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...