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Avengers have assembled! (pretty much just the Marvel movie thread now with some comics)
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Now out of the DC universe the only decent movies have been some of the Batman movies and the original Superman movies, mainly Superman 2. And even in the Superman and Batman movies there were some horrible horrible horrible stinkers. But also the DC universe interests me less and the one Vertigo comic they did, Constantine, was so bad and so far from the source I think it gave me a stroke.
Hell, Batman almost got ruined as a franchise because Joel Schumacher had a "vision" of what Batman should be.
Rigorous Scholarship
Also, I think relying on movies for their primary form of revenue might be good for Marvel Comics in the long run. Like I said, comics are a low-margin industry; you're not making much more than you're putting into it. If that's your sole source of income, you have to be very careful about the risks you're taking.
However, if you're primarily using it for branding and market research, you can stop worrying so much about that, and become more willing to take on riskier projects, or develop more new products.
I quite enjoy keeping up with them and collecting them. I don't think print necessarily has to be the only distribution method, but I think it should stick around.
How recent are you talking about? A Deadpool movie is being made.
I 100% agree. Comics are a relatively cheap way of experimenting with IP franchises. Got a new character but not sure how the fans are going to react? Throw him in a one-shot.
With digital distribution, they've reduced the sunk publishing costs of franchise experiments to as low as you can possibly get them, reducing the risk of launching new IPs. Given that this is the biggest hurdle facing Hollywood right now, I see this as ultimately a good thing for fans. Hopefully they won't screw over creators in the meantime; if you're an artist or writer and your new character fails, well you didn't risk much. But if your new character succeeds and becomes the next Wolverine or Blade, is Disney just going to pocket the mountains of cash or are they going to appropriately toss some back and the people who designed the character in the first place?
Marvel learned their lesson well from the Image debacle in giving creators more credit (and royalties) but I don't know about Disney either way. Is Disney a good company for artists and writers to work for?
It sucks that a good majority of their major characters have to be seperated from the new universe.
Fuck Marvel.
That said the moves the company has made since being acquired by Disney do seem to make good business sense, and $1.99 is cheap enough for impulse buyers, but not enough to hurt the print industry, which is also good.
I've also noticed an increase in the quality of movies since they opened Marvel Studios and hope that the quality continues after Disney is able to start affecting the film franchises. Right now they have no say over the current movies in production and pre-production, per the agreement they signed with Marvel.
I do want to point out one thing. It doesn't necesarrily relate to Spider Man 3, but it factors into X3 and Daredevil and Hulk
Bruce Campbell talked about it in "If Chins Could Kill" I think. Either that or the one before. Basically though, you can take the production cost of a movie, what it costs to make from start to finish, and then double it. That's what a big budget movie costs with the fast food tie ins and commercials and advertising campaigns.
So when X3 cost roughly 140 million to make, it actually costs closer to 300 million. Okay. So it made $450 at the box office, so we'll consider that a net profit of $150 million. Now Fox is going to take the largest chunk of that, as they were the primary investors. It was a leased property from Marvel, so most of there money was up front, with a percentage of the gross on the back end.
I can't confirm the hard dollars on any of this, but my guess is that they don't start seeing real profit until the DVD sales hit, and these days most of that is set aside for the actors that don't have good enough agents to get first dollar gross percentages for their clients.
Again, I'm not saying Marvel didn't make money off of Fox and Sony, I'm just saying they're making a hell of a lot more now that it's in house, obviously.
But just because a movie does well at the box office, it doesn't mean that everyone gets rich.
The Vac - My Science Fiction Epic
Fortune Pancakes - My Gag-A-Day Comic
I don't know that I would call the X-Men and Spider-Man the majority of their major characters.
Rigorous Scholarship
Yeah, you got me there.
But otherwise, there's not much going on with Marvel's undeveloped properties that I'm dying to see on the silver screen.
Remakes of already-ruined franchises? Maybe. I certainly could stand to see a competent Fantastic Four movie. And I certainly wouldn't hate quality expansions of the X-Men franchise.
But I'm just about tapped out with Marvel, at no fault to them. I just have no interest in seeing a Namor, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Inhumans, X-Force, Vision, Cosmic Wars, or Clone Saga movie, or anything else from the silly past of Marvel's vaults.
DC, however, is largely untapped, even regarding their key franchises. There still hasn't been a single decent Superman adaptation, and other than Batman, Green Lantern is the only thing in the works as far as JLA members go. Yes, I know about Jonah Hex and look forward to it, but Marvel even after streamlining their productions, is churning successful films out at an amazing pace compared to Warners.
Why? How? Spectactular Spider-Man is probably the best cartoon of Spider-Man I've seen yet!
Steam Profile
While I agree, I'm pretty sure they got canceled.
It would have to stay true to its nihilistic R-ratedness.
I nominate David Gordon Green to direct.
If you missed it in the other thread, they announced yesterday that they're making an Ultimate Spiderman cartoon now to debut on SpecSpidey's old network so... yeah, it's pretty much 100% dead at this point.
Jason Segel (in shape) as the Captain
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Tabby
Gina Torres as Monica
Keira Knightly as Bloodstone
Demitri Martin as Aaron Stack
The Vac - My Science Fiction Epic
Fortune Pancakes - My Gag-A-Day Comic
Jason Segel just feels a little more dirty
The Vac - My Science Fiction Epic
Fortune Pancakes - My Gag-A-Day Comic
Runaways, too.
Well I mean there are a lot of Characters that fall under those properties that Marvel doesn't really own I think for movies. Such as rogue galleries and x-men 2nd string dudes.
Would it be wrong to say that Ryan Reynold's 15 minute screentime as Wade Wilson during that 15 minute segment where they go on their one mission together was the best part of the movie? Because that's how I feel.
Everything after that point is just...just...awful.
I think for me the worst part of that movie is when Wolverine is fighting Gambit for pretty much no reason, when Gambit climbs up the wall with his broken stick, then jumps onto the fire escape. Wolverine goes to the base and begins to knock it down by slashing it with his claws, which COMPLETELY VAPORIZE the fire escape each time he hits it!
Just...ARGH!
hell if adamantium touches itself it explodes and repels (like when wolvie lightly touched his claws together and it exploded in a shower of sparks and repelled his hands back)
they need to dial that shit back some
especially if they're gonna want to have magneto rip the adamantium out of wolverine at some point
Haha yeah, I actually laughed out loud when I saw that bathroom scene. Fucking corny.
Yeah, that movie was crap.
I really liked the scene you're talking about, and if that's how they're going to do Deadpool in his solo movie, I'd be happy with it.
If they pick up after where X-Men Origins left off, then I hope to god they figure out a way to get rid some of the dumber things they added to him - namely the laser eyes and sword arms. I can live with him keeping the teleportation, because it's a lot easier to for an audience that isn't familiar with Deadpool to accept that he's a mutant who can teleport, rather than a mutant who obtained a belt that allows him to teleport. Kinda like how the Spider-Man movies went with organic web-shooters rather than the wrist mounted web-shooters Parker builds in the comics.
Wait really? Are there any details on this? That could be awesome.
The thing about DC and movies is it doesn't make any sense. Warner owns them. They should have a major comic movie out every year.
The biggest problem until only very recently (the last year or so) is that Warners had no cohesive plan for their DC properties.
Marvel has had the relative recent advantage of forming their own studio devoted to Marvel properties, but even when they were churning out movies twice a year under their licensing agreements, I wouldn't call the result much better than Warners' relative non-production. Those licensees made some utter shit.
Marvel's branding success didn't come from making movies willy-nilly, it came from things like Sony actually hiring a competent director for their Spider-Man movies who respected the material.
The real question to me is that when Marvel began making money hand-over-fist with their properties, why did it take Warners almost ten years to have a meeting about doing something similar?
For everyone who seems confused, Marvel Studios has only self-produced two movies so far:
Iron Man
Incredible Hulk
I think they're technically involved as a company with all marvel related titles but the self produced stuff is the important part. The production companies for the other franchises will stay with them (spiderman to sony and x-men to fox, etc) until the licenses expire, which I have no idea when that will be for each franchise.
The next self-produced Marvel Studios movies will be:
Iron Man 2
Thor
And I heard they finally cast whatsisname as Cap, so they'll probably start filming that in 2011. I know they're talking about an avengers movie, but they won't even go into pre production until some of the title characters are introduced in the overall cinematic universe.
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
Marvel Studios isn't going to be making X-Men or Spider Man movies any time soon. Sony and Fox still have contracts on those movies, as well as Deadpool, Wolverine, Magneto, (individual films) Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider.
I think Marvel got away with X-Men: First Class, but I'm not sure if that's them or Fox.
It'll be like seven to ten years before Marvel gets those back to do as their own.
The Vac - My Science Fiction Epic
Fortune Pancakes - My Gag-A-Day Comic
Hah, beat'd. Except you got totp. Bastard.
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
IMDB doesn't have any info (too early in production). Wikipedia's entry on the comic says the film is expected in 2011, Brian K. Vaughan as the writer. Recent rumor has Peter Sollett directing.
I've always wondered why Warner Bros. snatched up DC but did not aggressively produce movies. Or royally screwed up many of the ones they did (I'm looking at you, Catwoman).
Dude, what rock are you living under?
Pre-production on The Avengers is well underway, with Zak Penn already having completed the script and Joss Whedon signed to direct.
Done deal.
Orly. Sounds not terrible.
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
From what I understand, as long as those studios have a movie in any stage of production, those licenses never expire. It's why Fox has new Daredevil and Fantastic Four movies in the works.