Madame Web will be on streaming but it won't be at Disney+, here's why

Madame Web is hitting theaters for another big addition to the Spider-Man movie universe. However, despite being based on Marvel Comics characters, when it eventually hits streaming, it likely won’t be on Disney+! Here are the reasons why!

Madame Web is another attempt by Sony to build their own universe based on Spider-Man characters. Dakota Johnson is the title role of Cassandra Webb, who gains mysterious visions of the future. She’s soon pushed to help Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor), and Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), who are hunted by the evil Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim). It seems the four are destined to become costumed heroines and Ezekiel wants to stop that. 

The movie clearly has links to the Spider-Man comics, given all three of the younger women have borne the Spider-Woman name at one point, with the trailers even showing them in costumes. So, it would seem logical that it’s streamed on Disney+. However, there’s a big issue in that, technically, this is not the MCU. 

The Marvel-Sony rights can be confusing

To explain why this is happening, one has to go all the way back to 1999 when Marvel sold the film rights to the Spider-Man characters to Sony for $7 million. Keep in mind, comic book movies were still a risky endeavor back then, but Sony managed to make it work with the hit 2002 Spider-Man movie and its 2004 and 2007 sequels. 

Because the deal was a separate entity, this meant when Disney bought Marvel in 2009, they didn’t have the rights to the Spider-Man characters (just as they wouldn’t get rights to X-Men until absorbing Fox). So when the MCU started, Sony decided to follow suit by crafting their own “Spider-Verse.”

This led to The Amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield, its success boosting the plans for a Spider-Verse that would include various spin-off movies on characters like the Sinister Six, Black Cat and more. However, the disappointing box office for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 put those ideas off. That was followed by Disney and Sony reaching a licensing agreement in 2015 so Spider-Man could be in the MCU.

Sony continued with the Venom movies, and then, in 2021, worked with Marvel to produce the smash hit Spider-Man: No Way Home that linked all three Spider-Man movie continuities together. The success of that has pushed Sony to go back to their ideas on a "Spider-Verse," including Morbius, Madame Web, and the upcoming Kraven the Hunter films.

Where will Madame Web stream?

To make a long story short, this means that while Disney+ can stream any MCU stuff, they would need permission from Sony to stream any of the other Spider-Man-related films. So, you can watch the original Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy and The Amazing Spider-Man on Disney+.

However, Spider-Man: No Way Home is only available on Starz, Morbius on Netflix, and the Venom movies on Fubo. It appears that, because Sony doesn’t have a dedicated streaming service yet, Madame Web will premiere on the service Crave with the possibility of a Netflix run, but that’s uncertain yet. 

In short, it's the complex web of legal loopholes that will prevent Madame Web from showing up on Disney+ and a reminder that even Disney/Marvel doesn’t own everything yet. 

Madame Web premieres in theaters Wednesday, Feb. 14.