>>86884801ding ding ding ding ding ding
>>86884783Charles Fries owned them in the 1970s and when his company, Charles Fries Productions, sold up on his retirement in the 90s... they were part of the package.
Back then of course (in the 70s) you sold whole-rights for life - by the 80s this was out of vogue as there had been plenty of lawsuits arising from various aspects of the practice. What's common now (and was done in the 80s) is a 10-year deal (other periods are available) where you buy the film rights for a decade and if you don't act - if you're not actively filming or doing post-production - by the end of that period, you lose them. In comic book movies we've seen this with Daredevil, for example, but it's a widespread practice.
If you do act within the decade then there are (usually, unless it's something the seller definitely didn't want and lowered the price accordingly) provisions for sequels and these sequels will extend the contract duration by a few years. Reboots might extend it even further.
But a wholly-owned deal like Sony has with Spider-Man is unheard of these days. Someone must have owned those rights since a lot further back than the 1990s, because even Marvel in the 80s/90s wasn't offering whole-life.
It's very possible that there were two sets of rights - which is not as big a problem as it sounds, because it's like selling the rights to a book series to different studios, where they each have a claim on specific stories and characters - and that one of them went out in the 80s, but the other was already with Fries. Ownership would then seem to have been sorted out between the third parties without Marvel's involvement, since the second set hasn't reverted.
Again, going back to Daredevil - when FOX made it, they actually bought the Kingpin (in whole) from Sony, which is why Marvel now own his character again, because he reverted along with the rest of the Daredevil rights. So a combination of those two sets of Spider-Mans is likely.
