Sony Pictures Entertainment has suffered some high-profile wounds over the last decade. Their animated wing occasionally brings home a hit, but their live-action efforts have struggled. Look at their big franchises. Ghostbusters, Men in Black, Resident Evil, and many more have hit seemingly fatal snags. Their biggest flaws are their ambition and impatience. They only want one thing. They were willing to hunt down Robin Hood to get it.
The crowning jewel among Sony's recent disasters is its handling of Spider-Man. Sony's Amazing Spider-Man films ended without conclusion thanks to the company's deal with Disney. Their ongoing Sony Spider-Man Universe has brought the world some of the funniest theatrical disasters ever recorded. The SSU remains alive, but it's a punchline before anything else.
What was Hood?
Remember when there were three competing Pinocchio movies in production last year? The same situation occurred in 2015 with cinematic adaptations of Robin Hood. Disney, Lionsgate, and Sony each had a Robin Hood script in pre-production simultaneously. Only one of the three made it to the screen. Lionsgate's Robin Hood dropped in 2018, losing the studio over $80 million and earning a 15% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney's Nottingham & Hood is thought to be canceled since no one from the company has publicly mentioned it since 2015. Sony's Hood also went up in flames with little explanation. The writers behind Robin Hood (2018) believed their film would be bought up and canceled by Sony to make room for the company's big idea.
In October 2014, Sony announced they were in talks to sign a seven-figure deal for Hood, a script by Cory Goodman and Jeremy Lott. Goodman was best known for writing the 2011 horror/action film Priest. Lott worked in production on Spy Kids, but most of his other credits remain unproduced. Back in the 2010s, Lott and Goodman wrote a science fiction script called Lore that garnered interest from Warner Bros. and Dwayne Johnson, but there's still nothing to show for it. Former MGM chairman Michael De Luca brought Hood to Sony, describing the project with comparisons to the Fast and Furious saga or the Mission: Impossible franchise. Goodman and Lott didn't just sell Hood. They sold the entire Robin Hood Cinematic Universe.
What would've followed Sony's Hood?
After the undoubtedly massive success that would've surrounded Hood, an adaptation of an age-old story by an untested screenwriter and the guy who would go on to write The Last Witch Hunter, Goodman and Lott had plans. Sony planned to create solo films about each of Robin Hood's merry men. Little John was up first. The seven-foot-tall second-in-command would finally bring his quarterstaff skills to the big screen in his own movie. Friar Tuck, the jovial man of the cloth who brings fun to the band, would come next. Finally, the peerless swordsman Will Scarlett would step up to the big screen. Each of these films would need to make mountains out of molehills, deriving full backstories from a few lines of dialogue. They'd also have to work around or within dozens of iterations of each character. The Robin Hood Cinematic Universe would have few of the benefits of the other examples of the genre. Its failure was written in the stars. Arguably, cancelation before its first entry was the best-case scenario.
How is Sony handling the cinematic universe gimmick today?
Was the Robin Hood Cinematic Universe a good idea? Of course it wasn't. Would it have been any worse than the Sony Spider-Man Universe? Probably not. At least a rush of swashbuckling action films about thieves in the woods of 13th-century England would stand out against the other superhero efforts. The one good cinematic universe is Marvel's all-consuming empire. Though it's starting to show diminishing returns, comic book adaptations are the only thing most studios are willing to try. Sony's attempts to make heroes out of Spider-Man's cast of antagonists have hit several significant snags. They're still trying, desperately reaching toward what Marvel has without the patience to do what they did. Their desperation makes each new effort feel increasingly embarrassing. Watching them try the same trick in a different genre might have at least obscured their failure a bit.
There are several lessons to be learned from the failure of Hood. Not everything needs to be a shared universe. With the right tone, writers, and directors, a series of Robin Hood films had the potential to be successful. The desperation of big studios knows no bounds. Any list of characters is on the chopping block. Look out for the Winnie the Pooh cinematic universe. Maybe every individual kid from Stand By Me could get a solo project before they remake that classic. At least most examples will be abandoned and forgotten before anyone has to sit down and watch their first feature.