An agreement between Marvel Comics and Sony Pictures says that Spider-Man, the masked comic superhero who featured in several blockbuster movies, should neither be portrayed on screen as a homosexual or a member of any other race except white. This was revealed in an email that became public following a cyber attack on the film studio.

A recent report in IB Times states that sections of a licensing agreement between Marvel Comics and Sony Pictures in 2011, which was published by Gawker, contains a list of "Mandatory Spider-Man character traits." For instance, the "mandatory character traits" requires that the character is male, does not use torture, does not use foul language, does not smoke, abuse alcohol or sell drugs and is not a homosexual.

The document also renders a list of compulsory character traits for Spider-Man's alter-ego, Peter Parker, and insists that he too, must be a Caucasian heterosexual.

However, it is interesting to note that the document also does includes the caveat that the requirement on sexuality only applies providing Marvel has not portrayed the character as a homosexual in its comic book series.

These disclosures have been made at a critical time when people are increasingly challenging the conventions regarding Spider-Man's race and sexuality in mainstream cinema as well as comics.

In addition to the above mentioned information, the leaked documents from Sony Pictures owing to the hack disclosed that the then Sony studio chairman Amy Pascal wanted the black British actor Idris Elba to play the role of James Bond. Moreover, the character of Bobby "Iceman" Drake in the X-Men comics was recently introduced as being gay, following which rival studio DC Comics also announced that they will be coming out with a solo comic series on a gay superhero named Midnighter.

Meanwhile, critics have indicated that while Marvel's comics are becoming more and more diverse as far as the race, gender and sexuality of the characters are concerned, movies based on Marvel comics have not mirrored this change.