Marvel Movies

One of the big stories in the comics world today is that Marvel has struck a new deal with Paramount for ten films based on Marvel super-heroes. The studio will be distributing, but Marvel will be producing, so all financial and creative control will be with the comics publisher. This is interesting, and not an obvious move on Marvel’s part, at all. Sure, we’ve seen a large number of Marvel characters up on the big screen of late: the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises have been huge. But not quite as popular have been the Hulk, Daredevil, Blade, Elektra, the Punisher, and Man-Thing. Fantastic Four is coming this summer, and Ghost Rider is currently in production. But all these films means that somebody else has the rights to those characters. In addition, the Sub-Mariner is in preproduction with Universal, Iron Man’s in preproduction at New Line, and Black Widow and Iron Fist are both licensed to Lions Gate.

So who’s left? The press release names Captain America and Nick Fury, for two. Also Thor and Dr. Strange come to mind. But, depending on your own personal ranking of Marvel characters, we’re well into the second tier at this point, and it just goes down from there. Tom Spurgeon suggests that this doesn’t matter. If they take a relatively unknown character, they can make a movie without any preexisting fanboy expectations. Look at Blade, for instance. There’d been at least one Blade comics series with a very short run before the Wesley Snipes movie came out, but for the most part he’d only appeared as part of a team or as a secondary character in some other book. There was no reason to think that a Blade movie would be a sure thing, but it was successful enough to spawn two sequels.

But I get the feeling that Marvel wants to go for some big names. One rumor is that $180 million of a $525-million credit line set aside for film production over seven years is earmarked for Captain America. Although he has some amount of name recognition (and can currently be seen in a triumphant star turn in a VISA check card commercial), I’m not sure the good captain is a slam dunk for film success. (His previous films haven't exactly been blockbusters--oh, you didn't know there were previous Captain America films?) The character could work if the film is set in World War II, Cap’s original milieu, but it could also be trouble if they try to bring him into the present day (where, admittedly, his series has been set for the past forty years). What does Captain America represent in the early years of the new century (we could also ask what does America itself represent, but my brain hurts enough already)? Does he fight in foreign wars? Does he go to church? Does he turn his back on the political and just catch bank robbers? I don’t see an easy transition to the big screen for this patriotic icon.

One interesting footnote to possible movies is the fact that for the last little while, Marvel has been courting movie and TV writers and directors to write their comics. Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is writing X-Men, Reggie Hudlin (House Party, The Ladies Man) is writing Black Panther, and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) is writing Dr. Strange, among several others. Could the publisher be trying to get at movie talent through the back door? Could the Black Panther and Strange series--two characters who may not already be licensed to other producers--be potential storyboards?