Marvel Comics has announced a new $525 million deal that will finance Marvel's production of over 10 movies based on Marvel characters. The films will be distributed by Paramount and the first release should hit about 2008. This new deal gives Marvel complete creative control and larger profit than it has received in the past by licensing films to other studios. The deal guarantees at least 10 films within the next 7 years and will include 10 Marvel properties. The included characters include Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack and Shang-Chi. Now I can really see some of these characters making great movies, but Ant-Man and Power Pack????? With all the cool characters out there they could have picked some bigger names. Each film is expected to have a budget of up to $165 million and a top rating of PG-13. At this time all are expected to be live-action films. The complete details of this deal are very complicated and if you are interested you can read a complete description here.
In other Marvel news, Lions Gate will make a Dr. Strange direct-to-dvd animated movie to be released in late 2006 or early 2007. This will mark the fourth film in the Lions Gate/Marvel animated movie series. There will be 2 Ultimate Avengers animated movies, the first being released in Feb 2006. The 3rd film will be Iron Man. The Dr. Strange movie is expected to be a origin story. Anything will be better than that horrible live-action Strange movie from years past.
It appears Marvel will be knee-deep in movies for some time . For comic geeks (myself included) the past lot of Marvel movies (X-Men, Spider-Man and even FF) have been very satisfying and we can even forgive the lack-luster Elektra and Daredevil. Let's just hope that they don't get lazy and pump out another Man-Thing.
1 comment:
It can't be good news that Marvel is going to make so many movies, some based on really minor characters. Will the people involved with making these movies take the characters seriously enough to turn them into a good movie? Or will it be like the period after Tim Burton's Batman came out and we were flooded with crap superhero movies (*cough* Steel *cough*). If they release too much crap, I worry that the good superhero movies will also suffer because people won't be that interested anymore in 'another' superhero movie...
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