Sony Film CEO Tom Rothman has confirmed the company has plans to reboot Sony’s broader Spider-Man Universe after a series of high-profile flops in films like Kraven, Madame Web, and Morbius.
This comes from a conversation with Matt Belloni on The Town, in which Rothman answered a series of questions with fairly short, yes or no responses. When asked, “is the larger Spider-verse dead?” he said “No.” He then confirmed Sony would go back to those films “at some point.” And also affirmed it would be a “fresh reboot” with “new people.” Rothman did not provide any further details.
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) has struggled ever since it first kicked off in 2018 with Venom. Though Venom and its follow-ups, Let There Be Carnage (2021) and The Last Dance (2024) did quite well at the box office, all three were critically panned and generally received poorly by wider audiences as well. Even worse was Morbius (2022), which was regarded as such a poor movie it became a meme, and which was followed by similar box office disasters in Madame Web (2024) and Kraven the Hunter (2024). At the time, outgoing Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra described Kraven the Hunter as “probably the worst launch we had in the seven-and-a-half years” since he first stepped into his role. He also blamed all the SSU failures on the press, for criticizing them.
If you’re curious, these are the reviews for every SSU film, with the score we gave them at the time: Venom (4/10), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (7/10), Morbius (5/10), Madame Web (5/10), Venom: The Last Dance (4/10), and Kraven the Hunter (3/10).
As for what this reboot will entail, Rothman is keeping that under his mask for now, though whatever it is will likely take some time to spin up. At least we still have regular ol’ Spider-Man, who will be in theaters July 31 for Brand New Day.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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