How Spider-Man Conquered Hollywood

Welcome

back to the Bulwark goes to Hollywood. My name is Sunny Batch from culture editor at the Bulwark. And I’m very pleased to be rejoined by Sean O’Connell. Sean, we had him on to talk about his book about the Snyder cut that came out. Was that last year?

That am I has that already been a year? March

of twenty twenty one. Yeah. March of twenty twenty one.

Time flies. We had them we had them on discuss app book. He is back to discuss his new book with great power how Spider Man conquered Hollywood during the golden age of comic book Blockbusters, which is out now. You can you can get it for the Spider fan in your life. Put it in under the Christmas tree in the stocking.

It’ll be it’s a nice it’s a nice compendium kind of explaining Spider Man’s Place in the cinematic landscape and ecosystem and kind of contextualizing with everything else that is going on. Sean, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Of course. Happy to be here.

So let’s talk let’s talk about Spider Man Movie Star. And before we get to the, you know, the first big Spider Man movie in two thousand two directed by Sam Ramey. There were all sorts of starts and stops and, you know, the things that people kind of half remember but don’t quite fully understand. So what what was the actual first Spider movie out there?

Well, they the first one technically goes to two episodes of the the Nicholas Hammond television show that ran in the nineteen sixties. And that show was kind of produced because Bill Bixby’s incredible Hulk Show was popular, and they were trying to get Marvel characters to show up in primetime. But the Hammond Show never really caught on. He blames scheduling. He just blames it like they never had a consistent time to air you would get an episode in October, and then the next one might not be till December.

So the audience never really knew when to tune into it. But what the network did was they packaged two episodes together, and they would show them as movies in international territories. So in the UK and in Mexico, there would be fans who thought that they were seeing a Spider Man movie. And then Hammond would tell me, actually, I got a chance to speak with Nicholas Hammond for the book, and he would say, he would go to these comic book conventions around the world and get approached by fans to sign like these movie stand ups or movie posters because to them, they were seeing the first Spider Man movie. And I have a really close friend of mine who grew up in Mexico, who who didn’t think that the Sam Ramey movie in two thousand two was the first Spider Man movie because he was like, no.

No. I remember distinctly going to a theater as a kid and seeing this Spider Man a big screen. And so, yeah, I mean, that’s goes to show why he’s such a worldwide phenomenon and how early people were getting a chance to see him on the big screen.

Well, there’s there’s an interesting chicken and an egg situation in your book that you discussed a little bit. Was Spider Man? Is Spider Man popular because he’s popular or was he popular because he was licensed everywhere? I mean, this is it’s an interesting story about the early years of Marvel, and it’s one reasons, frankly, why the spider rights are so such a mess is because they were Marvel was selling rights to spider stuff everywhere.

Hey, absolutely. And, Sonny, the thing is I don’t have the answer to that. I’m not sure that anybody does. It really is you know, it’s almost like when you talk about the start of the MCU. And if Marvel Studios owned the rights to Spider Man, would they have started with him?

Because he is the most worldwide recognizable and somewhat relatable character, but they had to start with Iron Man. I just think if you think back to your childhood everybody of a certain age, you know, I’m in my late forties. Spider Man was prevalent when we were kids. He was in animated television shows, the nineteen sixty show is probably still playing in syndication. He would be in Spider Man and the Amazing Friends, He just was a popular character for people to tell stories for way more so than someone like an Iron Man or a Captain America that didn’t really pop up different media.

But you can even think about just how much Spider Man was involved in toys and lunch boxes and all these different places where the company put them you know, you could say that they were almost like forcing him down our throats at some point, but he was just popular and and again relatable. And while we talk about like the Hulk, having his show, which was definitely groundbreaking at that time, and still has some cultural impact. People talk about the Hulk at that point. It really was the push for Spider Man and especially in that sort of late eighties, early nineties as they were working towards getting Spider Man a Spider Man project up and running. Even though Blade and the X Men sort of dropped the same time the Spider Man did, it was Spider Man that just skyrocketed to global phenomenon.

It’s because of people look at that character and they find him relatable.

Yeah. So so then we we move on to the again, there’s a kind of period of disputed rights that runs through much of the eighties and nineties. Golin and Globus, the guys who who, you know, we’re making movies for with Cannon. And then James Cameron, of course, takes takes a crack at it really was. Us the Cameron story.

Obviously, James Cameron very much in the news right now with new with Avatar, the way of water hitting theaters here in a in a a week or so. But, you know, he almost made a Spider Man movie.

One of the reasons why I wanted to write this book is because there are different signposts, you know, at the course of Spider Man’s history, that if certain things had happened, we would have gone down a different road and it might have changed, you know, not just the superhero comic book story genre, but the film industry as a whole. And Cameron’s is a great example. He was, you know, around the time of Terminator n t two and was looking for his next project. He kinda he’s been a comic book fan his entire life He seemed like the type of director that you would want to get involved in the superhero genre because of the way that he blends visual effects with his storytelling, and he had been pitched or he went in to pitch an X Men movie with Katherine Bigolo at the time. She was gonna direct it and he was gonna produce.

And instead, Stanley kinda said, I hear you also like Spider Man, and that was that was it. Like, if Cameron, once he found out the Spider Man, and was available. He kind of went down that road. So there is a treatment that exists out there, and it’s about twenty eight, twenty nine pages that you can read through of how he would have laid out Spider Man’s origin. And and in that treatment, there are different things that then show up in the Sam Ramey origin story.

Like, the idea of making the the web spinners organic to Peter, you know, and not being the mechanized thing that goes on his that was Cameron’s idea originally. Cameron wanted there were conversations of him maybe working with DiCaprio as is Peter Parker and potentially wanting Arnold Twerencing to play his auto octavius. Who knows that these things would have come to pass? But it’s just because Cameron couldn’t get the rights freed up. Like, he he begged Fox to try to get in there and spend the money that they would have had to spend to to claim the theatrical rights and they could they didn’t wanna put up the five million dollars or something that it would have cost in order to get them.

And cameras like, you know what I’m saying? You’re sitting on a billion dollar idea here. And so, you know, when I think about that because this instead, he didn’t make the Spider Man movie, and he went on to make Titanic. Now if he doesn’t do that, you know, how different is the film industry moving forward? How much power does Cameron have?

What if he did three Spider Man movies in a row because the first one took off. It’s just I love looking at those big picture things and just thinking how different things could have been, the what ifs of the Hollywood history there. Or

what made one Spider Man movie and then didn’t make another one for thirteen years, which is also

possible. You know what? Yeah. That that’s his time frame. But

I mean, it it is fascinating. It’s fascinating to think about. I mean, and as you mentioned, you know, at this time, Marvel’s in a very weird place. This is before their this is obviously well before they’re bought by Disney. This is, you know, kind of in the midst of the the nineteen nineties comic boom, but also, like, as that wave is cresting and coming down, And, you know, at this point, Marvel’s actually owned by a toy company.

Yes. Toy Bez was the company. And and that’s Aviorad. And I promoter who if you have a passing knowledge of of the comic book movies and and the contributions of these people, Avi gets you know, a lot of heat for for decisions that he’s made creative decisions that he helped to sort of push as the movies went on. But I try to emphasize in the book because I honestly believe this he is, you know, essential to the formation of the of Marvel films because he was the one in those early stages, not knocking on the studio doors, and and he went from New York to Los Angeles, specifically because he knew that the future of those Marvel characters was in movies.

Now he absolutely considered the movies to be long form commercials for the for the toys that they were going to sell. And his partner, Ike Promoter, who is a nickel and dimer, you know, hated how much Avi thought he had to spend to look like a player in Hollywood, but that’s why the Marvel rights were divided up amongst multiple studios at the time because Avi would get a deal with twenty Century Fox to make an X Men movie and a deal with Newline to make a Blade movie but no studio would go all in on the pitch of, here are all of our characters where you please take them. And what breaks my heart is there’s a story in book about how Sony had an opportunity at one point to own the entire library except for the ones that were available. At Fox, which was the X Men and Fantastic Four. And Sony said, no, we don’t want we have no interest in all those other characters.

We only want Spider Man. And, you know, they just balked at the the price tag for it, which I think at that time was about twenty five million dollars. If you think about the fact that Sony could have been where Disney is now, you know, had they just taken a gamble and bought all those characters? But that’s how they ended up with Spider Man and are still holding onto Spider Man, although the book gets onto into how they eventually learn to collaborate with Marvel.

Yeah. I mean, it’s funny to think. Like, twenty five million dollars is, you know, one half of one Robert Downey Junior. Hey, Chuck. Yes.

Yeah. Towards the tail end of his run at at Marvel. Just a crazy a crazy figure. Alright. So so as as we go along here, we start getting in to the comic book era.

And I am I’m a big Blade guy. I always say Blade is the forgotten movie, you know, that really kicked off the whole Marvel boom. Sure. And obviously, X man, you know, I like, everybody remembers. I remember reading wizard magazine when the X man movie was being made.

I’m, like, follow it oh my god. They were actually gonna do this. It’s gonna be amazing. And it was, it was fine. But that but Spider Man is the the big the the big movie that really kicks off the whole blockbuster era of superhero filmmaking.

Tell us about the the the the business response to that. Because, I mean, I do think that I I do I I I I think your book I mean, we’ll see how the future progresses. But I do think your book makes a credible argument that we have basically bracketed this superhero era with Spider Man and then no way home. Right. One and the other.

Yeah. I think that’s fair.

So tell us tell us about the the making of Spider Man and kind of the business response to that. Well,

one of the things that I really wanted to get at when putting together, especially the stuff around Rami’s first movie, is just the work that went into translating that character from the page of a comic book to live action because I really felt that it was the first movie you know, Don or Superman gets a lot of credit for convincing people that, you know, that that character was flying. And then Burton’s for Batman movie, was a very, very popular film and, you know, extremely successful in the marketplace, but had Tim Burton stamp all over it. But I I think that Randy Spider Man was the first one that was as close to comic accurate and really treated the source material with the sort of reference that now we see on a regular basis to these movies. It’s essentially amazing fantasy number fifteen, which is Spider Man’s first appearance, retold through Ramey’s filter. And so I wanted to speak with people like John Dykstra who was the head of visual effects and Don Bridges, who was the production designer working with Rainy because I felt like the decisions that they had made early on in two thousand two or two thousand one, two thousand two, to create this world, created a blueprint for how movies going forward, had to remain as faithful as possible to the source material.

Because they created a New York that looked like it came right out of the Stanley Steve did go early, nineteen sixties comics, Toby McGuire, was the nerdy Peter Parker, you know, who who couldn’t get the girl and who was kind of bullied by flash Thompson, and those elements remained. They kept the heart and the core of of what was important, Spider Man. You know, when you think about racism before that, you were seeing things like Adolf London’s punisher and and, you know, movies that that sort of played fast and loose with the rules of it. But I think that that that first Spider Man will be connected with the global audience that it did because of how faithful it was to the stories And now Amy Pascal who’s been a producer on these Spider Man movies since the first one. She is the first one to admit that I think learning a lot from Kevin Feige, that the books are there, you know, as the the source material to lean on and and they’re successful because of, you know, what’s in the books.

So just stick to it. You know, tell those stories and and hit those character beets, and then your movie should succeed. The further you get away from from what makes the book special, what makes Marvel, you know, the the globally adored company that it is, is that the stories that they’re putting together work so well for those heroes. And when the movies adapt them properly, then I think they take off, and that’s what I think Ramey did. Yeah.

I mean, it it is it’s it’s interesting to go back and watch some of those the the the the first Ramey movies. In part, because I I I rewatched them before No Way Home came out. And I suck Kevin Feige’s name come up. I was like, oh, that’s interesting. He’s been here since the beginning.

Yeah. Good for him. But also just like, the the images in that movie really are ripped from the pages of of a comic book. In a way that I just don’t I don’t I don’t think, you know, had had been done prior to that. The one that always jumps out at me is the in the final fight with goblin, there’s this shot of Spider Man with like half his ass torn off, and I’m like, I remember Todd McFarlane drawing that,

you know — Yeah.

Yeah. — nineteen eighty nine or whatever. So, you know, it it made me feel old, but also you know, I I I did but I do wonder from your I mean, look, you’re you’re you’re you’re a fan, you’re you’re I would I I say this with with all, you know, due respect to a nerd like me. You you can’t you yes. I do wonder if there has been two if if things have gone too far to appeal to the fans too much, do you ever do you ever get that sense from folks you talk to or, you know, on the creative side of things that they worry about, you know, pandering a little bit too much to to people like us?

Absolutely. I mean, if you go back to those early rainy films, it’s something like social media didn’t exist, so you couldn’t get the instant wave of feedback, you know, in terms of how your stuff is being accepted or rejected. And you think about the Disney plus shows, which I think right now, the the Marvel Disney plus shows, cater significantly to trying to get certain characters out into the marketplace so that but I’m not quite sure that that Marvel knows how they’re gonna be using them moving forward. So in this case like where you might see a moonlight or or miss Marvel and enjoy that storyline, there’s no bigger picture. There’s no bigger plan for how they’re gonna be rolled in.

I kinda liked when Marvel was and it’s not that I don’t like what the MCU is doing now, but I liked when Marvel was doing standalone movies that you didn’t it didn’t have to tease into the next four or five other projects that, you know, that are building to a bigger bigger franchise. And and that’s some of the things I talk a little bit about in the book is how other companies like Warner Brothers and Sony made them stake of trying to chase after that universe building and how it was to their detriment because they couldn’t You know, I do think Marvel has had some some breaks along the way. Like, there are places when the Marvel Cinematic Universe probably should have gone off the rails. And maybe it’s Kevin Feige and maybe it’s just the luck of when certain films came out, but they were they managed to keep it all together for the Infinity Saga. Now you’re right.

It is it is more fan service. It is more the inclusion of certain characters who may never pay off. Like Harry Styles will show up in the end credits scene of eternals. We don’t know if we’re ever gonna see the eternals again. Let alone whoever a character was introduced.

So maybe they do do need to rain it back. You know, maybe they need to get a little bit under control or potentially it’s part of a bigger picture that Kevin Feige knows and we just don’t right now. Yeah. I

do remember watching the eternals and for the first time being stumped by a character introduction. Speak like who who’s Harry Styles here? I don’t I don’t under I have no idea what’s happening right now.

How weird is it that we both know Pip the Troll? But don’t know who Harry Styles is playing. That’s He is unusual.

So let’s so you know, again, one of the interesting what ifs in the story is, what if Spider Man four? You you with Sam Ramey. You you looked at some of the storyboards for that. Right? You talked about that a little bit in the book.

Howard Bauchner: I

did. Yes. I got a chance to to interview Jeffrey Henderson who did a lot the creative work behind the scenes on putting that story together and was working hand in hand with Rami to try to do what he looked at what he viewed as like redeeming project. He wanted to get back to the heart of the first two Spider Man movies after part three really, you know, was bogged down by a bunch of decisions that weren’t necessarily Ramey’s. It’s it’s famous now at this point that he didn’t like Venom as a character and that this is where Aviara gets a lot his flack is because he he believed that Venom was an extremely popular character with the kids and and that it would sell a lot of toys and that was his gut instinct was to push it forward I get Avi, you know, to to admit in the in the book that he probably, you know, was wrong to push Sam to do a villain that that he didn’t have his heart.

Behind. And so but it’s interesting, Sunny, is that, you know, at the time before the the Marvel Sony’s Spider Man films, Spider Man three was the highest grossing one in the franchise up to that point. So while it’s critically, you know, ridiculed and fans were pointed, it is the the low point It was a blockbuster phenomenon and gave Sony a bit of a, you know, overconfidence. I thing to say that, like, hey, anything that we put out that has Spider Man’s name on it is gonna do really, really well. And that feeds into what might have gone wrong with Andrew’s franchise.

As they tried to get that off the ground.

Yeah. Let’s so let’s move to the amazing Spider Man series of movies. Two two movies directed by Mark Webb. The that follow the Ramey films and they’re kind of before Tom Holland goes into the MCU. A bit of I I like almost a bit of a lost period for for some folks.

I mean, these are still massively these were still, you know, massively massive grocers still still lots money, but not enough money, which is why which is why that that that whole experiment came to an end.

I get

the sense from reading your book that Andrew Garfield is almost a tragic a tragic heroic figure in this story. He’s a guy who loves Spider Man, who just who who really wanted to to do it and is just getting hemmed in at every at every avenue by things he doesn’t want to do or things that aren’t good for the character. Yeah.

That’s absolutely true. And it is you know, like, not that I’m trying to say we took the part, you know, just because it was a part, but I don’t think that he had the passion for the character the way that Andrew did coming into the role. Like, Andrew’s a a legitimate die Spider Man fan grew up on on the character and wanted to do right by it, really cared what the fans thought of his interpretation and wanted to pour his passion into it. But this was also what I found pretty interesting in putting the the timeline together of the films is how the the movies that came right before the ones that been made would affect the decisions that that were being made to do so, say for like the amazing Spider Man, they wanted to specifically make sure they did things that didn’t mirror the rainy films. And then by the time you get to the Tom Holland and the MCU, they wanna do things that are completely different from the other two franchises that come before it.

So not only your deal with, like, fan expectation, but you’re dealing with just creative choices that you have to make because of the movies that came before it. And so with the amazing Spider Man, they go far more grounded. You know, that was, you remember the period of films that came after the the Nolan Batman films, everybody was going for dark and gritty. So they tried to filter Spider Man story through Dark and Grady. It’s interesting with Andrew too.

I think his Peter Parker was never quite the nerd. Like, he’s an outcast. You know, but I’m not calling that kid uncool, you know. Yeah. He’s still Yeah.

I don’t wanna hang out with that kid if I was at his school. They have to choose villains that hadn’t been shown up before so he gets settled with, like, the lizard who’s not the most compelling villain. And then the problem with amazing Spider Man too, I believe, is that Amy Pascal kinda saw the writing on the wall that, like, they were losing the fan base or they didn’t quite know a hundred percent what to do with the character. So an amazing Spider Man two They tried very hard to launch the cinematic universe with just one film. And by the time that movie before, that movie had even hit theaters.

They had parts three and four announced on the calendar. They had Drew Goddard who had done Kevin in the woods who was working on a sinister six movie. Like, they were just putting the way before the horse and saying, this is what we’re gonna do, and it all fell apart when, as you said, they didn’t make enough money. And it’s funny that, like, we still see that problem now. Like, Black Adam is facing that problem right now of they’re teasing out a Black Adam and Superman movie, but but we are learning the black album didn’t do that well at theaters, and so we may never see that film again.

And this happens in the comic book genre all too often, and again, sort of cut Andrew’s franchise off at the knees. Yeah. I mean,

it’s it’s again, it’s fascinating to go back and watch that movie because there are like six different films in it? There are there are — Yeah. — there

are

I I I I at the time, I was angry and I’m still kind of annoyed by it. That they they basically toss in the death of Gwen Stacey plotline as a, like, tertiary plot. Aida is just like, it is buried under six different stories. And and I I there’s no no no wonder it didn’t work. I mean, that just is It was it it is as you it had strong dark universe fives is how I like to think of it, you

know. That’s a good way to put it for sure. Yes. And, I mean, yeah, like you point out, there’s so many subplots that are just arguing, you know, albuming each other out of the way for space. And I think that there are things in in Amazing Spider Man two that work really really well, but you can’t overlook the things that just don’t that they don’t go anywhere.

And so, yeah, it became a weird sort of Frankenstein, Mishmash, that eventually led to what I think is a really, you know, groundbreaking partnership, which is Sony agreeing to turn one of their characters over to a competing studio. Like, I try to emphasize in the book and I still don’t I get the point across. Like, that just doesn’t happen. The studio doesn’t give up one of their assets. You know, a major IP to to a rival, but Sony looked across the street and just said Marvel’s doing so well with this.

Let’s figure this out. Well, let’s let’s

talk about that a little bit because you’re right. It’s fascinating. Like, this is a this is a huge partnership. It’s obviously very interesting. There are lots of ins and outs here.

But the thing that I learned from your book, I didn’t I actually didn’t know this, was that Marvel was in charge of casting — Spider Man. — casting Tom Holland to Spider Man, which I I I I, you know, I probably should have known, but I had I did not realize that that was that was done by a marvel casting director for

Yeah. Sarah Finn, before civil war. Yeah. Sarah Finn, who has been charged of most of the casting in Marvel. And, honestly, Sonny, it just Amy Pascal had reached a point where she just stopped trusting her instincts, you know, and it had to turn over as much of it to Kevin Feige because the decisions that she was making were proving to not work necessarily.

Even though she had the best intentions at you know, she she didn’t go into Amazing Spider Man trying to make bad movies without a doubt. She loves the character. She really wishes that it worked that it worked out at Sony, and especially for Andrew. And that’s kinda why I love so much how no way home gives him, you know, a bit of a redemptive arc. But they had to turn over everything to Kevin Feige and just say, like, what you’re doing is working So please help us with Spider Man make him work.

And there are, you know, notes passed between Amy and Kevin that just say, like, Please come save you know, this character. Please save him from what I’ve done to him. They tried to get Sam Raving to come back and say, please help us save Peter. We’ve lost our way with him, essentially. But turning them over completely to the MCU and just letting him make those decisions is what has gotten us to where we are with Tom Holland.

Yeah.

So let’s talk about that deal. How did that how did that deal actually work on a on a financial level? What was a revenue split like because it’s a really interesting deal that they they set up between the the two shops.

So Sony essentially would distribute the films But Disney was going to do a Disney and Marvel. We’re gonna do everything creatively in order to to make them happen. And so there was a marketing share, and then there’s a merchandise share that would that gave Sony essentially ninety five percent of everything that was earned and that Marvel would get five percent of what they took home. But it allowed them to use Spider Man in their movies. And essentially, they needed him for Infinity War and Endgame.

Those are the places where they necessarily wanted to send and and for that opportunity and to appear in Captain America Civil War. For that, they would creatively help out with Spider Man Homecoming, and Spider Man far from home and then what would eventually become No Way Home. But before No Way Home, the deal even fell through a bit because Disney pushed back and said, hey, we want more of fifty fifty split because we think that we’re doing all the work here. And not only are we doing all the work and you guys are just distributing these these pictures. But Kevin now, Kevin Feige, is tied up in so many other projects.

He’s, you know, trying to shepherd the Disney plus years forward. He’s got all these Marvel phase four and phase five movies. And they just figured Sony would would, you know, count out to them and say, like, oh, of course, we’ll go with the fifty fifty but just please keep helping us. And Sony, to their credit, they were like, no. You know, that’s okay.

We’ll we’ll keep Spider Man, and and you guys, good luck, keep doing what you’re doing. And for a little while, not very long, a couple of weeks maybe, the the deal was off. And and Spider Man was back over at Sony, and this was after far from home, so no way home was not happening yet. And the fans started to freak out. And to be honest, Tom Holland started to freak out a little because he was like, hey, things are going really well over at Marvel.

I really like collaborating with those guys. But now you’re going back over to Sony and Sony at that point had kind proven that they didn’t necessarily know how to handle the character correctly. And in fact, what they were doing on their own was creating these Venom films and maybe rolling out Morpheus was going to be, you know, it looked bad when the get go. And so, you know, but then they were able to sort of rectify what had happened. And then and then piece everything back together.

So there there it’s

funny. There’s a story. I remember from when this happened, there there’s a funny story in your book about Holland and Bob Iger kind of getting in touch with each other to, you know, try and try and mend the fences here. Well,

what I loved about this too is because right before that happened, Tom Holland essentially goes to d twenty three, and he’s promoting Pixar’s film onward of which he was voicing characters with Chris Pratt and Julia Louie Dreyfus. And he tells a story that he went backstage at the convention at Anaheim and there were a bunch of Marvel guys there, Marvel actors. And they were all getting together and taking pictures and Tom Holland says to himself, like, am I even contractually allowed to, like, show up in pictures with these guys? He didn’t even know where he stood between the two studios. So he goes off to London, you know, kinda dejected, goes back home.

He’s in this kinda limbo where he thinks now he’s gonna be in Sony’s universe he doesn’t get to play in the Marvel Sandbox anymore. And he reaches out to Bob Myger’s assistant and just says, hey, if I can get a a chance to get on the phone with Bob. I just wanna thank him for the opportunity he gave me and and letting me come over and be Spider Man in the Marvel Cinematic universe, which was really historic. You know, this is he was gonna be Spider Man in the MCU and that’s gonna go down in history as that way forever. And what’s beloved?

Like, he was definitely people loved his interpretation of it. And a couple days go by and he doesn’t hear anything back from Iger who’s, of course, extremely busy. And then Tom gets a cell phone call one night when he’s out at a pub, at trivia night, which he is a huge fan of doing trivia night here in in London. I’m actually in London right now as we’re speaking. And he’s a couple of pints in at this point the way he describes it.

And he answers the phone regardless, and it’s Bob Iger, and he kinda gives this gushing pitch of just why they should figure out a way to work together. He loves being Spider Man. He thinks the MCU needs Spider Man moving forward. Can they figure out a way to work it out? And I whether Bob Iger was just moved by the pitch or whether he also agreed that it was in everyone’s best interest, you know, to keep Spider Man in the MCU Eiger and Kevin Feige and all the executives over at Sony came up with a compromise that is at least gonna allow Tom to and a few more films, and then make no way home, which, you know, ended up becoming one of the highest grossing movies all the time.

Yeah. Which which kind of brings me to my my parting thought here, which is that I do I do wonder if we

if if

Spider Man both, like, kind of kicks off and ends the the era of total comic book dominance because I I just don’t know that we will ever see I mean, look, I this is a fool’s this is a fool’s game here to predict what will happen in the world of box office and and any of that. But you know, I just I I do wonder if if the if if the creation of Disney plus combined with, you know, just general Marvel fatigue, etcetera, etcetera, has led to a point where I don’t know that we will ever have another nearly two billion dollars grossing comic book movie like that. I I wonder I wonder if this is if this is it. I mean, I I’m I’m not gonna ask you to, you know, make a prediction yourself here, but I I’m just curious what you what you make of the landscape now as it as it sits.

I completely agree with you. Not that the bloom is fully off the rose, but it’s not nearly as engrossing in the casual landscape. You know, as it’s always gonna appeal to, I think, you know, nerds like us who are just interested in what Marvel is doing next kind of thing. But we’re at a stage now where fans are admitting that they skip movies. You know, or don’t even engage with some of the television shows.

And that wasn’t the case with Marvel. Like, when Marvel was going through phases one through three, every single thing that they put out was you know, the center of attention. And they can still put out, you know, it’s remarkable that they put out a doctor Strange movie that will a doctor Strange sequel, you know, that will earn as much money as it does. And we’re seeing things in the MCU that that fans could have never dreamed possible. Like Namor is attack King Wakanda, you know, in a Marvel movie.

Who would have thought we would ever get to that point? But I think you’re right. I mean, I I talk about the golden age of comic book movie fees. And I didn’t believe this when I was writing it necessarily because I think I I didn’t sort of lift my head up to kind of pay that much attention to what was happening. But I do think it’s kind of coming to a close or, you know, or slowing down at the very least.

And I don’t know what will replace it, but we see genres come and go in Hollywood all the time, you know, and point to, like, the western that lasted for fifty some odd years or something, and people still make the the random western nowadays a contemporary western. But there’s a saturation. There’s such a saturation in the market because you can look to Amazon Prime with the boys or, you know, pacemaker going over to age XPL Max and, you know, any stream platform you got on, people are trying to get some type of superhero story going out there. And that’s in addition to the stuff that DC is doing, and and the Sony universe that they’re doing with, like, all these, you know, spider related characters that I mentioned, branching into animation with, you know, into the spider verse and all these different things. And it’s After a while, it does even to someone who, like me, who loves it all, it gets to be too much.

And so you could look at no way home as almost like the book end to it if you consider, you know, Rami’s first one to be one of the pioneers.

Yeah. Alright. Was everything I wanted to ask you or everything I wanted to to talk about. What did I what did I fail to ask? What do you think folks you know about Spider Man?

Your book coming away? We we didn’t we just touched on some of the some of the hits here. If there’s anything you think folks should

know more

about, let me know. One

of the things that I just loved the most about it is that everybody who worked on Spider Man at different levels, their passion for it, I think, shines through. And especially as we get into the no way home stuff, which you know, broke such ground to bring back in Toby and Andrew, and to hear them talk about, like, that was the one of the most fun parts of of this book is writing that stuff because I was getting so close to having to deliver the manuscript, but all the no way home stuff was happening at that moment. So I was able to get a lot of really fresh quotes in about these guys talking about how important it was for them to return to the franchise. And in a way that movie was, like, proving my point. It was proving of how successful Spider Man is and how much he means to different people and why he is such a global phenomenon.

And those guys talking about the impact that these movies have had on their career and and their audiences, I think just went, you know, further in terms of, like, backing up my premise, which is that no one else is like Spider Man out there. The closest thing is probably Batman you know, in terms of the the number of of films that are made about him and the different ways deeper into animation and television and stuff like that. But Spider Man holds a very special place and I’m not quite sure that we’re gonna see another character that comes close to replicating what they’ve been able to do with him in terms of Hollywood storytelling. And so I hope that I I gave his story justice. Alright.

Sean, thanks for being on the show. Again, this Sean O’Connell. His book is with Great Power. How Spider Man: Conquer Hollywood during the Golden Age of comic blockbusters. Comic book blockbusters.

I’m sorry. And it’s available. And I am on a link to it in the email. You go go check it out there and pick it up for the Spider fan in your life for Christmas. My name is Sunny Bunch.

I am a cult writer at Bullwerk, and I will be back next week with another episode of Bullwerk goes to Hollywood to see

you guys then. Get inside look at Hollywood with Michael Rosenbaum. Let’s get inside Deborah Ann Wall. If you had to choose between true blood, dare double to do again. Partially because the Marvel series feel unfinished to me because we got canceled when we thought we were gonna have more Whereas true blood, we did get to wrap it up.

I knew that we were wrapping it up. I could say goodbye to everyone. I stole something from the set. You know, I didn’t get to steal anything from our daredevil set. Inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum, wherever you listen.