While Marvel Studios may be in the most reflective stage of its existence to date, with several past projects not matching up to prior successes, excitement couldn’t be higher for the team-up blockbuster Avengers: Doomsday to hit the 2026 movie schedule, and the same goes for the MCU’s next co-production with Sony, the currently filming Spider-Man: Brand New Day. And it sounds like the era of Sony’s sour Spidey spinoffs may be over, at least according to its CEO.
Previously a Roku board member, Ravi Ahuja was tapped to take over Sony Pictures as CEO in late 2024, and he was officially slotted into the role in January 2025, replacing outgoing head honcho Tony Vinciquerra. The latter was at the head of the company throughout the run of Marvel-adjacent whiffs such as the poorly reviewed Madame Web, the even more poorly reviewed Morbius and the similarly panned trilogy capper Venom: The Last Dance. Speaking at a Bank of America conference (via TheWrap), Ahuja addressed the current state of superhero cinema, saying:
There was a period of time where anything superhero was almost guaranteed to do well. 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.
Now, that's a pretty broad generalization, since there were definitely some superhero movies that still more or less failed at the box office during the genre's heyday. One can point to Green Lantern barely making more than its budget, or the jumbled releases of The New Mutants and Dark Phoenix. But for the most part Ahuja isn't wrong.
Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and the rise of the MCU made it clear how big such properties could be on the big screen, and all things Avengers went above and beyond in raising expectations. But not everything can be The Avengers, and in fact most things are far, far from it.
That said, a movie not having the most massive budget behind it is less of an issue if the project itself can be viewed and sold as an event. James Gunn's Superman had that kind of caché just from being the first live-action DCU project, but one could make the same distinction for Clayface as the rare horror movie within the supe subgenre. (Or for the Marvel Zombies miniseries, for that matter.)
I think Venom could have maybe felt like more of a cultural event as a best-case scenario, but fell short of that. (That trilogy was technically a success in spite of its negative critical attention.) But I don't think anything could have saved Madame Web or Morbius in that way, which just goes to show that a good story and characters are just as necessary as a sellable campaign. Let's not forget the former boss defended releasing such bombs, and he'll still be on the board at the studio until the end of the year.
Ravi Ahuja reaffirmed that he aims to continue pushing for the theatrical experience to be as communally enjoyable as can be, saying:
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.
It's definitely tougher to watch and laugh along with mid-level comedies at theaters these days, since the bulk of those releases are going straight to streaming, where it's basically impossible to make any movie release feel like an event.
Time will tell whether or not Ahuja will walk proudly or stumble repeatedly when it comes to Sony's Marvel projects, but if Nicolas Cage's Spider-Noir gets axed before it premieres, that'll probably be a good indicator.
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