In direction of the tip of Sony Image’s latest Marvel film “Kraven the Hunter,” the titular anti-hero — performed with most stomach musculature by Aaron Taylor-Johnson — experiences a chilling hallucination during which he’s surrounded by a horde of spiders. It’s a clear allusion to the character’s biggest nemesis within the Marvel comics, Spider-Man.

Additionally it is virtually actually the closest the character (or, not less than, Taylor-Johnson’s model of him) will ever get to confronting the web-slinger.

“Kraven” is projected to absorb one of many lowest-ever opening weekends for a Marvel superhero movie, making it the third of Sony Footage’ unsuccessful makes an attempt to spin-off a secondary Spider-Man character into its personal film franchise, following 2022’s “Morbius” with Jared Leto and final February’s “Madame Internet” with Dakota Johnson. The looming field workplace failure virtually actually signifies the tip of this endeavor on the studio, which one educated insider at Sony imputed to an industry-wide “irrational exuberance about superheroes” that has in the end led to the general diminishment of the style’s primacy because the main pressure on the field workplace.

What it doesn’t signify, nevertheless, is the tip of Sony’s Marvel Universe.

For one factor, technically talking, there by no means actually was a Sony Marvel Universe, or a Sony Spider-Man Universe, or another official designation akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the newly relaunched DC Universe. Sony has by no means approached its comedian e-book variations with that stage of intentional narrative cohesion, as exemplified by the studio’s informal, lowercased and rhetorically ungainly phrasing for its superhero movies: Sony’s universe of Marvel characters.

For an additional, Sony stays deeply invested in making motion pictures about Spider-Man, the beloved Marvel character who launched the present period superhero cinema with 2002’s “Spider-Man.” The fourth Spider-Man movie starring Tom Holland is predicted to start out filming in 2025, in partnership with Marvel Studios (extra on this later); the animated “Spider-Man: Throughout the Spider-Verse” is in manufacturing and can conclude the Oscar-winning trilogy specializing in Miles Morales; and Sony is producing a live-action “Spider-Man Noir” sequence starring Nicolas Cage for Amazon Prime Video. 

Sony insiders additionally fiercely defend the success the three “Venom” movies starring Tom Hardy, which have earned greater than $1.8 billion worldwide. The most recent movie, “Venom: The Final Dance,” has earned the bottom grosses but for the franchise ($473 million), particularly in opposition to the $856 million world take for 2018’s “Venom.” However “The Final Dance” value $120 million — thrifty for a superhero film — and it improved on the worldwide grosses of 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” So there’s actually no monetary motive for Sony to cease making “Venom” motion pictures any time quickly.

However “Venom” — constructed round a extensively in style character with its personal distinct imprint on the tradition — additionally offered Sony with the misunderstanding that audiences would flock to see a film about any Spider-Man character with out Spider-Man within the movie.

“All of those characters are well-known as a result of they went up in opposition to Spider-Man,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “Sadly for Sony, that they had a style of success with ‘Venom,’ and that form of spoiled every thing for them, as a result of they thought they may simply spin off all of those characters. I don’t suppose they realized that Venom might carry a franchise, whereas these different characters couldn’t. To not have Spider-Man in these movies was the deadly flaw.”

Sony is way from alone in aggressively increasing its superhero portfolio on the finish of the 2010s, solely to climate a pointy decline each in high quality and viewers curiosity within the 2020s. However the studio was caught in a singular catch-22 of its personal making: the unprecedented deal between the studio and Disney’s Marvel Studios to share Spider-Man throughout the MCU, beginning with 2016’s “Captain America: Civil Warfare” and 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” The partnership — during which Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige and former Sony Footage chief Amy Pascal produce the Tom Holland-led Spidey movies for Sony Footage — has been fabulously profitable for Sony, with worldwide grosses topping $3.9 billion. Nevertheless it additionally siloed off Holland’s Peter Parker from any Sony initiatives that aren’t formally a part of the MCU.

“The company entanglements when studios attempt to work collectively are actually exhausting,” says one high government with intensive expertise within the superhero area. “Sony has no flexibility. They’ve a cage that they need to work in, they usually’re simply making an attempt to make one good film at a time.”

In accordance with one Sony supply, the take care of Disney by no means precluded Sony from utilizing Spider-Man in its motion pictures that didn’t bear his title; the “Spider-Verse” motion pictures’ profusion of Peter Parkers, Gwen Stacys and different varied Spider-Individuals actually bears that out. However there was a sense throughout the studio that audiences wouldn’t settle for Holland’s Spidey instantly popping up in a live-action movie that wasn’t part of the MCU, particularly after “Spider-Man: No Approach Dwelling” and the Marvel Studios initiatives “Loki” and “Physician Unusual within the Multiverse of Insanity” established definitive boundaries to the Marvel multiverse.

This appears to have had the best impression on “Morbius,” which was initially scheduled to premiere in July 2020, nicely earlier than “No Approach Dwelling” and “Physician Unusual 2,” however because of the pandemic wound up opening after them. The delay pressured Sony into reshoots to account for a way Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes, launched as a part of the MCU in “Homecoming,” might be standing in the identical room as Leto’s titular residing vampire, a personality who isn’t within the MCU — a enjoyable conceit that didn’t look like an enormous deal till the multiverse instantly made it one.

Dancing round Spider-Man with out ever getting to make use of him additionally contributed to the sensation that these spin-off movies have been merely workouts in, ahem, craven opportunism. “You may really feel the cynicism a mile away,” says a veteran producer. “They’re grinding out product, and it feels prefer it. There’s no high quality management.”

Privately, Sony insiders acknowledge that “Kraven,” “Madame Internet” and “Morbius” are artistic and important duds (even when in addition they insist that “Morbius,” which made $167.4 million globally, did flip a revenue). Shifting ahead, they are saying, the studio will have to be extra discerning about which — if any — of the studio’s steady of Spider-Man characters ought to be elevated into their very own film franchise.

There’s a totally different risk, as nicely. “You could possibly rent a special Spider-Man,” Bock says. “It doesn’t need to be Tom.”