With the pandemic having shut down theaters for the majority of 2020 and part of 2021, many studios took to unloading their biggest projects onto streaming services. Pretty much everybody got into it…but not Sony. They held firm, moving their entire blockbuster slate and now they’ve got quite the lineup on the way, including three Marvel films in Venom 2, Morbius, and even Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2. And when those movies are done in theaters, Netflix will be the only place you can stream them.
Netflix has struck a multi-year deal to be the exclusive streaming home to Sony’s upcoming theatrical releases, including the aforementioned superhero films plus Uncharted, which will be the first starting in 2022, along with Bullet Train, Where the Crawdads Sing, and future Bad Boys and Jumanji sequels.
The deal spans five years and is described by THR as “record-setting” and worth roughly $1B to Sony. The studio has notably not launched a streaming service of their own, leaves them the flexibility to make this sort of agreement. This also does away with the previous pay-TV deal Sony had with Starz since 2006.
Pretty big stuff here, and it’s interesting that we’ll be seeing these specific Marvel movies only on Netflix. I wonder if Sony reached out to Disney at all?
