Grumpy David wrote:Wait so Sony would remove Spiderman from the Marvel universe even though this is exactly why this movie didn't flop?! Madness. Sony can't be trusted to make a good Spiderman movie by themselves.
The initial contract is/was for a joint partnership. It may have already been extended since Civil War and this solo movies reaction.
Marvel make the movie and in return get to use the Spider-Man character (presumably X amount of times - so far Civil War and the next one/two Avengers movies). Not sure if they get to use villains/secondary characters etc in their own productions.
Sony fund the production of the Spider-Man movies and receive the profits.
The partnership length is for 2 Spider-Man solo movies and 2 (3 if he is in both Avengers movies?) MCU movies. At this point the contract is complete and Sony can either extend the deal (probably with different criteria - although Sony are running out of cards as they don't have merchandising rights to the characters and they recently gave away the TV rights), or they can go it alone again - I'm not sure they can continue using Tom Holland though - probably not.
Because Sony are funding the movies if they don't turn a profit, or not as profitable as they hope then you could see them going alone again in a few years time.