(Note: This episode originally ran back in 2022.) This past weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had the second largest domestic opening of 2023, netting (or should we say webbing?) over $120 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada. But the story leading up to this latest Spider-Man movie has been its own epic saga. When Marvel licensed the Spider-Man film rights to Sony Pictures in the 1990s, the deal made sense — Marvel didn't make movies yet, and their business was mainly about making comic books and toys. Years later, though, the deal would come back to haunt Marvel, and it would start a long tug of war between Sony and Marvel over who should have creative cinematic control of Marvel's most popular superhero. Today, we break down all of the off-screen drama that has become just as entertaining as the movies themselves. This episode was originally produced by Nick Fountain with help from Taylor Washington and Dave Blanchard. It was engineered by Isaac Rodrigues. It was edited by Jess Jiang. The update was produced by Emma Peaslee, with engineering by Maggie Luthar. It was edited by Keith Romer. Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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The biggest superhero blockbuster of 2023 is not Marvel's newest Ant man movie.
It is also not Marvel's newest Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
No, no.
It is the newest Spider man movie.
What's a guy gotta do to join this Spider team?
You can never be part of this.
All stations stop.
Spider Mandev.
Spider man across the Spider Verse made $120 million last weekend in the US, making it the biggest comic book movie opening of the year.
But notably a comic book movie that was not made by Marvel Studios.
The biggest, most successful superhero movie company in history.
Nope.
Because Marvel does not own the film rights to its own most popular character.
Sony Pictures owns the Spider rights.
And a while ago, we dedicated an entire episode to the surprisingly epic saga of Sony and Marvel and the Spider man film rights.
Today, we're going to rerun that episode because this new movie's success kind of redefines what our original story meant.
Yeah.
So this new across the Spider Verse movie, it is an animated film.
It's the sequel to that miles morales into the Spider Verse movie.