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I was reading Wikipedia's entry on the 2012 movie The Amazing Spider-Man to find out about the next movie in the franchise. It says that there were plans for a third movie but it is cancelled now, and Spider-Man is going to appear in Marvel's Cinematic Universe. It also says that Sony hired someone (don't remember the name) to write a new trilogy for the franchise.

What is the point of telling the same story once again? They have repeated it twice already. Is it just for business or to compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

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    Was it this article?
    – Catija ♦
    Nov 12 '15 at 16:00
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    You say "trilogy" where what you mean is "franchise". Raimi's movies weren't planned as a 3-part story or anything, there was plans for a fourth before 3 got such bad reception (sorry, repeating Kyle's point below). Spider-Man is such a popular character with many storylines to mine, and they're starting the actor at such a young age, I suspect Marvel & Sony are expecting to make many movies. I'll let someone else speak to your question about repeating themselves & competition.
    – Pierre Houston
    Nov 13 '15 at 9:25
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Sony released their first three Spider-Man movies between 2002 and 2007, and already had a 4th & 5th Spider-Man in the works.

After the success of the Avengers franchise released by Marvel Studios, beginning with Iron Man in 2008, there was suddenly a lot of interest in Marvel property. Sony tried to push the Spider-Man franchise to be bigger and better in order to benefit from the renewed interest in superhero movies, and tried to rush the production.

This caused the director (Sam Raimi) to pull out of creating more, as he didn't want to complete it to their timeline and other creative differences (casting choices, doing it in 3d).

This forced Sony to do a reboot with Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield with The Amazing Spider-Man. This was supposed to kick off its own franchise with the emergence of Spider-Man villains The Sinister Six, but the movies failed to impress.

Due to their attempts at rebooting the franchise failing and Marvel's going on to have such success, Sony struck up a deal with Marvel. Marvel would be allowed to use Spider-Man in their other Avengers movies, whilst in exchange they would help Sony creatively in writing new Spider-Man movies.

One of the conditions that Marvel required for this deal was to recast the actor for Spider-Man (not sure about the director), which meant that for further films the continuity would not hold, hence them again rebooting the franchise.

Whether these new films will again have an origin story is uncertain so far, or if they will begin at a time when Spider-Man already has his powers.

If the question is why they are rebooting Spider-Man so soon after the previous attempts, Roger's answer is correct, if no more movies are made in a set time frame the rights to Spider-Man reverts back to Marvel.

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    This certainly seems to jive with what I've read. A cited source would be helpful just to back it up. :D
    – Catija ♦
    Nov 12 '15 at 16:30
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    Sony actually did put a 4th Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie in the works, but canceled it when Raimi said it couldn't be completed prior to the release of Amazing Spider-Man...which was apparently already in the works. This sounds insane to me, but I'm not a movie exec.
    – Kyle Strand
    Nov 12 '15 at 19:56
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    I'm pretty sure Kevin Feige at Marvel has stated that this is not an origin story.
    – KutuluMike
    Nov 13 '15 at 1:54
  • They are including Spider man in Captain America, so maybe they are not going to take it to avengers infinity war. So including spider man in MCU maybe a plan to use other MCU characters in Spider-man's future series may be?
    – Kushal Bhuyan
    Nov 13 '15 at 2:00
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    could you please add a source for this answer? thanks!
    – Abie Giordano
    Nov 13 '15 at 2:42
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It's just for business. Sony's retention of the rights to the Spider-Man franchise is contingent upon them continuing to make movies. If they stop making those movies, the rights can be contested and reverted back to Marvel, and then Sony has lost that particular revenue stream.

This has happened before, such as with the original Fantastic Four movie. Not the 2005 one, the 1994 one that was made on a shoestring and never released, simply because a movie had to be made or the studio would have lost the rights.

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  • So Sony is trying to make their own cinematic universe like Marvel.
    – Kushal Bhuyan
    Nov 12 '15 at 18:18
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    I doubt that. They don't have the rights to enough different characters to credibly build a "universe" of interlocking narratives the way Marvel has. They just don't want to lose what they have.
    – Roger
    Nov 12 '15 at 19:12
  • @KprimeX Sony's actually given up on trying to make their own universe and have just "merged" their character into Marvels; they seemed to concede that they couldn't compete, and that it would be better to take advantage of Marvel's success for their own licensed property than watch it fail again.
    – KutuluMike
    Nov 13 '15 at 2:07
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Yes, they are "rebooting" Spider-Man, but it will not be a third, new attempt at a trilogy the way the previous two series were.

Sony is rebooting Spider-Man because their last attempt at a series did not do well for them financially. Legally, they have to keep making Spider-Man movies every so often, or they'll lose the rights. But the quality of the movies was not up to the same level as the Fox or Marvel movies, so Sony decided to make a deal with Marvel. Marvel will assist Sony in production of the movie, and Sony will allow Marvel to bring the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (e.g. he's going to appear in Captain America: Civil War).

Part of the deal is that Sony is going to make a Spider-Man movie in 2017 that is unconnected to either Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man. They have re-cast the role and will be telling an entirely different story. But, this is not just "another rebooted trilogy." There are a number of things that are different about this:

  • It's not a stand-alone movie the way the previous two were. Rather, it will be part of the overall MCU, which contains the Avengers movies, the Daredevil Netflix show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., etc. The Spider-Man from Civil War will be the same character as the one from the Spider-Man movie.

  • It is not an "origin story". Spider-Man already exists in the Marvel movie universe, we just haven't seen him yet. In the movie, Spider-Man will start out already having his powers and already behaving as a costumed super-hero, just an "amateur" one.

Kevin Feige, the President of Marvel Studios, confirmed this pretty soon after the reboot was announced:

"In Spider-Man’s very specific case, where there have been two retellings of that origin in the last whatever it’s been - [thirteen] years - for us we are going to take it for granted that people know that, and the specifics,"

"It will not be an origin story,"

"There is a young kid [already] running around New York City in a homemade version of the Spider-Man costume in the MCU, you just don’t know it yet,"(src)

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  • So it's a possibility that after Captain America civil war, we are going to see spider man in the Avengers infinity war duo logy too.
    – Kushal Bhuyan
    Nov 13 '15 at 2:03
  • I suspect, given how important the character is to the source material, we'll probably see a lot of him.
    – KutuluMike
    Nov 13 '15 at 2:03

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