For the past 15 years, movie studios have coveted nothing more than superhero franchises. There’s Marvel Studios, with The Avengers and Marvel Cinematic Universe as reigning champs. And Warner Bros., with DC Comics’ Batman and Superman and Justice League all coming together under Zack Snyder. The wealth of stories and characters within reach of Marvel Studios and WB is as hard to calculate. They’ll never run out of stories.

Then there’s Fox, who owns X-Men. Since X-Men is a Marvel title and Marvel Studios has rights to the rest of the Marvel Universe, Fox has had to get creative in how they grow their franchise. They created a trilogy, then, spun-off Wolverine, then later rebooted the title. In an inspired decision (and taking a page from Star Trek), Fox then combined the original with the re-boot, and kept going. They have many characters yet to go at Fox, and maybe even Fantastic Four, if Marvel doesn’t ruin that plan.

Which brings us to Sony. Sony is trying to keep up with their competitors, but it’s hard, because Sony owns Spider-Man.

Here’s a short recap of Sony’s Spider-Man work. They started their Spider-Man franchise with a trilogy starring Tobey Maguire in the role and did a pretty fine job with Sam Raimi directing. Spider-Man 2 remains one the best films in the super-hero genre, which helps the curve because Spider-Man 3 was terrible.

Sony rebooted their series a few years later with the Perfectly Adequate (Amazing) Spider-Man, now with Andrew Garfield starring. It made a bunch of money and was pretty decent but nobody really seemed to care about the new series start-up. The sequel came out and made a bunch more money, but wasn’t that good, and resulted in even fewer people who cared that Marc Webb’s films were getting released.

The films all made a big pile of money, but it’s hard not to notice that with each new picture the BPOM drops about, oh, a hundred million dollars.

With TASM 2 came plans for the expansion of the Spider-Man franchise in the Marvel model. A major sprawling cinematic universe blow-up including a Venom film to be directed by Alex Kurtzman and a Sinister Six film to be directed by Drew Goddard we announced, and it was a little exciting.

Drew Goddard doing Sinister Six? That perked some ears and turned some heads towards Sony’s superhero work. And they needed something to get people caring because no one, in any business, like to see their results follow such a negative trend.

Turns out Sony might have gotten a little ahead of themselves. With producer/writer Roberto Orci leaving the franchise to direct Star Trek 3: Kirk Squints Harder, he gave an interview to IGN that sounds a little more despairing than Sony might like to hear. From IGN:

“I don’t know what their plans are for that franchise,” Orci said when asked about his continued involvement. “I don’t ever want to say never, but we have to figure out what their scheduling is in terms of when they want each movie. I’ve read probably as much as anyone else. There’s a love for the Sinister Six, the idea of Venom — there’s an idea of Spider-Man’s going to be one of these characters that’s part of our business. He’s such a popular character. Spider-Man’s not going to go away any time soon. When it all happens and how and all that has yet to be determined.”

“There is an idea that Spider-Man is going to be part of our business.” Is it possible to get a more luke-warm endorsement on the state of a franchise than that?

I’m sure this will all come together. They would have us think it’s an issue of timing and schedules and planning a franchise, but one day The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will come out, and then some Venom movie will come out some year in the future, and later still a The Sinister Six movie will get released.

But Sony, the question is not just one of scheduling. Your past three films have been met with money (diminishing, but still a lot) and ticket sales but no enthusiasm. People are leaving for other middling franchises, and doing so with a sense of confusion about your future.

Five movies into a diminishing franchise built on one of the best Marvel characters of all time, perhaps its time to start asking: who cares?