What a prized kill for Kraven the Hunter. After Sony’s last Spider-Man spinoff film failed to become a box office success — a problem most of Sony’s Spidey-free Spider-Man movies have had — the studio is hitting the reset switch on the entire franchise. Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman confirmed during an interview with entertainment podcast The Town that the studio’s universe of movies about Spider-Man characters and villains will be rebooted.
Rothman shared absolutely no details about what that reboot will look like, when it will happen, or who will be involved. All he could confirm was that they’re starting over with new people involved. The news comes after Kraven the Hunter landed in theaters at the end of 2024 with disastrous reviews and poor box office performance. According to Deadline, the film was set to lose Sony $71 million after its theatrical run, which stalled out at $62 million globally against a reported budget of up to $130 million.
It wasn’t always bad news for what the studio had officially dubbed Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU). The first two Venom films both cleared $500 million at the box office, with the first movie, 2018’s Venom, earning over $850 million globally. And while the follow-up Venom: Let There Be Carnage was definitely a step down from the first movie, it was 2022’s Morbius that hinted at something seriously wrong.
Morbius struggled to reach $167 million in theaters and, at this point, is known more for being a Power Rangers meme than for being a movie. Madame Web arrived and bombed. Venom: The Last Dance, the third and final entry in Tom Hardy’s trilogy of Venom movies, managed to rebound from the lows of Morbius and Madame Web but still couldn’t match the first two films at the box office.
Interestingly, the final three films in the SSU (Madame Web, Venom: The Last Dance, and Kraven the Hunter) were all released in 2024. That level of overabundance certainly didn’t help the movies succeed, which is something Rothman says both Sony and Marvel recognize about the SSU and Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Scarcity has value, you got to have the audience miss you… Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he explained when discussing the overall decline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the last few years. It’s an issue both Rothman and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige are keenly aware of.
Looking forward, Marvel Studios and Sony will next partner on Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth chapter in the story of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, which hits theaters on July 31. Sony’s live-action Spider-Noir series starring Nicolas Cage is set to be released on Prime Video later this year.
