ADollarADay
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I meant to do this sooner, but never did, sorry about that
I figured we could take a look at the Spider-man movie rights since the X-Men and Fantastic Four film rights are returning to Marvel once the Disney acquisition of Fox is completed. The Hulk/Namor movie rights details are mainly unknown (the only thing I know is that Universal has rights of first refusal on Hulk and Hulk family movies, it's unknown if that's in perpetuity or for a trilogy. It's also not known what rights Comcast owns on Namor, but they have some claim on him, supposedly. If someone knows anything more on Namor/Hulk rights, with sources, please do say).
Back to Spider-Man movie rights. I am not going to go over how they got to the point they got and the history of it. I am mainly interested in looking at the available contracts and publicly available information along with educated guessing based on these. I am going to focus on financials, film rights, tv rights, reversion period and rights to transfer the contract. I am still not sure what Sony got for giving up animated TV rights in 2009 and why Disney didn't go for live action tv rights at that time as well.
I may have missed or misread some of these things because the contracts are long as ****. If I did so, please feel free to point it out and correct me.
So without further ado, there have been 3 amendments to the original contract, let's go through them:
2004 Amendment:
2011 Amendment:
This contract was between Sony and Disney and was mainly Disney buying the remaining 25% merchandising rights that Sony owned for Spider-Man. The contracts have a comprehensive list of characters that Sony has rights to (Scheduled Characters), characters that can't be used by Marvel or Sony (Frozen characters), characters that are shared (Fox Kingpin characters), and characters that only Marvel can use. There is also a list of what Sony can do for alternative versions of Spider-man.
This is the amendment that unfortunately we don't have access to on wikileaks. This amendment was the one that allowed Spider-man in the MCU. Apparently the only thing that changed is what I describe below, but I find that unlikely. I think Disney would definitely want to change the transferring of the character and protect themselves more, basically getting a better grip on the character to get the full rights back, but we can mainly guess what - if anything else - was changed here.
I figured we could take a look at the Spider-man movie rights since the X-Men and Fantastic Four film rights are returning to Marvel once the Disney acquisition of Fox is completed. The Hulk/Namor movie rights details are mainly unknown (the only thing I know is that Universal has rights of first refusal on Hulk and Hulk family movies, it's unknown if that's in perpetuity or for a trilogy. It's also not known what rights Comcast owns on Namor, but they have some claim on him, supposedly. If someone knows anything more on Namor/Hulk rights, with sources, please do say).
Back to Spider-Man movie rights. I am not going to go over how they got to the point they got and the history of it. I am mainly interested in looking at the available contracts and publicly available information along with educated guessing based on these. I am going to focus on financials, film rights, tv rights, reversion period and rights to transfer the contract. I am still not sure what Sony got for giving up animated TV rights in 2009 and why Disney didn't go for live action tv rights at that time as well.
I may have missed or misread some of these things because the contracts are long as ****. If I did so, please feel free to point it out and correct me.
So without further ado, there have been 3 amendments to the original contract, let's go through them:
2004 Amendment:
- Financials
- Rights extension fee, which must be paid within 9 months of the preceding picture's initial theatrical release = 5MM
- Production terms expires 3 years after the date of any rights extension payment (essentially making it 3 years, 9 months)
- Timing to release the next picture is 5 years after the date of any rights extension payments (essentially 5 years, 9 months)
- SPE to pay Marvel Production advancements when principal photography or animation starts. The cost would be 10-12.5MM minus the rights extension fee already previously paid
- SPE to pay Marvel 5% of the BO gross
- I'm not sure what Marvel got for the Home Release. I am not sure if DVD/Blu-Ray/VOD would be considered merchandise or not
- Film Rights
- Production terms keep going indefinitely as long as SPE continues to produce and release pictures
- Production term expires 9 months after the initial theatrical release of the preceding picture unless SPE pays a rights extension fee
- must commence production within 3 years 9 months and release it within 5 years 9 months after the release of preceding picture
- Production terms keep going indefinitely as long as SPE continues to produce and release pictures
- TV Rights
- Sony has the animated and live action tv rights
- Reversion and Transfer
- If Sony doesn't produce or release a movie within the specified deadlines above, all rights in the contract revert to Marvel
- Sony can sell and transfer the rights contained in the license agreement to individuals or other corporations, including other Major Studios
- If Sony doesn't produce or release a movie within the specified deadlines above, all rights in the contract revert to Marvel
- Contract Links
2011 Amendment:
This contract was between Sony and Disney and was mainly Disney buying the remaining 25% merchandising rights that Sony owned for Spider-Man. The contracts have a comprehensive list of characters that Sony has rights to (Scheduled Characters), characters that can't be used by Marvel or Sony (Frozen characters), characters that are shared (Fox Kingpin characters), and characters that only Marvel can use. There is also a list of what Sony can do for alternative versions of Spider-man.
- Financials
- Minimum film budget of 75MM, 2000 screens, and PG-13 rating
- Disney pays Sony 280MM plus 3.5% of each film's BO gross (with a limit of 35MM per film and 130MM every 10 years) to buy them out of merchandising participation
- SPE does not have to pay a rights extension fee or a licensing fee to Disney
- Sony pays Disney 100MM to buy them out of each film's participation gross, essentially Disney pays Sony to use Spider-man in movies
- I'm not sure if Disney gets anything for Home Release. I am not sure if DVD/Blu-Ray/VOD would be considered merchandise or not
- Film Rights
- Production terms keep going indefinitely as long as SPE continues to produce and release pictures
- SPE must commence production within 3 years 9 months and release it within 5 years 9 months after the release of preceding picture
- If SPE releases 3 movies within 8 consecutive years then SPE can extend the production deadline to 5 years to commence production and 7 years to release after release of preceding picture (Three Within Eight option)
- TV Rights
- Marvel has the rights to animated tv series that are under 44 minutes in length
- Sony has the live action tv rights and animated tv rights to shows over 44 minutes in length
- Reversion and Transfer
- If Sony doesn't produce or release a movie within the specified deadlines above, all rights in the contract revert to Marvel
- Sony can sell and transfer the rights contained in the license agreement to individuals or other corporations, including other Major Studios
- Contract Links
This is the amendment that unfortunately we don't have access to on wikileaks. This amendment was the one that allowed Spider-man in the MCU. Apparently the only thing that changed is what I describe below, but I find that unlikely. I think Disney would definitely want to change the transferring of the character and protect themselves more, basically getting a better grip on the character to get the full rights back, but we can mainly guess what - if anything else - was changed here.
- Financials
- Disney does not pay 3.5% of the BO gross if the movie does over 750MM WW. We don't know what it goes down to and if it's a sliding or flat lower percentage
- Links
