Comical musings
I’m lucky enough to be going to the London premiere of Iron Man tomorrow.
It’s the first film to come out of the newly created Marvel Studios.
All of Marvel’s previous outings (X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spiderman and Hulk) have been plain old license deals.
They’ve generated billions of dollars in billings and so it’s no wonder that Marvel have managed to raise enough capital (much of it from Merill Lynch) to set up their own venture and cut out the middle man…
However, as this Independent article explains, now is a really unusual time to be establishing a studio given all the film industry strikes we’ve seen recently.
What makes Marvel different is that it already has such a long list of characters it can use to develop films with. After all, the company has been writing comics since 1933. Apart from some upfront script development based on what they already have, there’s really no need to create anything from scratch.
It reminds me of how Bungie Studios, the creators of the supremely successful Halo videogame have expanded the equity of the game to include comics, soundtracks and in future, a film.
If you’ve got something that people love then it’s a no-brainer to extend it beyond its original medium. As long as you do it with the fans in mind, of course… 4 years ago