Hey, Maybe Release 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' On VOD Now?

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Hey, Maybe Release 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' On VOD Now?

With all due respect to any and all upcoming films about the moon falling on top of Earth, the most talked-about movie in the world right now is Spider-Man: No Way Home. But regardless of its widespread success and near-universal acclaim, a lot of us haven’t been able to see it yet, which is why we’re asking, nay imploring, that Sony release No Way Home on VOD immediately. 

Why? Despite the internet’s barrage of Futurama and Transformers memes, the Omicron variant has ravaged much of the world, prompting an increased number of new lockdowns. In Canada, movie theaters are, as of today, closed in Quebec and Ontario – which isn’t insignificant, Ontario’s theaters alone accounted for 40% of the country’s box office take last weekend. 

Some of us literally spent most of December rewatching and writing about Spider-Man movies in anticipation of a thing we now can’t enjoy because we didn’t feel like heading out to a packed theater full of sweaty, screaming nerds, in what likely amounted to the germ equivalent of a swingers party, mere days before Christmas. So, yeah, a lot of Canadian Spider-Man fans are now plum out of luck – and perhaps Sony isn’t aware that Spider-Man has a rich history with Canada, dating back to the 1990s when Peter Parker randomly met Ghost Rider in Toronto and, judging from the cover art, teamed up with him to … terrorize a small child?

Marvel Comics

Sure, we get that, say, Licorice Pizza needs all the ticket sales it can get from both cinephiles and confused diners in search of experimental cuisine, but No Way Home has literally made over a billion dollars — that’s already more than 166 times what Gotti earned in its entire theatrical run for crying out loud. And, sure, a lot of movie theaters may be dependent on Spider-Man’s popularity, but the box office profits of movies like Dune and Halloween Kills proved that films can still do well in theaters, even when they’re available digitally – although the latter’s success may have been due to the fact that no one could figure out how exactly to download Paramount Plus, or Peacock, or Peacock Plus, or whatever the hell Halloween Kills was actually on. 

Apparently, Sony knows that right now (as Covid cases are surging like Paul Giamatti’s neck veins in The Amazing Spider-Man 2) might not be an ideal time for crowds to gather in movie theaters. Hence their delay of the upcoming Morbius – either that or they need some extra time to edit out Jared Leto’s offensively cartoonish Italian accent that we assume he’s attempting in every movie from now on. 

Charge us $30, fine, whatever. Remember how Disney released Black Widow for around that price back in August, knowing that much of their audience didn’t feel safe going to a movie theater? Looking at a chart of U.S. Covid cases today, August 2021 is basically a toddler standing next to the Shaq in heels that is January 2022.

Google

Wouldn’t this be a nice thing to offer fans who may be coping with the stress of school and work closures or who are dealing with isolation and/or actual illness and just want to see Spider-Man hanging out with two other Spider-Men, dammit? This was pretty much the exact reason why Disney released The Rise of Skywalker early on VOD back in March 2020 – which was either an act of kindness during a hard time or more salt our collective wound, depending on how you feel about that movie. So don’t wait for another three months Sony, release it now, before Willem Dafoe’s third-act nude scene gets spoiled for everyone.

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Top Image: Marvel Studios

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