Sony Pictures CEO confirms Spider-Man spinoff universe is being rebooted

A very worthwhile kill Kraven the Hunter. After Sony’s last Spider-Man spinoff film failed to be a box office success – a problem most of Sony’s Spidey-free Spider-Man films have had – the studio hit the reset button for the entire franchise. Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman confirmed during an interview with entertainment podcast The Town that the studio’s film universe of Spider-Man characters and villains will be rebooted.

Rothman gave absolutely no details about what the reboot would look like, when it would happen, or who would be involved. All he could confirm was that they started over with new people involved. The news came later Kraven the Hunter hits theaters in late 2024 to poor reviews and poor box office performance. According to Deadline, the film is expected to lose Sony $71 million after its theatrical run, which globally stalled at $62 million against a reported budget of $130 million.

That’s not necessarily bad news for what Sony studios have officially dubbed the Spider-Man Universe (SSU). The first two Venom films both grossed $500 million at the box office, with the first film, 2018’s Venom, earning over $850 million globally. And while the follow-up Poison: Let There Be Carnage clearly a throwback to the first film, which was 2022 Morbius it hints at something very wrong.

Morbius struggled to reach $167 million in theaters and, at this point, is better known as a Power Rangers meme than as a film. Web Lady arrived and was bombed. Poison: The Last DanceThe third and final entry in Tom Hardy’s Venom film trilogy, managed to rise from the lows Morbius And Web Lady but it still couldn’t match the first two films at the box office.

Interestingly, the last three films at SSU (Web Lady, Poison: The Last DanceAnd Kraven the Hunter) were all released in 2024. That level of excess certainly didn’t help the film’s success, which Rothman said Sony and Marvel acknowledged about SSU and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Scarcity has value, you have to make the audience miss you… Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he explained when discussing the decline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole in recent years. This is a problem that Rothman and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige are well aware of.

In the future, Marvel Studios and Sony will next partner Spider-Man: A New Daythe fourth chapter in Tom Holland’s Spider-Man saga, which hits theaters July 31. Sony live action Black-Spider series starring Nicolas Cage will be released on Prime Video later this year.