Sony loses Spider-Man tv rights


JackFetch

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My fellow fans of The Spectacular Spider-Man have been waiting for months to find out whether a third season of the show would be ordered and wondering what the holdup was on an announcement. Like the Spider-Man movie series, Spectacular has been produced by Sony, but yesterday, Spectacular's Supervising Producer, Greg Weisman, made a surprising revelation Only days before the huge news broke that Disney was buying Marvel, he had been told that Sony had relinquished all television rights to Spider-Man, including animation, in exchange for "some concession vis-a-vis the live action Spider-Man features."

I contacted Weisman via email to find out where this major turn of events leaves The Spectacular Spider-Man. Did this mean Sony could continue producing Spectacular Spider-Man, but had no further claim to Spider-Man on TV beyond that? And if Sony had to step aside immediately, was it possible for Marvel to fully take over production of the show so it could continue?

Weisman explained, "Sony is NO LONGER involved with The Spectacular Spider-Man. I'm informed that Marvel can now produce the series, but of course, they don't have to."

In the best case scenario for The Spectacular Spider-Man, not only could the show continue with Marvel producing, but some of the restrictions Weisman, fellow Supervising Producer Victor Cook and their team have had to work with could be lifted including the fact that up until now, they could not use any non-Spider-Man characters on the series. Pondering that fact, Weisman said, "I'd be very excited at the prospect of adding Kingpin to our cast. And as I've mentioned before, I'd love to do the occasional crossover, starting with the Human Torch. But the bigger concern is whether or not we get new episodes, not who guest stars in them."

So does Spectacular Spider-Man already airing on Disney XD -- the only current Marvel project already directly tied to Disney before the new Disney/Marvel deal -- help the show's prospects? Weisman said "It can't hurt."

He noted, "A number of folks at Marvel have said kind things about the show in the past, but as you can imagine they have a LOT on their plates right now, so no one's talked to me about any potential pick-ups since the world turned a bit upside-down. What hasn't changed, I imagine, is that we're still waiting to hear whether Disney XD even WANTS a new season. If Disney XD decides they don't want any episodes, it's no longer likely that we'd shop the series around to XD's competitors. So any decision begins at XD, I would think. And before you ask, no, nobody at Disney has talked to me about the series. "

http://tv.ign.com/articles/102/1020699p1.html

My guess is they added years to the movie rights by doing this.

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