Sony v MCU Spider-Man films box office: which studio has made more money from the Marvel character?

Madame Web is the next film in the Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU), a film franchise based around Spider-Man and associated Marvel characters. Sony owns the rights to Spidey and characters such as Venom, Morbius, Kraven the Hunter, and Cassandra Webb, and has made billions from them over the last two decades.

However, Marvel Studios and Sony secured a deal several years ago in which they were able to share characters - this allowed Spider-Man to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), whilst the likes of Iron Man featured in the SSU.

This was great news for the fans and fostered a sense of competition between the two studios, both have which have made a killing from Spider-Man.

How much have the Sony Spider-Man films made?

Sony has made a staggering $10.37 billion from the Spider-Man franchise, which includes the standalone and crossover Spidey films, villain movies, and the animated Spider-Verse projects.

This huge sum is broken down into $7.9 billion from the Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland films, including the crossover No Way Home, (which made $1.9 billion on its own).

The Spider-verse films (Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse made $1 billion collectively. Additionally, the two Venom films made $1.3 billion at the box office, whilst Morbius was a flop but still made $167.5 million.

Two of the Sony Spidey movies have cross the billion dollar mark at the box office - No Way Home, which is the seventh highest grossing film of all time and Sony’s highest, and Far From Home, which made $1.13 billion and is Sony’s second highest grossing film, James Bond movie Skyfall by a few million.

Collectively, the Sony Spider-Man universe films had a budget of $2 billion, meaning that (not accounting for marketing and the cut taken by cinemas), the franchise has netted the studio $8.3 billion so far.

How much have the MCU Spider-Man films made?

Spider-Man didn’t join the MCU until 2016, and has only appeared in three films in the franchise so far, though they have all been incredibly successful. Tom Holland played Spider-Man in the character’s MCU debut in Captain America: Civil War, which made $1.13 billion. He reprised the role in Avengers: Infinity War, which became the fourth highest-grossing film ever (it’s now sixth), having made $2 billion, and Avengers: Endgame which smashed records, making $2.8 billion and briefly becoming the world’s highest-grossing film.

This gives the MCU’s Spider-Man films a combined box office of $5.93 billion. Take away the total budget of the three films, which is roughly $922 million (again not accounting for marketing and the cinema’s cut) and this gives a total profit of just over $5 billion.

Whilst Sony has made over $3 billion more from Spider-Man and related characters than Marvel, this is over 13 films compared to the MCU’s three. The per movie average for Sony is way lower, at around $630 million profit per film, compared to $1.66 billion for the MCU.

Then of course you could argue that Spider-Man was only one of many characters in Civil War and the Avengers films and that they hardly count as Spider-Man movies. Either way, both studios have made a huge amount from their respective franchises, and hopefully this will be enough of a motive for them to continue to share characters going forward.