While Disney continues to grow their stable of movies thanks to internal films alongside Pixar, LucasFilm (Star Wars & Indiana Jones), and Marvel and Universal Studios expand their franchises like the Fast & Furious saga and Jurassic World series, Sony Pictures stutters and putters. Easily the world’s best known superhero and yet after two tries at building a bigger world with The Amazing Spider-Man, Sony Pictures basically gave up on bringing Spidy to the big screen and signed a deal with Marvel to include the beloved character in the MCU – a good move on their part, might I add. Let Marvel deal with the character and Sony gets a cut. It might not be the equivalent of owning the character entirely on their own but it’s better than rebooting the character every 5 years and ultimately killing any excitement towards him.

Now to give you an idea of how far behind the pack Sony Pictures is, Ghostbusters, a film that was received with mixed reactions, was their highest grossing movie in 2016, bringing in $128 million for the studio domestically with a $911 million total gross. On the other hand, rival studios like Disney, WB, and Universal brought in $3 billion, $1.9 billion, and $1.4 billion respectively.

To understand why the studio struggles so much, we need to only look at their most recent attempt to cash in on characters they control. Speaking with Fandango, Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts:

 It’s not. It’s not connected to the Marvel world, so that’s really intriguing… what that will be. I don’t know anything about it. It’s not connected, so there’s not that overlap. I’m only focused on my movie right now. 

To be clear, Sony Pictures will make a Venom movie that doesn’t take place in the MCU which in turn means no Spider-Man either. The reason fans love Venom, and the reason he’s interesting, is because of his connection to Parker and how he plays into the greater world, not because he’s some alien space goo that infects humans.

On its own, there is no reason whatsoever to see the Venom movie. That’s like Paramount making a movie about Khan without any mention of the entire Star Trek universe or a standalone flick about Agent Smith that doesn’t take place inside The Matrix.

Instead of working with Marvel and helping further flesh out the series, here’s how Sony is using their continued control over Spider-Man: they will release, in the next two years, an animated movie which again has nothing to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and they’ll turn Venom, a beloved baddie from the world of Spidy, into a horror film with zero connection to the world that created him.

Got it.

Maybe before taking on another major franchise, Sony Pictures should try to have some respect for the characters they have in their stable instead of cashing in on them. At this point, I hope all of their Marvel-related efforts crash and burn so Marvel Studios can regain those rights.