8 Films That Were Made Solely To Hold Onto Rights

Want to know why the not so Amazing Spider-Man had to happen?

By Padraig Cotter /

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The film business has always been about making money, even if it does occasionally allow talented directors to produce great movies. The steady corporatization of it has become a little overwhelming in recent years, though, and we now have fans pitting Marvel against DC like it’s some kind of football match.

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This has been the case for some time, and while great work can still be made in this environment – Mad Max: Fury Road is a damned miracle – it often results in shoddy movies. This is compounded further when a studio remembers they hold the rights to a valuable property, but those rights are about to expire if they don’t make something.

So they’ll quickly slap a movie together and throw it out into the world, and often it doesn’t matter to them if it’s any good; so long as they keep the rights, they’re happy.

A number of high-profile movies have suffered this fate in recent years, and nearly all of them suffered poor reviews and box-office as a result. That’s what happens when you knowingly make a bad movie and expect audiences to lap it up.

8. The Amazing Spider-Man

Despite being a huge hit Spider-Man 3 was reviled by fans, and despite Sam Raimi working hard on redeeming the series with a planned Spider-Man 4, Sony eventually pulled the plug. It was stated in the agreement between Sony and Marvel they need to make a movie every few years, and they were hardly going to let a cash cow like Spider-Man slink away to a rival studio.

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So they decided to reboot, telling yet another origin story of how Peter Parker learned about great responsibly. While hardly terrible there’s a troubling lack of innovation with The Amazing Spider-Man; it covers story beats that were already worn out in the Raimi movies, and the villain’s evil scheme is so generic it’s almost a parody.

Still, the movie was a hit and Sony galloped forwards with the sequel. Unfortunately, they stuffed it with villains and pointless subplots, and it was met with a collective “meh.” Thankfully Sony decided after this they wanted to share their toys after all, and let Marvel use Spidey for the MCU.

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