Sony Pictures

Madame Web (2024) and Kraven the Hunter (2024) both landed as critical and commercial disappointments, following Morbius's infamous 2022 flop, effectively ending the Sony Spider-Man Universe as a going concern even as Venom: The Last Dance closed out that trilogy on a comparatively stronger note. With its own cinematic-universe experiment largely discredited, Sony has leaned more heavily into licensing Spider-Man-adjacent and other IP to outside platforms and into its anime pipeline through its Crunchyroll and Aniplex holdings.

We think Sony deserves some credit here that it rarely gets: unlike studios that keep doubling down on a failed shared-universe strategy out of sunk-cost stubbornness, Sony mostly stopped making SSU movies once the audience made its verdict unmistakable. The real asset Sony Pictures has now isn't a cinematic universe, it's distribution flexibility — the willingness to put films wherever they'll perform best, whether that's theaters, Netflix licensing deals, or its own growing anime business.

The thing worth watching is whether Sony ever revives spider-adjacent film properties with a genuinely different creative approach, or quietly lets that chapter close for good while anime becomes the studio's real growth story.