While Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and The Walt Disney Co.-owned Marvel Studios LLC might end a multiyear partnership to include Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe due to a revenue-sharing dispute, Sony will likely still hold a very profitable franchise through the character.
That is not to say Sony will not feel the loss in its pictures segment. The company takes 95% of first-dollar gross — in which the participant receives a percentage of gross box office from a movie's first release day — from its stand-alone Spider-Man films. Disney takes the remaining 5%, partly in exchange for making actor Tom Holland's portrayal of the character available to Disney for its Marvel Cinematic Universe films. In turn, Disney provides Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige to produce Sony's stand-alone Spider-Man films.
As a result of the dispute, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige will not produce future Spider-Man movies, Sony Pictures confirmed in a tweet. Feige was involved in the production of "Spider-Man: Far From Home," which hit theaters July 2.
The Sony-Marvel partnership began in 2015. Spider-Man joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe — an American media franchise centered on a series of superhero films — for the first time in 2016's "Captain America: Civil War," interacting with MCU characters such as Iron Man and Captain America.

The companies have not disclosed whether Sony gets a cut of Disney MCU films where Spider-Man appears, but looking at Sony's financial reports, the stand-alone Spider-Man films seem to have a much larger impact on the company's motion pictures subsegment than Disney MCU films.
For example, Sony's motion pictures segment saw a revenue jump of 32.8% during the September 2017 quarter that included "Spider-Man: Homecoming." That film grossed $659.1 million internationally and $334.2 million domestically, making it the 11th best performing film across Feige's Marvel films, according to data from Kagan, a media market research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.
"Spider-Man: Far From Home," which will be included in the company's September quarter results, has already exceeded $1 billion in revenue to become Sony's highest-grossing film of all time, CFO Hiroki Totoki said on the company’s July 30 earnings call.
It is unclear how important Feige is to the Spider-Man franchise, but the filmmaker has overseen a Marvel Cinematic Universe that has swelled profits for both Disney and Sony. From a low point with 2008's "The Incredible Hulk" to a high point with 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," profit margins for MCU films have swelled erratically but reliably from 9.1% to 61.9%, according to Kagan. "Homecoming" in 2017 collected a 43.9% profit margin.

Sony will continue to make stand-alone Spider-Man films after it splits from Disney, and it has been enjoying some success with its non-Feige films. "Venom," another character in Spider-Man's universe, and the animated title "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" also helped drive performance for Sony's motion pictures segment. The company grossed $979.2 million on "Venom" and cut a 56.5% profit margin. For "Into the Spider-Verse," Sony cut a 47.5% margin on $596.8 million in revenue, according to Kagan.
Those films each dropped during the December 2018 quarter for Sony, and its motion pictures segment saw a 31.2% revenue jump for that period. From the June quarters 2016 to 2019, the only other period during which the company saw motion pictures revenue growth similar to those including Spider-Man releases was in the June 2016 quarter, which saw a 29.5% jump surrounding the releases of "The Angry Birds Movie" and "The Shallows."

During a May investor event, Sony Pictures CEO Anthony Vinciquerra highlighted the fact that the company's owned Spider-Man universe includes 900 characters and said the company is working on film and television projects across its Spider-Man intellectual property.
Still, Sony did see more critical acclaim with its partnership with Feige, where "Homecoming" and "Far From Home" garnered "fresh" Rotten Tomatoes scores over 90%, while "Venom" flopped at 29% "rotten" and, prior to the Disney partnership, "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" saw scores of 72% and 52%. "Into the Spider-Verse" remains a clear outlier to that trend though, with an outstanding 97% rating.
