So what happens if Venom flops? When Sony and Disney sit down next year after far from home and revisit the deal. I think Disney might make a move on the full rights. They can argue that Venom damaged the brand if its bad and its confusing Disneys consumers as to what is and isnt in the MCU. Disney will offer a nice 2 or 3 billion for the rights IMO.
No way it gets even close to 1B IMO.
If Venom flops (let's say 300-400MM WW. That's probably flop territory, if it does below 300MM WW....) then Sony will be in a precarious position.
To reiterate, Disney wants the full rights back, make no mistake about it. Venom flopping will just further strengthen Disney's negotiation position, which will already be extremely strong post closing of the Fox acquisition. Disney has no incentive to resign the agreement now that their sandbox got a lot bigger. Especially when they have to pay tens of millions of dollars to Sony based on the BO gross for every Spider-man movie made. From a business perspective, Disney has no need to resign and can wish Sony good luck with the license. The only way I see Disney resigning is if one or both of the following are true:
1) SM merchandise really took a nose dive after ASM2. We don't have evidence of this at all though and merchandise probably saw an uptick after that movie came out
2) Concessions are given by Sony and they loosen their grip on the license. We don't know exactly what the 2015 amendment did besides a change in the % that Disney has to pay Sony. If they haven't already changed this prior to the 2015 deal, I believe things like annulment of rights to assign (section 23), Fox Kingpin characters fully reverse and are not available to SPE (schedule 7B, section 4f), further revision to the fee (i.e. go back to Sony paying Marvel 5% of the BO gross. Section 7), changes to the reversion dates (i.e. three within eight removed, section 6b), live action television production (section 6e) etc. Some of those might have been changed in 2015, but Disney would want even further changes before resigning.
OTOH if Venom is successful (let's say 700-800MM+ WW), then you can expect Sony to yank Spider-man from the MCU after FFH. Sony has an incentive to resign the agreement right now and they know that Disney can squeeze them and will want more out of the license to resign, if not get the whole license all at once. But if Venom makes that much, then they will have the incentive to take a risk and bring it all in house for their own universe. They'd most likely have to recast Tom Holland though.
Inhumans and some of the Agents of Shield characters (ex. Absorbing Man, Mockingbird, etc.) may be a different story, but I don't think the Netflix ones (aside from maybe Iron Fist) are a good fit at all for the tone of the MCU. Deadpool may be R-Rated, but aside from that he is still a comedic character that wouldn't be that out of place beyond the rating. A serious, violent, dark character like Punisher would stick out like a sore thumb. I'd be stunned to see a proper Punisher film set in the MCU.
I can see a MAX label for R rated Marvel movies that Deadpool would be released under. I also think a Punisher movie could work and hopefully Feige and friends are not averse to it.
I also would love to see Inhumans in the movies. Even with the X-Men coming home. I got very interested in their stories and the whole slave owner angle. Scott Buck just sucks and Perlmutter was trying to use them to imitate the X-Men.
