By 1998, the litigation had wound down and most of the Spider-Man movie rights had reverted to Marvel. The exception was Columbia (and its parent company, Sony), which maintained a claim on the home-video rights, which in turn made it hard for Marvel to cut a deal with any other studio. Sony made Marvel an offer for the Spider-Man movie rights: $10 million, plus 5 percent of the gross and half of the toy revenue. Marvel countered by offering the movie rights to every character it still had available. That lineup didn’t include the Fantastic Four or the X-Men, but it did cover Captain America,
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