Is Marvel Studios fifth Paramount movie a potential source of dispute?

Marvel studios seems to be locked into a distribution deal with Paramount for its next five movies, but exactly what properties those movies will be about is a bit unclear. Specifically after Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and Avengers – what is the fifth and final film? some coverage says that it will "most likely" be Iron Man 3 (note the uncertainty) while others suggest Ant Man. Indeed when the distribution deal was first reported by Nikki Finke Ant Man was listed as the final movie.

Ant Man has been in development since 2006 with Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim writer/director Edgar Wright at the helm. Wright was still connected with the project as recently as this July and Marvel Studio's head Kevin Feige has discussed the project in numerous interviews.

I’m guessing that the idea of producing this Ant Man movie has suddenly become much more attractive to Feige – you have got to believe that if they could, Disney would seize the opportunity to own Iron Man 3 outright. Ant Man is clearly a riskier project with a narrower appeal.

Added to that are some logistical issues – all indications are that Marvel wants Favreau to direct their big Avengers movie. That means that to make Iron Man 3 the fifth film either Favreau leaves the franchise or the movie is pushed back from 2013 and the Paramount deal is extended for another few years – neither of which is too desirable for Disney/Marvel, I would imagine.

Also worth thinking about here is the fact that when this Paramount deal was first agreed it wasn't clear which of these properties were going to be the most successful – so it’s by no means a sure thing that Paramount locked down sequel rights to any particular characters in their 5 film deal. Indeed it is still possible that Iron Man 2 will be a flop or that either Thor or Captain America might be an even bigger hit, making Iron Man 3 less attractive.

One other possibly crucial detail - in June Feige revealed that another, as yet unannounced Marvel movie was planned for release in 2012, the same year Marvel/Paramount's 3rd and 4th movies (Captain America, Avengers) are due to be released. He seemed to hint that an announcement would come at San Diego, but none materialised. Maybe I'm crazy but the timing (and the probable delay in any announcement) makes me suspect that this could have had something to do with Marvel's acquisition of the Marvelman property. At any rate is this new movie part of the Paramount deal? is it even still in development?

Nikki Finke recently published a quote from Rich Greenfield at Pali Research, in which he discussed the Marvel/Paramount deal:

Marvel’s current distribution deal with Paramount (Viacom-owned) covers the next five Marvel pictures including Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011),Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012) and Iron Man 3 (2012/2013). Paramount confirmed the films to be produced under their Marvel agreement.

He apparently did not check with Marvel though. Could this be Paramount putting down markers to indicate to Marvel that they believe that Iron Man 3 is part of the deal? is it that they are actually on board with Feige's secret new film project and are just being coy with Greenfield? or could all this speculation be way off-base -have Marvel and Paramount already agreed that Iron Man 3 is the last film in their agreement?

All this reminds me of the dispute between Pixar and former Disney chief Michael Eisner over Toy Story 2. That mess took years to sort out and almost destroyed the very lucrative Disney/Pixar relationship. Hopefully all my speculation is groundless and the terms of the Marvel/Paramount deal are clearly set-out.

Some Quick Hits

• Rich Johnston seems to confirm my story that Bendis is writing Dark Siege. He thinks that Oliver Coipel is on art and that the story involves an exploration of the relationship between gods and men.
• On a similar theme, Warren Ellis has announced his latest project from Avatar: Supergod. What a fantastic title – I’m amazed no one has used it before. I love the tag line “the man in the sky is not coming to save you”. It’s an ambitious and not wholly original angle to explore (see above) but I trust that Ellis has the right sensibilities for this type of thing. He has me on the hook for the first issue anyway.
• Walking Dead as an AMC series? best news of the year as far as I am concerned. The comic is my favourite thing being published today and AMC’s Mad Men is the best TV series currently being produced (and new episodes of both come out this week!). Although it's still basic cable, AMC seems to be trying to become a “premium” brand so hopefully their instincts are to turn the series into a quality drama rather than appealing to the “gore” audience such zombie projects usually attract. I also hope that Kirkman stays involved in the project throughout its development - I'd hate to see the concept watered down or changed too much.

Marvel acquires Marvelman: Has anything like this ever worked out well before? Part 2

Go here for Part 1.

So if they never really work out for the characters how do I explain the fact that these acquisitions continue to happen?

In a few of these cases there have been obvious reasons for these sales that have little to do with getting access to the intellectual property involved. It's well known that the main motivation for Marvel's acquisition of Malibu and, to a lesser extent, DC's of Wildstorm was to the acquire the sophisticated coloring departments both companies possessed.

Wildstorm also had exclusive contracts with arguably the two biggest creators in the business - Jim Lee and Alan Moore - and DC hoped to make use of those relationships. The other big benefit for Marvel and DC in buying Malibu and Wildstorm was that it immediately increased their market share by taking a potential competitor out of the marketplace.

It is this second, somewhat controversial motivation that I think explains why so many other properties have been bought up by the big two. Buying these characters removes the possibility that another competitor will figure out a way to utilise and disrupt the marketplace.

Valiant is an example of just that happening. Jim Shooter set-up this company in the early 1990s using a bunch of nearly-forgotten characters from 1960s Western/Gold Key Comics to launch his new line of comics. With solid production values and the full resources of a talented editorial and promotional team behind them, the company took off and quickly became one of the biggest comics publishers in the country.

Their success was brief, and in part based on peculiar market conditions of the time, but the example is as stark reminder of the potential disruptive power of new comic company using old concepts in a focused and well promoted manner. If Valiant had only been an imprint of a larger company I don't think it would have been anywhere near as successful, just remember Shooter's earlier attempt to a launch a new superhero line - his failed "New Universe" project at Marvel.

It is for this "spoiler" reason of wanting to block potential competition that I think DC may be kicking itself now that it didn't actively pursue Marvelman. The character probably wouldn't add a huge amount to DC, but he has the potential to help Marvel enormously in areas that DC traditionally dominates.

In part 3 I'll go into the opportunity costs inherent in buying and promoting these new acquisitions and explore the most obvious benefit these companies see in buying the rights to old properties - the idea that these new characters will add value to their pre-existing catalogues -and explain why I think that, except in rare cases (like Marvelman), this is usually a mistake.

Marvel acquires Marvelman: Has anything like this ever worked out well before? Part 1

Here's my take on this: no, nothing like this has ever really worked out perfectly in the past. There is a long history of the two biggest comics publishers acquiring the rights to other company's characters and failing to fully exploit the potential of those properties. Once acquired, the characters never manage to regain the heights of popularity they enjoyed at the peak of their success at other publishers.

The one possible exception I can think of is the 1944 merger of Detective Comics and All-American Publications which united Detective's characters like Batman and Superman with All-American's properties such as Green Lantern, Flash and Wonder Woman to form National Comics (which eventually changed its name to DC). That merger has obviously been an unqualified success for both companies' characters. I'm not sure that it really qualifies for what I'm talking about here though, as it wasn't technically an acquisition and both companies had never really been separate entities anyway.

Probably the biggest and most successful acquisition of the type I'm talking about has been the sale of the Fawcett Comics library (basically the "Captain Marvel/Shazam" characters) to DC Comics. DC has probably made their initial investment back many times over since they bought those characters in the 1970s. There have been numerous comic series, a TV show, an animated series and even plans for a big screen movie featuring the characters.

However, whatever success the property has had at DC pales in comparison to the popularity that the various Captain Marvel series enjoyed in their heyday in the 1940s, when the character was the most popular superhero in America, outselling even Superman, who was also at his peak at the time. At DC, Captain Marvel has never been more than a mediocre success, a property given a third rate priority by the company.

Since then DC has acquired lots of other libraries of characters including the Quality, Charlton and Wildstorm Comics heroes. Though these concepts have had periodic upsurges in visibility, all these acquisitions have followed the same pattern of fading popularity post-sale, as DC focuses its resources on promoting the Detective/All-American stable of characters.

Marvel has been down the same road, buying Malibu Comics in 1994 and then being so derelict in managing their "Ultraverse" characters that they are now unusable, victims of arcane rights issues that were triggered by Marvel's negligence in not producing new material featuring the concepts.

So if never works out, why do comics companies keep doing it? what are DC thinking in acquiring the rights to the MLJ, Milestone and THUNDER Agents characters - all in the space of the last year? and why do I think that Marvelman could be an exception to all this?

In the next few days I hope to post part two where I explain some of my theories!

Some quick hits

I don't have time to do a proper post today so here are a few short items:

• Rich Johnston does an update on the Marvelman situation, and what the positions of the various rights holders may be.
• Commenter TJ Burns at the Comicboards.com Avengers board points out that in addition to the character's appearance as "Miracleman" in Captain Britain, Marvelman was mentioned by name in Warren Ellis' Druid miniseries in the early 90s.
• In the comments of my post calling for Con webcasts, Chip pointed out that DC Comics has posted several long audio recordings of their panels at their website (you have to scroll down to the podcast section to find them though).
• And finally, just because I am in love with new Daft Punk track playing in the background, here is the big Tron: Legacy Lightcycle reveal, also from Comic Con:

A Marvel Universe Marvelman is inevitable

Marvel's "Miracleman"

Now that Marvel owns the rights to Marvelman I think that it's inevitable that there will eventually be a Marvel Universe version of the character. It is just a question of sooner or later.

The benefits to Marvel of such a move are obvious - it immediately generates some attention and makes it easier for them to leverage their biggest asset - the "Marvel Universe" continuity - in exploiting the character. Against that there are very few reasons not do it, negative fan reaction being the main one, and that can always be managed.

Remember that Marvelman is not Watchmen. Alan Moore did not create him, he merely wrote his version of a pre-existing character. Indeed Alan Moore actually introduced a version into the Marvel Universe himself in the mid-1980s, the character "Miracleman" from his Captain Britain run, so it's unlikely that he would object to this especially now that Mick Anglo has been properly compensated.

Even if the current management at Marvel is dead set against the idea- which I don't think is a given at all - the essential economic logic of the move will eventually mean that it will be tried at some point by some future administration. They might as well do it now and try and do it properly rather than let some future writer of, say Exiles vol. 7, use the character as a gimmick guest star.

Marvel have had other properties in the past that they initially planned not to include in the regular Marvel Universe - the New Universe, Star-Lord, Marvel Boy etc - but they were all eventually tied in to their existing mythology. Even the Ultimate Comics "universe" has been connected to the regular Marvel line, via the Marvel Zombies books.

I imagine Marvel's immediate priority with Marvelman is to sort out the rights issues so they can republish the sought after Moore/Gaiman material. They will want to get Gaiman and Buckingham to finish their story, which both creators have expressed interest in doing in the past. If possible, they will probably try to continue the story after Gaiman is finished - probably with some extremely prestigious talent, someone of the order of a Michael Chabon or a Jonathan Lethem if they can get them. But talent like that is slow and cant be rushed, and in the meantime a Marvel Universe Marvelman series could make use of the character.

I don't think that debuting such a version of the character necessarily detracts from continuing the Moore/ Gaiman story, as long as it was a separate continuity. The general comics consumer is pretty sophisticated, and assuming all the rights issues are resolved, Marvel could even differentiate between the two versions by continuing the Moore/Gaiman series under the "Miracleman" label. That's the title that most of these stories were originally published under after all, and the name most people associate with this version.

Obviously, a Marvel Universe Marvelman series would have to be handled delicately, and Marvel would be anxious to preserve the prestige that the concept currently has. I'd imagine that people like Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar or Brian K. Vaughan would be their top choices to handle something like this, if they can interest them.

Buying Marvelman – potentially the biggest deal of Quesada’s tenure as Marvel Editor-in-Chief

From what I can piece together from interviews over the past weekend Joe Quesada seems to have been the first person to realise the inherent potential to Marvel of acquiring the Marvelman rights. Quesada credits publisher Dan Buckley with doing the (by no means insignificant) legwork but seems to claim the idea and the initial enthusiasm for it as his own. As such I think he deserves enormous credit for seeing what no one else did – that this is potentially a huge deal for the company.

It's only in considering the deal in the few days since its was announced that I've realised that the property has enormous potential, especially for Marvel. Just publishing the back catalogue (specifically the Quality/ Eclipse 1980s material) would be a windfall. There is already a huge pent-up demand out there for this material and even without the scarcity issue similar titles such as the Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Sandman trades have been perennial sales juggernauts for Marvel’s rival DC Comics – a phenomenon Marvel has no doubt envied for some time and are anxious to replicate.

There is even the possibility that because Marvel/Miracleman is much more of a mainstream comic superhero story it could even surpass the popularity of those other titles. I know that many would question this – could a more mainstream super-hero story actually mean higher sales in the largely bookstore dominated trade business? However consider of the three other examples I cite - the best selling of them is Watchmen. I think that one of the key factors in that book’s success is that it is a mature, intelligent story wrapped in the traditional trappings of the super-hero genre, the genre that most people have been trained to expect from comics. Marvel/Miracleman has the same strength, perhaps even moreso.

Then when you consider the potential for new interpretations – new comics, videogames, animation, movies – which if handled right (with due deference, respect and compensation given to the original creators) the company could be onto a major new property here.

Of course, all Marvel has done so far is acquire Mick Anglo’s rights to the character – and unquestionably the real value of the character at this point lies in the 1980s material. But the genius of this move is that Marvel now owns the character – which essentially stops anybody else from trying to publish stories featuring him. This means that all the other rights holders essentially have to deal with Marvel. And Marvel is one of the only organisations with both the resources and now, crucially, a real interest in sorting out the tangled mess of legal issues that remain unresolved.

Anglo and parties representing him have apparently been trying to exploit the character independently over the last few years, but were unsuccessful. I imagine the legal morass surrounding the character was a huge contributory factor to this. What independent party would be willing to invest significant amounts of cash in a largely unknown property with huge legal uncertainties surrounding it, and without access to the stories which make the character most attractive?. I think Marvel was uniquely positioned here.

Marvel have always lacked a credible “Superman” type figure in their catalogue of characters – a single hero with enormous power and all the iconic imagery and themes that go with that simple idea. Their recent attempts to build such a character from the ground-up – characters like the Sentry and the Blue Marvel - have been interesting but ultimately unsuccessful. Marvelman has the potential to credibly plug that gap – the name itself seems to suggest such a role (one note: Im not necessarily suggesting here that Marvelman should be placed into the Marvel Universe – that’s an issue I hope to deal with in a subsequent post).

And while some may point out the graphic nature of the 1980s work as a barrier to the characters future broad potential I would strongly disagree - just look at the wide variety of depictions of Batman, from The Dark Knight Returns to the current Brave and the Bold cartoon. Marvelman’s origins lie in children’s literature after all and that is what he was originally designed for.

DC, perhaps the only other credible company which could have also made this move appear to have been uninterested. They already own Superman and they have the rights to most of Moore and Gaiman’s most popular comics, so it seems they were complacent about it all and didn't see what Marvel sees. It seems ironic though that at a time in which they are spending a lot of resources acquiring the rights to old properties – such as the Milestone characters, the old Archie MLJ heroes and most recently the THUNDER agents - they have missed out on potentially the most valuable property out there.

Of course the legal issues are nowhere near settled yet – there are many interested parties whose rights have to be reconciled before Marvel can fully exploit the character and his back catalogue. Such parties include (but are by no means limited to) – Alan Moore, Garry Leach, Alan Davis, Chuck Austen, Neil Gaiman, Mark Buckingham, Todd McFarlane, Dez Skinn and DC comics. I hope to deal with some of those issues surrounding these parties in future posts.