Who Owns Spider Man

Spider-Man, one of Marvel’s most beloved superheroes, has an interesting history when it comes to who owns him. Originally created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, he was originally owned by the publishing giant Marvel comics. Over the decades, the ownership of Spider-Man has changed several times due to various deals, agreements, and corporate takeovers.

The first dispute over the rights to Spider-Man began in 1985 when Marvel Comics approached publisher Ron Perelman to purchase the company. In order to cover the costs of the purchase, Perelman agreed to sell the film rights for Spider-Man to Carolco Pictures for $4 million dollars. However, Marvel soon found out that the rights to the character had in fact been sold to Cannon Films in 1986, for a much lower amount.

Later, in 1998, Marvel entered into a deal with Sony Pictures and Columbia to create the first Spider-Man film. The agreement gave Sony the rights to make five feature films based upon the wall-crawler, along with any additional movie sequels and spinoffs. This agreement allowed Marvel to maintain the publishing rights to the character while Sony held the film rights.

The Sony-Marvel agreement stayed in effect until 2015, when Marvel’s parent company, The Walt Disney Company, acquired Marvel Studios. This allowed Disney to buy out the remainder of Sony’s holdings and therefore, Spider-Man and his related characters returned to Marvel completely.

In the present day, both Marvel Studios and Sony work together to create films in the Spider-Man franchise that fit into a shared universe. Sony still holds the film rights to Spider-Man while Marvel Studios maintains the publishing rights to the character.