If there are two people in this world that know just how difficult it is to work out a deal between Sony and Disney over the rights to Spider-Man, it’s the Russo Brothers. The directing duo were the first people to be able to use Tom Holland’s version of the character in a film (2016’s “Captain America: Civil War”) and cemented his status in the MCU thanks to two appearances in “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame.” So, when you ask them about the recent fallout between the rival studios over the use of the character, they’re not surprised that talks broke down.
Speaking to The Daily Beast, the Russos discussed just how difficult it was to land Spider-Man in ‘Civil War’ to begin with, and how that experience made them fully prepared to learn that Sony and Disney couldn’t work out a longer-term deal.
“We were extremely passionate about [having Spider-Man in ‘Civil War’]. This is something we really wanted to happen, and fought a long time internally at Marvel to make it happen,” Anthony Russo said.
Joe Russo added, “It wasn’t easy. Kevin [Feige] went through a lot. There were a lot of ups and downs, and he kept walking into our office and we’d go, ‘Look, we’ve got to do it with [Sony],’ and he’d go, ‘OK, I’ll figure it out,’ and walk back into his. He was looking for the way out. He wanted to open that door and have us go, ‘We figured it out! We don’t need Spider-Man!’ because it’s a lot of work to get two major corporations to play nice with each other, and the fact that it happened at all, we should all be dancing and celebrating that we got that little bit of time.”
Ultimately, it’s this sort of back and forth that predated the entire first Sony/Disney deal for Spider-Man that makes it so the Russos aren’t shocked that everything seemingly has fallen apart.
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“I think that’s why Joe and I are not so devastated or surprised that there’s been a falling-out, because it was so hard to make it happen in the first place,” said Anthony Russo.
If today’s news is any indication, it would appear that the little bit of hope left that Sony and Disney could work out a deal for a continued Spidey-sharing relationship has come and gone, as the CEO of Sony Pictures actively downplayed Feige’s role on the previous ‘Spider-Man’ films.
When you’re talking about sharing hundreds of millions of dollars between two studios that generally don’t work well together, we honestly shouldn’t be surprised it broke down, but instead, just be happy that the deal worked out in the first place.