Marvel Comics and Movies


Here's one for the geeks...Marvel Comics was so broke a in the late 80's and early 90's they sold the film and television rights of a host of their major characters to keep afloat. That's why SONY (Columbia Pictures) owns Spider-man and Ghost Rider, Fox owns X-Men/Wolverine, The Fantastic Four and Daredevil/Elektra, New Line (Warner Bros) owns Blade and Lionsgate had the Punisher. Now, after a time, if these film studios aren't producing something using the characters, the rights revert back to the owner...

Marvel got their own studio up and running off the back of one of their second tier franchises: Iron Man, which was a massive hit. This year The Avengers became the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time so Marvel Studios is now happily building their Universe on their terms.

Sony are not letting go of Spider-man...not yet at least. They just rebooted the franchise...so Spidey isn't headed back to Marvel anytime soon. Fox have a Wolverine and X-Men movie in the works so they're not giving that up. Some of the others though are starting to reach their time limits.

Recent negotiations between Fox and Marvel over the rights of Daredevil, Silver Surfer and Galactus broke down so Fox is holding onto the Surfer and giving up Daredevil. The Man Without Fear headed back to Marvel is great news for fans.

The most baffling aspect of all these comic book/movie studio deals is that DC Comics finds it so difficult to get their projects up and running. DC is wholly owned by Time Warner Inc...which owns Warner Bros, New Line, HBO, The WB Network and the Cartoon Network. And really, except for Batman and Superman they've failed to really bring any of their characters to the big or small screen with any success. (Don't expect a Green Lantern sequel soon)

Coming soon for DC - A new Superman movie and a Green Arrow TV show. There's rumors of a Justice League movie, after Marvel's huge Avengers success but that's stalled out before and looks likely to stall again. The Wonder Woman TV show died at the pilot stage and despite constant rumors of an Aquaman movie...no-one's too interested in a character that speaks to fish...

Marvel meanwhile have a new Iron Man movie on the way. Then right behind it expect the sequels to Captain America and Thor. Ant-man is still in the process of being put together by the director of "Shaun of the Dead" and Marvel announced at Comic-con that they're going to produce a Guardians of the Galaxy movie...expanding their intergalactic Universe.

Oh and best of all, Marvel just signed up Joss Whedon to write and direct the sequel to Avengers! :0)



GSY

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Selling your book or selling your soul?

Image
Snobbery and hubris from the traditional publishing world bred some hurt feelings on the self-published side of the industry. To ease the pain, "Selfies" like to point out that they maintain control over their work and don't have to sell their souls like the "Trads" do. I don't think many believe that argument completely, but there's a lot of self-satisfaction in the idea of being in complete control of your artistic vision. This mask of creative integrity has morphed into a widely held conceit that we Selfies can write anything we like and, once our genius is recognized, we can reap the benefits of redefining the publishing industry. Only, that almost NEVER happens. Sure, the internet is awash with stories of this person who made seven figures self-publishing, or that person who was writing a chapter at a time on their blog and now their book is a movie. Yes, it happens...to those two people. Generally, the rest of us struggle. One of the ...
Read more

Questions for Spartagus.

I'm trying to be a writer (you may have heard mention of this fact a couple thousand times already...lets just pretend this is the first time) and writers need an audience and an ability to connect with them. So, I'm gonna try something different in the blog this time. I struggle to talk about myself in any meaningful way to strangers. I don't know you and you don't know me so, for the most part we are strangers. I show up on Twitter and tweet some mundane fact about myself: "I like cheese!" or, find myself chiming in about movies, cracking wise or ruminating about the size of the universe.The bulk of what I "talk" about is in short, sharp blasts on Twitter and that's lead me to wonder how much of a connection I'm making to the people I interact with through the myriad of social forums. I'm not the most social of animals since I do not find myself in the least bit "special" or "interesting" so find it hard to fat...
Read more

Bright Lights #1 - Valerie Haight - Happenstance

Image
 As promised, today I begin a new series of interviews with a diverse group of writers I've met on my internet journeys. The first head on the chopping block (volunteer) is Valerie Haight. Valerie is a prize winning, contemporary romance and suspense writer from Arkansas. Always supportive of other writers, she was one of the first people on Twitter to extend the hand of friendship to me and the first (and still only) person to ask me to post (guest blog) on their website. I am hugely honored that she has finally relented and agreed to come over to my wee blog and talk to you all (or y'all...whichever is more appropriate lol). So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce the first "Bright Light" in this ongoing series: Valerie Haight GUS: Hi, Valerie! This is a very exciting time for you in your writing career.  Now that you're nearing the release of your first novella, which part of the journey has surprised you the most...
Read more