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Confirmed - Meeting between Top Sony and Marvel/Disney Executives.
Posted by Labels: MCU, Spider-Man
This January at the Pinewood Studios, just outside of London England, Senior Executives from Sony Pictures Entertainement [SPE], Sony Corporation, Marvel Studios, Marvel Entertainement, and Disney Corporation will be meeting to discuss the future of Spider-Man in film.
Confirmed attendees include Amy Pascal - Co-Chair SPE, Doug Belgard - Co-Chair SPE, and Kevin Feige - President Marvel Studios. However it is the list of rumored attendees that's grabbing people attention which includes Kazou Hirau - CEO Sony Corp and Bob Iger CEO of Disney, and Isaac Perlmutter CEO Marvel Entertainment, Alan Fine - President Marvel Entertainment, Josh Whedon - Director/Producer, Joe and Anthony Russo Director/Producer and Andrew Garfield - Actor.
Noticeable absent from the list is Avi Arad, the long time Producer of the Spider-Man films and former President of Marvel Studios.
Why Pinewood Studios?
This is an interesting location for a number of reasons.
1) The location is roughly equal distance from Los Angeles and Tokyo.
2) Marvel Studios already has large sections of the Studio booked for filming reshoots of Avengers: Age of Ultron in January.
If this was a meeting between Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal a location in LA would make more sense as both individuals work primarily in the LA metropolitan area, going to a more neutral location 5500 miles from LA suggests that the rumors of CEO of both Disney and Sony are involved in these discussion validity.
If an agreement between the two companies can be meet insertion of Spider-Man in at least a Cameo role into Avengers: Age of Ultron seems likely.
How Likely is an Agreement?
Within SPE and Sony Corp there are number of high level executives who do not like the idea of a deal with a rival studio; adamantly opposed. It appears that these individuals were called out on the carpet as it were in middle of November. In an email from Amy Pascal, paraphrased, she said "you have told me not to move forward with Marvel but have yet to present any potential other solutions. I am getting backed into a corner and a decision has to be made."
Jeff Robinov, a high level at Executive at SPE, who during his time at Warner Bros green lighted the Dark Knight Trilogy, is one of the loudest voices in opposition of the deal. He presented an 8 page white paper on potential ideas, however in my reading of that White Paper it basically said pick a director and let them have full control to come up with everything.
IMHO it appears that no one as of November 15th was able to present any workable ideas that had much traction.
What does Marvel want?
Avi Arad out of the picture, Creative Control, and the ability to use Spider-Man characters in the MCU.
Marvel has told Sony that it would not ever accept a deal that kept Avi Arad involved in any capacity with Spider-Man and MCU; he would not even be allowed to be an over-night Janitor. That's not unexpected considering Marvel Corporate view on Arad, but it may be a legal stumbling block for SPE.
Creative Control is a huge issue for many of the executives at Sony, but I personally struggle to understand what motivates this fear. To work with in the MCU you stories have to integrate into the canon already created, as weird as that is TASM and TASM2 were written to be in that canon already. Let me reiterate that fact the latest two movies were conceived to be apart of the MCU even though Spider-Man was not a part of the MCU.
Of course the whole purpose of these discussions is to include Spider-Man in MCU canon and movies.
What does SPE want?
Financial success and protections against various issues.
We know that TASM made after expenses $300 Million in profit, TASM2 will make slightly less than that. That profit funds a lot of smaller scale pictures for SPE, a loss of say $50 million might stop production of 3 or 4 low budget films. That's a big deal to Sony.
Sony has also invested large amounts of money to bring VX work in house so to speak. A new state of the art VX studio was opened earlier this year and Sony needs to make sure that it has these big budget films to support that studio.
Sony also believes it will have a legal bill coming for Avi Arad and his studio if their contract is broken that it will have to pay.
Amy Pascal has made it clear she wants to protect the people she feels have done nothing or little wrong in the process. She clearly thinks that Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Shailene Woodley and even to some extent Marc Webb are more victims of circumstance than actual problems. Many critics have praised both Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield performance in both movies.
Is Andrew Garfield out?
If this deals falls apart I think it will be because Amy Pascal is defending "her people".
That being said there are a lot of bridges between Garfield and Sony that may be on fire. Andrew Garfield did not attend as required by his contract a couple of Sony Corporate Events and he also talked publically and disparagingly about TASM2. With that said it appears that Matthew Tolmach (producer of TASM and TASM2) maybe more a fault in these situations than Andrew Garfield is, as rumor has it Tolmach informed Garfield about pending removal from the role right before two of these events occurred.
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