Marvel Moguls
A piece in Forbes reminded me of something I'd read in a shareholders report (something I happened upon -- I don't own any of those shares) from Marvel concerning their setting up financing for a slate of self-produced films.
The characters named as projects are: Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi. Eh. While The Incredibles demonstrated that one can pull off a superhero team mix without bogging down into too much backstory because it's okay to presume the audience has a couple functioning brain cells. Can we expect intelligence to strike twice?
Not all of the projects are of immediate interest to me -- fewer once I consider what's likely to happen to them in the hands of some self-styled "visionary" or producer's nephew. It's difficult for me to imagine myself settling in to watch a Power Pack movie.., but who knows? It really isn't as if they could ruin it.
The average budget split mentioned could be as high as $165 million, which strikes me as insanity. To spend that level of budget on films like these is to almost guarantee fiscal failure from a bookkeeping perspective. It's like any investing -- past a point it's generally much better to spread $100 out over multiple items than it is to spend it all in one place, as the percent increases favor the smaller items becoming proportionately more valuable than a single expensive item is... but I digress.
I suppose we'll see how that part works for next year's Superman Returns, which - from what I've heard reported from director Bryan Singer - is now sporting a budget in the $225-250 million range. Maybe they're funding some research to revivify Brando? Still, that's for Superman -- maybe they'll be able to pull it off, but then again I have to wonder what one really needs to spend that much money on these days. When one takes generally falling box office figures with a movie needing to make twice its production budget before they declare it a winner, and this is an uphill battle no matter how good it is.
On the other hand - if we take some happy pills and a moderately strong drink - we could bring ourselves to believe that this move to free them from the vagaries of separate film contracts with disparate studios, and some of the old Marvel comics magic might insinuate itself into these projects now that Spider-man isn't tied up in one set of contracts and unable to make even a quick guest-appearance in a Fantastic Four movie.
It doesn't have to be heavy-handed continuity, just part of the feelgood magic that allowed Marvel to take the comics world by storm in the kitschy, pop culture-laden 1960s and create a fan loyalty that allowed them to hold onto a market share long past the point their abuse of those same fans should have lost it. A shared universe doesn't have to be the making of a major plot point of something that happened in the margins ten years ago. It doesn't have to be clannish, exclusionary, secret club material. It can be fun and inclusive, accessible to the newcomer and with some extra rewards for the long time fan with the treasure trove of memories.
I'd suggest retaining Joss Whedon for the scripts, though he's likely not the only one up to the task.
Comments
It's almost as if someone actually reminded him, several pages into the script, that he'd pretty much killed the entire team in the last issue and had to do something about it, and he really didn't want to be bothered.
It's lazy crap like this that ruined the last two seasons of BUFFY for me, and that made me crazy in the first five seasons, too. Whedon writes really snappy, fun, entertaining dialogue... and that's about it, I'm afraid. I guess that could be enough in a HAWKEYE movie, but I'd hope for more.
Of course, I don't even want to think about a Bendis AVENGERS script...