After the backlash from fans over Sony's Avi Arad's involvement in the MCU's Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home films, one of the producers of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse spoke out to defend his colleague. Arad is still producing Marvel Spider-Man content at Sony with productions like Venom 2 and Morbius. He is not as involved with the MCU films since the most recent negotiations in 2019. The question many fans have been asking is whether that was due to some of the alleged choices he made that they have been criticizing of late.
Arad has been producing Marvel and Spider-Man content for decades. As one of the founders of Marvel Studios, Arad was a large part of the early years of Marvel's live-action films, though he left the studio right before the official MCU launched. Fans have been reacting to a story that blames Arad for many controversial choices the MCU Spider-Man franchise has made, including not mentioning the death of Uncle Ben and removing a scene with Captain America from Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Seeing the fan outcry about the influence Arad had on the MCU's Spider-Man films, Into the Spider-Verse producer Phil Lord took to Twitter to speak on the man's behalf. Lord claimed that Arad's "enthusiasm and encouragement and intelligence" played a significant role in making Into the Spider-Verse a "much better" movie than it would have been without the man's assistance. Lord finishes his post with the statement that Arad is a "True Believer," harkening back to the words of Marvel legend Stan Lee himself to promote the beleaguered producer.
Lord has been a part of several big Hollywood projects and has seen his share of drama with productions over the years. In 2017 while working with his directing partner Christopher Miller on Solo: A Star Wars Story, the duo left the project due to "creative differences" with Lucasfilm. The resulting film suffered from mixed reviews from fans and critics. Before that, the pair had directed several box-office hits without incident, including Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street, and The Lego Movie.
Different projects require different handling, and that might be the case with Arad's involvement with a live-action MCU Spider-Man and Sony's animated Into the Spider-Verse. With the MCU films, there are many spinning plates, and while Arad may be getting the blame for some of these decisions, it seems likely everyone involved was coming up with solutions that seemed like the best ideas for the film at the time. Compromises that would satisfy what Sony required and what the MCU wanted from the character. Unfortunately, Arad has a poor history with Spider-Man films in particular. In the past, he pushed Venom as an extra villain in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 and has been accused of blocking Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man films from crossing over with the MCU.
SOURCE: Phil Lord/ Twitter