Gareth S. Young - - 1000 Trillion Suns

Next year, Captain America celebrates his 75th birthday. No doubt the comics will celebrate this in fine style, and it's just been announced that ABC, the television wing of Disney, will be showing a 1 hour  75th Anniversary Special . Later in the year there is, of course, a third Captain America movie -  CIVIL WAR  - to be devoured by the fans. And all of this is great. I'm a fan of comics, movies and Cap, so I'm on board for all of it. What is interesting though is how OLD all of this comic book stuff is. DC's Holy Trinity There's a lot of excitement for DC's upcoming Batman versus Superman movie and the first "on screen" appearance of the Big 3  - Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman - together in one movie. Warner acquired Time Inc. in 1989 and with it, DC comics. About ten minutes later, a Batman movie was announced. That it's taken more than 25 years to get the Big 3 together is baffling to me. Supes, Bats and WW are three of the...

Every summer, the movie studios release what they call "tentpole" movies. Normally, these are big-budget, effects-driven franchise movies, designed to prop up the studios and make them their profits for the year. I call them programmed franchises because they're not acquired with one movie in mind. The philosophy from the start is to produce at least a trilogy. So much money is invested in these movies that failure can cripple a studio. Trivia Blast!! - New Line Cinema had to merge with its parent company Warner Bros after the (relative) failure of  The Golden Compass:   Budget: $180M  Box Office: $70M ( The Golden Compass  was intended to follow the trilogy of His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman) Jaws   Stephen Spielberg is sometimes credited with creating the first summer "Blockbuster" movie with  Jaws .  Jaws  was the first movie to be distributed with a "wide release," meaning that it opene...