I think the issue is more about franchise fatigue than anything else. ASM grossed $759 million while ASM2 grossed $709 million despite negative reviews and poor word-of-mouth. But the last Spider-Man franchise had a film in 2014. MCU Spider-Man was introduced in 2016 via Captain America: Civil War. Two years isn't enough time for audiences to have fully moved on from the prior franchise.
Warner Bros. waited four years before debuting a new Batman, and Fox brilliantly used time travel to pass the baton from the older X-Men to a younger group of X-Men. By comparison, Sony dropped the ball because of their desperation to build a shared cinematic universe. But they aren't alone in making such poor decisions, as Universal has shown similar levels of desperation in their mismanaged efforts to create their so called "Dark Universe" between Dracula Untold, and the recent failure of the Mummy reboot.
Oh how I long for the 80s and 90s. Film making is being ruined by cinematic universes.
Franchise fatigue is a myth nothing more its about how good the movie is. If franchise fatigue was really a issue we wouldn't have like 24 bond movies, we wouldn't have like fast and the furios 9 or what ever coming out in the next year or so, we wouldn't have so many sequles over all in the first place. When movies makes less then he movie before in a franchise it is normally a case of the movie being a worse movie then the movie before. Yes you may have some movies like Spider-Man 3 were the movie made more WW then Spider-Man 2 but that was because Spider-Man 2 was great and from trailers Spider-Man 3 looked like it was going to be even better so the hype was crazy. Yes Spider-Man 3 made a lot of money but it had bad legs and that was because it was not that good. If it had been good the movie would have easily done a billion. If not for all the hype created by Spider-Man 2 then Spider-Man 3 would have done much worse.
Not really. The 30 highest grossing movies of all time have made over $1 billion each, and of those 30, 27 of them are from 2003 or later (the exceptions being The Phantom Menace, Titanic, and Jurassic Park). In fact, 12 of the 30 films to cross $1 billion have been released in the past three years. If this were the early 2000s, your assertion would be true, but $1 billion has quickly become the new target for tentpole films. Also worth consideration is the fact that the aforementioned data is unadjusted for inflation.
This is why Sony rebooted Spider-Man again. AMS2 grossed $700 million, a figure that was once considered remarkable. But for Sony, the failure to hit $1 billion was enough of a disappointment to spur a reboot. Many critics considered Batman v Superman a disappointment because it only crossed $ 800 million rather than $1 billion.
I suppose there is room to argue whether or not it is realistic for film studios and critics to expect tentpole films to hit $ 1 billion, but for now, $1 billion grosses are becoming far more common.
Yep a billion is not what it used to be any more because of inflation, bigger internation market and 3d. A billion back in like the early 2000's is more like a movie doing 1.3-1.5 billion or something. When a movie in a franchise makes less money then ones before when ticket prices are higher, bigger market and have 3d when the ones before didn't that is a really bad thing. Takes asm2 it made around 80 million less then Spider-Man 2 the lowest of the first 3 Spider-Man movies even thought it had 10 years worth of inflation on its side and bigger market and 3d to add to its money. You used to have maybe 1 billion movie a year now you have like multiple. In a few more years the average like blockbuster is going to be like a billion. Just think about this for a 2nd when the first Spider-Man movie came out it was the first movie to do 100+ OW now the record is almost 250m.
Not only that but if you look at how Spider-Man has done WW compard to other movies that came out the same year the amazing Spider-Man movies did a lot worse and a amazing Spider-Man 3 would have been like a 600 million movie most likely meaning another drop.
Hear is how Spider-Man movies ranked WW for the year they came out.
2002 Spider-Man 3erd behind LOTR and Harry potter
2004 Spider-Man 2 again 3erd behind LOTR and Shrek 2
2007 Spider-Man 3 again 3erd behind Harry potter and one of the Pirates movies.
Now on the other hand lets look at amazing Spider-Man movies
2012 amazing Spider-Man 7th
2014 amazing Spider-Man 2 finished 9th
If we saw amazing Spider-Man 3 it could have follow out of the top 10.
Spider-Man HC you look at it at best is going to finish below BATB,TFATF,STAR WARS 8 and that would mean 4th at best. I say best because it may not catch GOTG 2.