First, thank you to everyone who responded to my question on the profits of TASM2.
My take away is pretty much what I thought...
The movie didn't make as much as what Sony was hoping, but it did make millions of dollars in profit.
Yes, maybe they were hoping for the billion mark, but only got to $700 or $800 million. And yes, out of that the profit is much less.
But $300 million (even if it's before "overhead") is still $300 million. The point being that Sony has and will continue to make money with their Spider Man films. I believe they will be discussing the ways to make their next Amazing Spider Man film more profitable, which is very possible.
First, they are going to need to cut back in certain areas. For example, how much did it cost them to have that whole mech Rhino CGI scene at the end? And what was the purpose, to show us he's ready to move on and be Spider Man again? Meh... IMO, they should have just ended the movie after Gwen's death, with the Goblin getting away, and after they showed us that Peter has promised revenge. Revenge is a good story point...
The point is that if they can still make say $300 million profit (give or take) then they will want crazy money and rights (or possibly certain levels of control) to sell this back to Disney. It's just not in Sony's favor to do this deal for anything less than like $1 billion and some control. Disney is not going to agree to that.
So, that will leave Sony having to go forward with a new movie. A reboot would not make sense, but they can easily change their plans for the next movie in order to fix the places where they went bad, and maximize their profit. First, one main villain! Less Oscorp behind the scenes stuff (still need a little though). Maybe just one secondary villain.
So again, if they went with a Kraven story, with Kraven taking on the "hunt of a lifetime" in order to obtain Peter's blood (needed to stabilize Harry), you have a solid story. Simply put, Kraven gets beat solidly in their first meeting, forcing him to get "enahnced" by Oscorp. Add in Black Cat, a little MJ friendship only stuff, more Aunt May, some minimal Bugle stuff, a little Empire State U stuff, and maybe a secondary villain like Cameleon; and you've got something to work with.
Seems like they need to stabilize and see if they can reach say $350 million profit, instead of going for the huge story, which means holding off on the Sinister Six as the villains, and totally doing away with any offshoot movies (especially the stupid S6 redemption travesty) at this time...
I'm sorry but it doesn't seem like you read any of our answers in full. Sony budgeted their year based on the assumption Spider-Man would make 1 billion dollars at the box office, not 700 million. Sony is hurt in a number of ways by this:
1. Spider-Man is what you call a "tent-pole" franchise. This is defined as a franchise that, like a pole does to a tent, helps support the smaller and less successful ventures of the studio. For instance, any of the smaller more artistic films released under Sony were funded by tentpoles. Unforeseen troubles, such as the fiasco with 'The Interview', not being widely released are also covered by tentpoles. Sony is already a struggling film studio and with Spider-Man only providing HALF the profit they expected, the studio suffers as much as a family that only received HALF of a paycheck.
2. The Amazing Spider-Man had a luge-warm reception. There was a lot of positivity surrounding the film, but it was largely based on the tone of the promising foundation it set towards films. Given that the movie was following Spider-Man 3 and was a reboot of a popular franchise, a dip in profits was expected. However Sony and the general audience seemed to expect a rise in profit with the sequel. Because there was an even further dip, with a third negative/mixed reception, the franchise is losing the name value it needs for those massive opening numbers.
3. Sony needed this film to be a name they could use to market Sinister Six and Venom. The studio has already put tens of millions of dollars into these projects (again something they expected their tentpole to cover). Because the film was so poorly received the studio can't be confident in Spin-Offs of the movie being a success. Marvel Studios has been making huge profits, and even made Guardians a well known property, however they have yet to make The Incredible Hulk to for this same reason. If the world wasn't well received the first time around, who's going to put money down that people will want to explore it further? The performance of Amazing Spider-Man 2 puts doubt on that possibility.
4. You suggest lowering the budget to increase the profits. This is something Sony has been trying to do since Spider-Man 3. The budgets for Spider-Man 3, 4, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 all inflated out of control during production. This was part of the purpose for the reboot in the first place, the target range was 70-80 million dollars. However Sony has continued to go over budget despite all their best efforts.
5. As I said early Spider-Man is a tent-pole, in fact it is their largest tentpole. Not only did it underperform, but it do so on one of the most devastating years Sony has ever had. Even if they managed to get 350 million dollars as you suggest, Sony would still be hurting substantially from the box office performance of the film. No only that the fact that Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy are out performing a superhero, who's so popular his merch sells more than all other superheroes (batman/superman included) combined, is a very very bad sign for the franchise.
Finally I can't help but notice you seem to think the film completely revolves around the script. Unfortunately the scripting doesn't matter all that much. You can have a mediocre script (Kick-Ass) that comes out fantastically because of the direction and the editing, and you can have great scripts be destroyed by those in the production team (TASM 2?). Not only that the film's budget is more determined by the technical aspects than the script. Notice the Avengers had a budget of 170 million dollars, while TASM 2 had a budget of 200 million. The Avengers featured a flying aircraft carrier, a robotic looking man who flies around in a mech, two gods, a monster, the destruction of Manhattan, and a full blown alien invasion. The film's budget could easily be just as high with a villain like Kraven as it would be with a character like Electro. You have to realize no one goes out looking to make an unreasonably expensive film or a bad film. The failures are on the part of the Studio and revolve more around the production itself.
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