Now that the deal between rival studios, Sony and Disney, has been reached, allowing for the two massive entities to share the big-screen rights to the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise, we’re starting to get more information about how the discussion went from terrible to good. And according to a new report from THR, one of the reasons why the two studios were able to come to the agreement stems from the franchise’s star, Tom Holland, taking a proactive role.
The report says that any future deal between Sony and Disney was “100 percent dead.” That is until Tom Holland stepped in. After all was seemingly lost, it is reported that the Peter Parker actor reached out to Disney CEO Bob Iger and Sony film chairman Tom Rothman about the situation, urging them both to come to a deal. Holland is said to have shown the two men the outpouring of fan support he’s received and that is said to have “thawed” the negotiations, allowing for more discussion between the studios.
The report also says that his role in the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise wasn’t the only bargaining chip Holland had with Sony. Apparently, he also leveraged the fact that the studio is actively trying to get the film adaptation of the video game “Uncharted” off the ground. Of course, as we learned the day after the deal was announced, “Uncharted” got a new director attached to the project, signaling that the film would actually go into production in 2020.
As mentioned before, the new deal between Sony and Disney allows for the Mouse House to put forth 25% of the new ‘Spider-Man’ film’s budget for a 25% stake in the project’s net box office gross. That’s a huge step up from the 5% that Disney was receiving on the first two ‘Spider-Man’ films featuring Holland.
We still don’t know the full story about the intricacies of the deal, but both sides have confirmed that all parties are looking to the future, with the next ‘Spider-Man’ film coming in July 2021 and a future non-Spidey film will feature Holland’s character sometime after that.
