After Sony’s Marvel universe of superhero movies sputtered out last fall with the release of “Kraven the Hunter,” Sony Pictures CEO Ravi Ahuja acknowledged that the bar for superhero movies to be successful at the box office has been raised.
“There was a period of time where anything superhero was almost guaranteed to do well,” Ahuja said on Thursday at the Bank of America conference. “I think [the bar] for superhero movies, it was relatively low. In the mid-2010s pretty much all of them would do incredible business, but now even superhero movies have to have a degree of originality. They have to add something different. They have to have emotional connection. They have to be cultural events that can be marketed that way.”
Ahuja’s comments come as Sony’s attempt to build out its own Marvel universe based on the Spider-Man characters it licenses reached something of a nadir after diminishing returns.
While 2018’s “Venom” grossed $856 million worldwide and its sequels managed to hit nearly $500 million, the Jared Leto-fronted “Morbius” limped to $167 million globally, with a historic 74% second-weekend box office drop that became a social media punchline; the critically savaged “Madame Web” grossed just $100 million worldwide and the Aaron Taylor-Johnson-led “Kraven the Hunter” managed a mere $62 million globally.
Ahuja expressed optimism that the next Tom Holland “Spider-Man” movie, “Brand New Day,” would do well, but noted that “you can’t make a bad movie.”
Indeed, the Holland-led “Spider-Man” films — which are creatively produced by Marvel Studios but largely financed and distributed by Sony — have been a bright spot, with 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” grossing nearly $2 billion.
As for Sony’s overall approach to making big box office hits, Ahuja said you have to make “cultural events,” pointing to films like “Weapons,” “Sinners” and Sony’s own “28 Years Later.”
“It’s a bit of marketing, but it’s making it an event that people want to go out to theaters and watch together as well. That’s always been the case. I think it’s just even tougher than it used to be.”
