"Of the six films released so far, only the first Venom from 2018 was an unequivocal box office hit netting $856m worldwide, yet its reviews constituted a collective shrug. Its weaker and even more narratively optional sequels, 2021's Venom: Let There Be Carnage and 2024's Venom: The Last Dance, managed $506m and $478m respectively."
"Rothman then added: Scarcity has value you got to make the audience miss you. For those fortunate enough to have missed these films, Sony's Spider-Man Universe is, or was, a series of movies about people (mostly villains or antiheroes) who have at some point met the masked wallcrawler in the comics."
"Morbius in 2022 ($167.5m worldwide on a $75m budget) achieved the rare feat of being more successful as a cultural punchline than as an actual movie. Madame Web (2024 - roughly $100m from a budget north of $80m) proved even less enticing."
Sony's Spider-Man Universe, featuring Spider-Man adjacent characters without Spider-Man himself, has underperformed critically and commercially in recent years. While the first Venom film (2018) earned $856 million worldwide, subsequent entries showed declining returns: Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($506m), Venom: The Last Dance ($478m), Morbius ($167.5m), Madame Web ($100m), and Kraven the Hunter ($62m). Despite this trajectory and minimal audience demand, Sony CEO Tom Rothman announced plans for a franchise reboot with new creative teams. Rothman justified the decision by invoking scarcity value, suggesting the studio will step back to let audiences miss the franchise before relaunching it.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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