Marvel Studios to Produce Its Own Movies

Dekortage writes "According to the New York Times, Marvel Studios will be producing its own superhero movies instead of licensing the superheros to other Hollywood studios. It's all about the money: despite the enormous popularity of Sony Pictures' Spiderman 1 and 2, the licensing deal only netted Marvel $62 million. The article includes some tips about upcoming works: Edward Norton as Bruce Banner in a new Incredible Hulk, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark in Iron Man."

Re:Actors?

[msuzio]

On the contrary, Tony Stark has been portrayed as a recovering alcoholic in the comics for decades now. If anything, RDJ wins extra points for knowing how to get in touch with the character ;-)

Re:Snakes in the garden

[doubleofive]

The article you link to doesn't exactly prove your point. Stan Lee Media isn't owned by Stan Lee, they're using a loophole in an already existing contract to try to make money off of The Man's work.

A Marvel spokesperson declined to comment but later issued a statement from Mr. Lee: "I do not support this action and believe the suit to be baseless." Mr. Lee currently serves as publisher emeritus of Marvel Comics. He and Pow Entertainment could not immediately be reached for comment. In January, he filed suit against Mr. Nesfield and two of his associates alleging they illegally took over his former company and infringed on his trademarks and copyrights.

Re:This has happened before

[superpulpsicle]

I want War machine and Iron man with the proton canon versus 100000 sentinels. I'll pay good money to see it.

Re:Well of course

[delt0r]

Yea, first theres all the Sony Sound Stuido(TM) Fees, followed by the high cost of Sony Cameras and of course the editiong and mastering with the Sony Edtition Station Pro(TM). There was the hugh cost of Marketing from Sony Marketing and then there was all these licence fees for Blu-Ray mastering and DVD mastering (A Sony subsidary company). We havn't even talked about the cost of film (Sony Colour Tech) or film duplication (Sony Film Distrabution) and don't get me started on the Sony Legal deparment overheads or the realvent fees to MPAA/RIAA. And we don't even have a soundtrack yet.

People don't understand the high cost of movie production and distrabution.

Because of Hollywood Accounting

[Moraelin]

Basically because of Hollywood Accounting [wikipedia.org].

In a nutshell, they calculate a shitload of costs (and often actually give that money to their daughter companies and such) as percentages of the income. E.g., marketting for the movie might be calculated as, say, 25% of the income, so even if your film sells a billion copies, that expense just increases accordingly. Often to the point where the movie _will_ look like it made them a loss, even if it became the greatest success of all time and sold a billion copies.

And since there is no time when you can say "ok, it's over", you can't even really call the bluff. There is no date when you can say "ok, it's over, let's divide the loot." There's always the DVD version, the Blue Ray version, the remastered edition, the "han shot third" edition, etc, so they can just say they earmarked those funds for marketting those. So, see, it's still not a profit, it's money your movie cost them.

It's not a joke, such movies as Forrest Gump or the LOTR movies, according to Hollywood, actually made a loss. Mind-boggling as that sounds.

_Why_ they do it, is so they can shaft you on royalties. Any contract where they promise you x% of the profit, is almost guaranteed to be x% of zero, since they'll massage it into looking like it made a loss.

Frankly, Marvel already made a damn good deal if they made anything at all.

Which also tells you why they'd rather take the risks. Because it beats getting shafted. Someone probably woke up to the reality that they got shafted again, and trying to get a better contract is like tilting at the windmills. So they're trying to avoid Hollywood, if they can.

Wouldn't even be the only one. The author of Forrest Gump, IIRC, also refused to sell them the rights to the sequel, after being shafted on the first (and thus only) movie. Since they said the first one made them a loss, he said something like that he can't in good conscience let any more money be wasted on a failure.

Marvel, on the other hand, obviously doesn't want to just give up on movies completely, like that guy did. So they're trying to do it themselves.

Re:Well of course

[OldeTimeGeek]

Yes, we all know that shady accounting is a Sony invention. These techniques were never practiced at MGM, Universal, Fox, Paramount, RKO or Warner Brothers.

Sony rants are popular with the Slashdot crowd, but zero-profit movies have been the practice in Hollywood for a long, long time.

Re:Could it be possible to make superhero films WO

[Dogtanian]

The Roger Corman version of Fantastic Four?

Oh, there's apparently a very interesting story behind that film. To quote its Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org]:-

The Fantastic Four is an unreleased low-budget feature film completed in 1994. Created to secure copyright to the property, the producers never intended it for release -- although the director and other creators were not informed of this fact.

There's another article about it here [teako170.com], alongside the usual discussion at IMDB [imdb.com] (note that you need to register to view the forums).

Re:Snakes in the garden

[Verszou]

There's actually a minor error in what I wrote above, Dave Cockrum didn't create X-Men, Lee and Kirby did, but he invented the new team with members like Nightcrawler and so on - the X-Men we know from todays comics and movies. Nightcrawler for instance was originally created for another book, but Cockrum decided to use him when he had to do the first X-Men story.

Another interesting case where a creator didn't get the recognition, financially and otherwise, that his work deserved was Bill Finger who the Bill Finger Award is named after (http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_otherawards.shtm l). His name actually went into common use among creators where expressing things like "I've been fingered" means that you were not given proper credit for what you did.