Sony boss has finally explained why their ambitious Spider-Man universe, featuring Venom, didn’t succeed. While Tom Holland‘s live-action MCU movies have been box office juggernauts, including the latest entry, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the studio has constantly failed to build its own cinematic universe based on the fan-favorite wall crawler.

In an interview with Variety, Tom Rothman admitted what led to the failure of Sony’s shared Spider-Man universe, headlined by Venom. While the franchise featuring Tom Hardy in the popular role was successful, if not by a huge margin, other spin-off Spider-Man installments bombed.

Rothman explained, “the audience wasn’t satisfied enough with them. Whether that’s a fair assessment of those movies, who knows. That’s howling into the wind. The audience is the boss, and they didn’t respond. It’s as simple as that.”

In 2018, Sony tried to establish Venom as a big character for its own shared Spider-Man franchise in the future. While the movie featuring Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock/Venom was poorly received by critics, it still became a massive box office hit.

Sony then churned out two more Venom movies that weren’t as successful as the first part but still made money. However, the ambitious plan to create a separate Spider-Man universe completely crashed once other spin-off movies came out.

In 2022, Morbius, starring Jared Leto, was released and failed to create any impact. Then came 2024’s Madame Web, led by Dakota Johnson, which was also panned by critics and didn’t succeed at the box office either. The same year, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Kraven The Hunter also came out and was the last nail in the coffin for Sony’s shared Spider-Man universe.

Moving forward, it seems there are no plans to expand the spin-off series at all. Rothman also made it clear, saying, “At the moment, there are none in active development.”

As for Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, it’s now playing in theaters.

Originally reported by Mintu Kumar Tomar on SuperHeroHype.