony's only big moneymaking franchises.

Sony also gets an annual royalty from Marvel depending on how well the MCU Spider-Man films do. The bigger they do at the box office the lower the royalty, and on the previous film that was around $30 million.

It's also understandable why Marvel wants some of that pie, as Spider-Man is easily their most iconic character. Also, while it might not be over $2 billion like Endgame, $200 million isn't anything to sneeze at, even for a studio the size of Disney, so any amount they can get on top would be a win.

Marvel still has all the merchandising rights for the character of course, so they still do get money from the movies through the toy lines, but it's not directly from the profits of the film.

There's lots of money to be made on both sides, so hopefully, this thing can get resolved at some point down the line.