Overview
Spider-Man in film dates back to 1977, his rights belonging to Marvel until 1999, when Sony bought them for $7 million. He has been Marvel's most successful character in the cinema industry ever since. After selling the Spider-Man motion picture rights to Sony, Marvel built its own studio, eventually developing the Marvel Cinematic Universe without its most renowned character. This would change in 2016, when Marvel finally was able to add Spider-Man to its cinematic universe, after a licensing deal between Sony and Disney. The agreement ended up being successful to both companies. The following two Avengers sequels, finally with Spider-Man, crossed the $2 billion mark at worldwide box office for the first time. Meanwhile, Sony in association with Marvel launched a new superhero universe, leading Sony to get in 2022 the biggest deal ever for streaming rights: a $3 billion streaming license to Netflix and Disney platforms.
History
The fictional character Spider-Man, a comic book superhero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and featured in Marvel Comics publications, has appeared as a main character in numerous theatrical and made-for-television films.
The first 10 films were linked to television series and screened in theaters only in certain countries. Nicholas Hammond starred as Peter Parker / Spider-Man in the 1977 made-for-television film Spider-Man that spawned a broadcast series, and would appear as the character in two sequels edited from those episodes. In 1978, the Toei Company created a theatrical spin-off of their Spider-Man television series, with Shinji Todō reprising his role as Takuya Yamashiro / Spider-Man. None of these films had a theatrical release in the United States.
By 1999, Sony Pictures Entertainment had acquired the motion picture rights to the character for cinema and TV, creating Spider-Man animated TV series, and two film series until 2014: the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy of films (2002–2007) starring Tobey Maguire as the character, and the Marc Webb Amazing Spider-Man films (2012–2014) starring Andrew Garfield in the role.
In February 2015, Disney, Marvel Studios, and Sony made a deal to share the Spider-Man film rights, leading to a new iteration of Spider-Man being introduced and integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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