Fortune has a lengthy article up on the whole finance side of Marvel’s movies, covering everything from how much Marvel has made off of previous films like the Spider-Man franchise and Fantastic Four, as well as a look at their upcoming self-produced films like Iron Man and Thor, from which they stand to make a lot more money.
Of course, the new films also comes with a lot of risks, as the article details:
Marvel, which expects to spend between $100 million and $165 million each to produce the films, is taking a big gamble here. In fact, it is betting its characters. It has a deal with insurer Ambac (Charts) to cover the interest payments to its senior creditors should the movies bomb. If they do, Ambac gets the movie rights to Iron Man and his mighty brethren.
Can Marvel prevail with a slate of characters – Thor, the recently deceased (but sure to be resurrected) Captain America, Ant-Man – that, beloved as they are to longtime comics fans, are mostly unknown to today’s kids? And can a comic book publisher and licenser turn itself into a profitable Hollywood studio? Wall Street thinks yes. As of early May, Marvel’s shares were trading at $29, up from $20 a year earlier. That’s partially because of the new strategy but also because Spider-Man’s third screen appearance should enable Marvel to move plenty of Spidey merchandise.
They seem to have some misgivings about Thor’s chances on the silver screen:
It’s hard to talk about Thor with a straight face. Introduced in 1962, he is a buff, golden-locked incarnation of the Norse thunder god. He wields an enchanted hammer and talks in a Shakespeare-meets-the-Marx-Brothers dialect: “Let foes beware!! We strike for Earth – and the realm eternal!”
The challenge for Marvel Studios is to take what Stan Lee and the brilliant artist Jack Kirby were able to make work in comic books 45 years ago and turn it into a 21st-century Hollywood franchise. That’s what screenwriter Mark Protosevich, whose credits include “The Cell” and “I Am Legend,” is struggling with. On a February morning he’s on speakerphone in Marvel’s Hollywood office giving several executives an update. “We’re not talking about a New Agey interpretation of gods here,” he says. “We are talking about vengeful gods, interfering gods.” In walks Maisel, carrying a replica of Thor’s hammer. “Just to inspire you guys,” he says. He looks happy to put it down. The thing is surprisingly heavy, but what would you expect? In the comic, no one but Thor can lift the magic mallet.
Movie money stats:
–The first two Spider-Man movies made about $3 billion from ticket, DVD and TV sales; per Lehmann Brothers, Marvel took home $62 million.
–Of FF’s $624 million, Marvel got $13 million.
–Of the three X-Men films’ $2 billion, they got $26 million.
–Note that these figures are from a third-party report … Marvel hasn’t disclosed how much they actually made off the films. But based on these numbers, you can see why it would be advantageous for Marvel to make their own movies and reap the profits … if they succeed, of course.
Fortune also has an interactive graphic up that lets you scroll over various comic movie stars, current and future, to see where they’ve appeared on the big and small screens (i.e. TV and video games). You can also click on the images of each character to see how they relate to each other.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
So wait, if Marvel’s movies flop, their creditor gets the right to make movies with characters that have already flopped on the big screen?
“Sorry ‘Ant-Man’ didn’t do well. Tell you what, you can make movies with him now.”
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Sounds like maybe Avi got a bum deal. I didn’t realize he was basically pushed out (at least that’s how it sounds). I guess it’s only fair since he apparently did the same thing to Stan Lee to get the job in the first place, but I’m worried Maisel is more businessman than Marvel Comics fan, whereas I always got the impression Avi was equal amounts of both. Suggesting to combine two villians into one for the Iron Man movie doesn’t bother me; the fact that he did it only to save money does.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Actually, what worries me most about Marvel making its own movies is, ironically enough, the fact that the moviemakers who don’t work for Marvel seem to understand Marvel’s characters one hell of a lot better than most of the people who do work for Marvel, from its most favored writers on up to its Editor-in-Chief. It used to be that fans asked, “Why couldn’t they make the movies more like the comics?” If they’d done that in the past half-dozen years, though, we would have had a Spider-Man movie all about Peter Parker’s predestined connection to mystic animal totems, and non-comic book-reading moviegoers would probably regard it as the biggest joke since Battlefield Earth.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:13 pm
This is just a response to comment #3:
Whether you personally like the stories or not, the writers, artists, and yes, editors, must know a little something about the characters, considering for the past year Marvel’s books have moved more than any of their competitors AND pulled in almost a quarter of ALL graphic novels sales for the month of April.
SOMEONE must like the Marvel stories, even if whiny fanboys with a net connection would like to make us think otherwise.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Thor already had his big screen chance. ‘Adventures in Babysitting’ anyone?
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Those numbers don’t make sense AFAICT. It appears, that in all cases total sales figures are compared to pure profit for Marvel (aka the price of the licensing). (Assuming Marvel has/had no further costs I’m unaware off.) To put those numbers into a meaningful context, one would have to know how much the studio made, how much the cinemas, DVD manufacturers, toy producers took home.
Depending on that, and the return on investment on these things it may or may not make financial sense for Marvel to make their own movies. (Marvel’s accountants would appear to think it does and they certainly know more about it than us. It’s just the numbers as cited don’t support the conclusion drawn. at all.)
Sure, from one angle it’s pocket change for properties nurtured over decades. From another angle, Marvel got free cash for properties grown out of a profitable publishing division. The story has to be adapted for cinema anyway and (per Snakes on a plane, Firefly and the like) the nerd audience is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. In a lot of ways it’s no better than a good, new script that’s been tested with a representative focus group. For that, 13 million is plenty.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:39 pm
In response to comment #4
Marvel outsells Naruto? Really? Without combining everything they sell? Please provide a link to that data, I’d really like to see it.
Sure, some people like what Marvel does right now, but then again, even if lots of people did (and to my knowledge they don’t really) that gets us no farther then Britney Spears. On the other hand, if we’re just saying Marvel is the top player in the tiny and insinificant speciality store ghetto of the direct market, then that doesn’t say anything either way, as far as the general population is concerned.
Either way, you’re right, the merit of the current stories in the books is a matter of opinion. Unfortunately that wasn’t the point, the point was the suitability of same stories to a general audience. And in that regard, it’s a fairly well established rule that mystical totem shit by and large doesn’t play that well, particularly not compared to straight-up character drama and romance. So yeah, it’s a good thing the movies don’t resemble the books as they are right now.
May 24th, 2007 at 6:35 am
I won’t waste such a good chance to badmouth the current Amazing Spider-Man book!
Look:
http://www.comichron.com/Default.aspx?tabid=208
JMS gave the venerable series its LOWEST SALES EVER (2005), thanks to Sins Past and things like that. I understand he got some sales back on 2006 by way of Permanent Crossovers (The Other/Civil War/Back on Black), but no one can deny that JMS is a Bad Thing for the series right now.
Dan Slott can’t come quickly enough!
Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)
May 24th, 2007 at 10:07 am
something else about the article doesn’t seem right. The way I read it, the author seems to suggest that making their own movies is a good thing _because_ they made bad deals in the past. Which, if true, would be a pretty stupid thing to say. Those past deals where based on the success of the Punisher and Captain America movies of old and sealed before X-Men and Spider-Man showed there was big money to be made. _Of course_ Marvel wouldn’t have had to make the same bad deals going forward.
If they felt they could make even money themselves than they could extract in licensing, that’s reasonable, but it has nothing to do with the old deals being bad ones (assuming of course, they actually were).
May 24th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I seem to recall prior articles noting the reason the deals were “bad” is because they were essentially allowing the various studios to lock up their most famous characters for bargain basement prices. They basically sold off Spider-Man, X-Men, and FF (their most popular and publicly well known characters) for a pittance, allowing the studios to make multiple films for each under the same contract. It was a deal born out of desperation for Marvel, and not only bad in hindsight but really anyone with even a little foresight shold have been able to see it.
May 25th, 2007 at 1:29 am
Right, but running their own show isn’t going to allow them to go back in time and fix that. They presumably wouldn’t have repeated the mistake even if they decided to sell licenses again.
So it only works as a _reason_ if you’re talking in psychological terms, as an overreaction to a past mistake. But that’d be stupid and the article in Fortune should criticise them for it. As it doesn’t, it’s a bit of a mess.