Marvel Studios to Produce Its Own Movies 151
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:oh great... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this could work quite well if, (and that may be a big IF), Marvel sticks to its strengths and brings in Hollywood talent to do the rest.
For example, if they have the artists and writers for the comic books create the storyboards for the movie, and have a good director actually use that as a base for the actual movie, they could create something pretty good.
The comic writers don't understand the difficulties of working with different camera angles or special effects, but the directors do. Of course, the directors probably don't understand the characters and would have a hard time getting the "comic book feel" right. Together, they could do both, which would make one hell of a movie. Maybe an iterative approach to the movie/story like they do at Pixar would work. Marvel puts together some storyboards, the directors go over them talking about what can be done, and what doesn't work technically and cinematically, and Marvel updates things. Repeat until both sides are happy. Schedule a blockbuster release date and collect your money.
Re:Snakes in the garden (Score:2, Interesting)
However there is some valid point to the argument for paying the creators fairly, if not legally then morally. For instance the creator of X-Men Dave Cockrum died recently while having a lot of problems paying his medical bills. Legally he did not own any of his creations and he was unfortunate enough to work at Marvel before they changed their policy. As I understand it was after this that The Hero Initiative was set up (http://www.heroinitiative.org/). Both Stan Lee and current editor-in-chief Joe Quesada contributed their time to making a DVD to raise money for the cause.
I'm in no way an expert on US copyright laws, but I would suspect that if Marvel felt obliged to pay any one creator who'd fallen on hard times for his works they might open themselves up to a number of lawsuits, so it makes business sense for them to stick to the original agreements with the creators.
Marvel, DC... do they have a printer's RIAA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay. So how did they lose the rights to Superman in the first place?
Neal: Well they just signed a piece of paper.
Sam: That's all it took? Well why would DC Comics screw them out of that?
Neal: Well DC didn't screw them. There was no entity such as DC Comics at the time. There was an accountant who was one of three partners who ran a printing company who was printing comic books as a way to keep their presses moving and that was all they were really interested in doing. Of course it became a pain in the ass and they had to pay attention to it and they did pay attention to it and Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who had been working for them, brought into them this comic idea that they had been trying to sell to the syndicated strips for several years and they thought that they were never going to sell it, so why not sell it to the publisher that was publishing their detective stories and their cowboy stories? And so the publisher gave them a piece of paper to sign and said, "We'll buy it, but everything we publish, we own so you have to sign this piece of paper. I don't think it was even a fully typed out piece of paper. I think it was about three quarters of a page and they signed away their rights just like that.
Sam: Now were you able to help better their quality of life? Did they get enough money?
Neal: They got enough money to live like human beings. Well it doesn't sound like a lot these days but they got $25,000 a year. But it escalated and it was up from nothing. But it was more than that. They got their names back on the strip and they also got setted. What you call "setted" is when somebody goes, "Oh, the creators of Superman are here tonight during this benefit performance of the Superman movie. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Jerry and Joe will you take a bow?" And they were treated well, and treated well at conventions because they finally came out of their hole. They had their way paid. They earned what was at that time a living wage so they could fly places and do things. Joe got married for the first time in his life. Jerry got to live a reasonable life. He put his daughter through school. And their income went up. They had medical insurance and they had lots of benefits you have at a bigger corporation. For the first time in their lives they lived a reasonable life.
Sam: So they did okay.
Neal: They did okay at the end of their lives. At the end! At the end after they had been fucked. I don't like to use the word 'fuck' so much but when it comes to this story the word just comes to my mouth.
Re:That's still no excuse for fraud (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, now that I think about it, if Groom would have gotten a fair share from the Gump movie, maybe he wouldn't have written Gump & Co to cash in on the movie's success. I guess it's nice to think somewhere exists a parallel universe with honest Hollywood accounting that was spared that steaming pile of literary crap.
And if anyone thinks I'm exaggerating how bad that book was, here's a short spoiler: Forrest joins the space program and ends up captured by cannibals. He has to keep beating their chief in chess so they won't eat him. If you still want to read it, go ahead. You've been warned.