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Back in 1998, Sony Pictures executive Yair Landau met with Marvel about the rights to Spider-Man. They already had the DVD rights but wanted the full film rights. New Marvel chief Ike Perlmutter made him a surprising counter offer, wherein Sony would not only take Spider-Man but also pretty much every other Marvel character, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, and Black Panther, in a deal which would have cost $25 million.

However, when Landau took the offer back to his bosses at Sony, they quickly shot it down. “Nobody gives a sh—about any of the other Marvel characters," Landau recalled. "Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man.” So they did, and instead Sony made a deal to acquire the rights to Spider-Man from Marvel for $10 million, plus 5% of any movies' gross revenue and half the revenue from consumer products. Marvel was a bit desperate for cash at the time, so that might have seemed like a win on their part, but Perlmutter's business partner Avi Arad didn't think so, calling the deal "pitiful".

Of course, as we all now know, this proved to be a big mistake in the long run, given the huge success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe IOTL. So then, what if Sony had accepted Perlmutter's original counter-offer in 1998, and secured the film rights for every single Marvel character back then for $25 million, effectively making Marvel Studios a subsidiary of Sony Pictures? Would they have created a Marvel Cinematic Universe of their own, earlier than IOTL? And how might TTL's alternate MCU have panned out, under Sony's jurisdiction?
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