The Big Picture: Wrongs & Rights

Aureliano

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In summation: copyright law is insane. The moment studios get complete control over an IP and cut the original creator out of the loop, that's the moment it stops making sense to me why any court in the country would rule in favor of this crap. And this is why we get a Spiderman movie that no sane person would ever want to be made.
 

Amaror

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The new x-men was low budget? That movie was awesome. Seemes like you don't have to spent THAT much money for a movie to turn out awesome.
 

AdamRBi

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I was really hoping for more of an assessment on how studios handled translating widespread comic narrative of characters into a massively more popular medium; what elements they decide to strengthen, pull back, add, or outright drop as to make it more accessible to the movie demographics; but I guess that's not what Bob's best at.

Still though this is interesting enough, I actually had no clue how messy the movie rights for the marvel universe were.
 

GeorgW

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Aug 27, 2010
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The trailer for Spider Man was playing right before Avengers, and I got the feeling that the only reason they were doing it was to have Spiderman in 3D, but I guess your reason is much more logical. I wonder if it'd be worth it for Marvel to buy the licences back...
I've seen a lot of people talking about Antman, why do people want an Antman movie?
I'm hoping for a Dr. Strange movie, personally. Deadpool would be a lot of fun, but that could be hard.
 

Baldr

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Jan 6, 2010
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Columbia Pictures is a sub-branch of Sony Pictures(same as New Line is Warner Bros.)

So that just leaves X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil with Fox Studios, and Spider-man and Ghostrider with Sony.
 

Right Hook

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Dastardly said:
Dr. Strange could work very well under a different race or ethnicity, as long as we avoid the tendency to make "magical minorities" so overbearingly stereotypical (basically, don't make a black Dr. Strange look like the James Bond Baron Samedi). But then again, why focus only on black? Why not Hispanic Central or South American? Indian?
I've heard that the next round of Marvel Studio's films will deal with the more magical side of the universe as opposed to technology, which we've seen more of in this run. Not sure how true it is but I think Dr. Strange is a very likely candidate, however I don't think they'd risk making him a different ethnicity, I'll let Donald Glover tell you why (starts at about 1:00).

 

xPixelatedx

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Aiddon said:
or it's just that DC's characters are INFINITELY more difficult to write for considering how things are set up. They're very idealized which doesn't exactly make for plausible drama unless you go through heavy rewrites. By no means are they bad characters, but most of them don't have the right kind of baggage. Batman is easy to write for considering his origin story.
You have obviously never seen Young Justice. One of the most impressive and character driven comic book related shows that has ever been on TV.
 

PrototypeC

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Bob Chipman, I love you. Your videos are amazing. They are hilarious, informative, clever, and otherwise exactly what I look for on the internet; they light up my life. But I swear, the next time I hear that "BLAARGHL, ARE, WEEEEEEEEEEEEIIRRD" I will turn off the video and give up on ever watching this again.

I know, no big loss on your part, but I just want you to think about how annoying some of us find that shtick. It was funny, then it was tolerable, now it's just awful. Awful! I don't know what irritates me so much about it, but I watch these videos to unwind and that "joke" makes it hard to not just get MORE annoyed than i was.
 

Vausch

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Evilsanta said:
Vausch said:
Evilsanta said:
artanis_neravar said:
Evilsanta said:
Well that explains alot.

I guess Marvel really regrets having to have sold those rights now that the Avengers are a BIG succes.

And I sort of feel sorry for WB for only being able to make good Batman movies.
As good as they are, these Batman movie would never be able to work in a Justice League setup, I mean Nolan has stated that the Penguin doesn't fit in with the realistic feel this Batman is going for, so how would aliens fit in with it?
How the hell would I know? I am just some random guy on the internet.

Seriously though, I guess they will have to reboot the existing ones or just come with a Batman movie that fits overall with the Justice League. I guess they could make it work if they said the the Nolan movies took place in an alternate universe where magic/aliens doesn't exist.

Maybe some one that know more about this can help me out on this?
No, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Nolan has gone on record saying his Batman is essentially what he would be if he were to take place in our reality. Some liberties taken of course, but to be fair most of the more fantastic technology isn't that far off and with a billionaire funding it, it's not that hard to believe he could push it to be done here and now.
So all WB has to do is just come up with a Batman movie that fits with Justice League. Though the problem with that I guess is, Would people watch a non Nolan Batman movie? I guess with the right cast and directors and writers they could pull it off.

Also come up with a Green Lantern movie that doesn't suck.
Well, when you get right down to it most of the superhero movies as of late tend to follow a similar formula, Nolan's are just more down to earth than the others. It probably wouldn't be that much of a stretch to introduce the characters, but the issue there is it's still taking a fairly realistic setting and sprinkling it with elements of the fantastic. But again, it all has to start somewhere for them, maybe a token mention of Kryptonite or Bane's Venom rather than whatever he's using in TDKR.

You'd think it wouldn't have been that hard, would it? "Hey, there's a comic here called Green Lantern: Secret Origin that is really all we need, let's use that!" -"Nah, I got a better idea. Remember the really positive responses FOX got to making Galactus into a giant smoke monster? Let's do that!"

Y'know what was one little thing that kinda irked me about GL in retrospect? The rings are supposed to be translating what the aliens are saying from their native languages, so why do all of their lip movements synch with English?
 

Vausch

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Pat Hulse said:
Vausch said:
So, here's a question: Why can't the studios collaborate? Y'know, like they all go "Okay we'll make the movie and divide the gross 3 ways and split the budget 3 ways. Each of us invests 60 to 100 million, each of us is almost guaranteed to get that back and then some".

Oversimplification is now done, let's see how I'm out of touch!
Actually, there's not a whole lot of reason why they can't, other than general unwillingness. Sony doesn't want to have to submit to Marvel Studios' mandates regarding their continuity (and to share more of the profits in order to do so), and Marvel makes money whether or not they make the movie in-studio.

What we'll have to wait and see is whether or not Avengers has raised the expectations of movie-going audiences such that they won't want to see a Marvel movie that DOESN'T take place in the larger universe. In other words, if Amazing Spider-Man fails, we will either see Marvel Studios getting many of their rights back, or Sony and Fox will start actively collaborating.

Of course, there's a chance that Disney will discourage any such collaboration, seeing Sony and Fox as competitors.

So yeah. It's not just about money. It's about whether or not the studios can make MORE money through collaboration and whether or not that extra money is worth sharing IP's (something Disney has never been eager to do).
]

So, in other words, if the upcoming Marvel's don't do well the odds of them getting their universes shared would increase? Well, I'm pretty sure Spiderman is going to suck anyway so no loss there.

I know Disney's evil but you'd think the prospect of "share the risk and potential huge income or get a blame figure if things go wrong" wouldn't be something they could pass up.
 

BabySinclair

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I keep praying that Fox backs down on the next Daredevil. That way we can get a Heroes For Hire movie with him, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. Sad that the Iron Fist movie Marvel was rumored to be working on years ago never got anywhere, Ray Parks would have been the lead.

To Marvel: The Avengers just made piles of money, put it to use buying your rights back
 

Crazy_Dude

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Dr.Strange would be the perfect new hero he kinda has the magic thing covered and we really need some form of magic user. Thor uses it a little bit but not as much as Strange. They could also introduce the Infinity Gems in the same movie, assuming they go The Infinity Gauntlet. (But who uses Thanos in a movie without his signature weapon?)

Namor would be my second choice as he just seems awesome, but I am sad to hear that the movie rights to him are a little "grey".
 

hermes

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Crazy_Dude said:
Dr.Strange would be the perfect new hero he kinda has the magic thing covered and we really need some form of magic user. Thor uses it a little bit but not as much as Strange. They could also introduce the Infinity Gems in the same movie, assuming they go The Infinity Gauntlet. (But who uses Thanos in a movie without his signature weapon?).
I believe he should be introduced in the next movie, since none of the actual cast seems like a match for the next likely villain
Thanos
however, I am not sure a movie stared only by him could be sustained. Magic as a superpower is always pretty hard to write about, and we could end up with a new Sorcerer's Apprentice.
 

The Great JT

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Kumagawa Misogi said:
The Great JT said:
"...aside from Batman, Warner Bros. seems to really suck at this."

This just in, Bob has made a massive understatement. Film at 11.

Warner just have to say "Bruce Timm here's $300 million make us an awesome justice league movie" and it's done.
They already did. It's called "Justice League: New Frontier."
 

Pat Hulse

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Vausch said:
Pat Hulse said:
Vausch said:
So, here's a question: Why can't the studios collaborate? Y'know, like they all go "Okay we'll make the movie and divide the gross 3 ways and split the budget 3 ways. Each of us invests 60 to 100 million, each of us is almost guaranteed to get that back and then some".

Oversimplification is now done, let's see how I'm out of touch!
Actually, there's not a whole lot of reason why they can't, other than general unwillingness. Sony doesn't want to have to submit to Marvel Studios' mandates regarding their continuity (and to share more of the profits in order to do so), and Marvel makes money whether or not they make the movie in-studio.

What we'll have to wait and see is whether or not Avengers has raised the expectations of movie-going audiences such that they won't want to see a Marvel movie that DOESN'T take place in the larger universe. In other words, if Amazing Spider-Man fails, we will either see Marvel Studios getting many of their rights back, or Sony and Fox will start actively collaborating.

Of course, there's a chance that Disney will discourage any such collaboration, seeing Sony and Fox as competitors.

So yeah. It's not just about money. It's about whether or not the studios can make MORE money through collaboration and whether or not that extra money is worth sharing IP's (something Disney has never been eager to do).
]

So, in other words, if the upcoming Marvel's don't do well the odds of them getting their universes shared would increase? Well, I'm pretty sure Spiderman is going to suck anyway so no loss there.

I know Disney's evil but you'd think the prospect of "share the risk and potential huge income or get a blame figure if things go wrong" wouldn't be something they could pass up.
Basically, yes. If ASM sucks and does poorly in the box office, it's plausible that Sony will scrap its plans for a sequel and try and sell the license back to Disney while it's still worth something.

And unfortunately, Disney could get a potential huge income from a collaborative work, or they could just get a small income from a failed work done by Fox or Sony (since Marvel still makes money from those movies) and then get the rights back and make an even bigger income from an in-house production that doesn't suck. The only thing they risk going the latter route is whether audiences will get sick of the properties themselves or just sick of studios other than Marvel making Marvel movies. They potentially stand to gain a lot more if they let the other studios fail. And if the other studios don't fail, they still make money off of it. There's not a lot of incentive for them to collaborate with competing studios that they already make money off of through the licensing deal. It's not so much evil as a rational business decision (though those two things are often hard to distinguish).
 

gigastar

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Shadowstar38 said:
This also means that sense Fox owns mutants we'll never get a good Deadpool movie ;_;
Except that Deadpool is not a mutant, he was given mutant powers through the Weapon X program, but hes not a mutant.

Might be enough to wrestle him off of Fox for his movie.
 

Xanadu84

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It occurs to me...it's probably for the best that it would be too difficult to get more characters.

Avengers was so awesome because it built relationships. All the characters have interesting interactions with each other, friendships, rivalries and the like. So we have 6 heroes, Fury, and bad guys. They also pretty much built up Hawkeye and Black Widow as movie characters from scratch, and managed to make them hold there own in awesomeness next to the rest of them. I think they should continue this dynamic. Adding more characters would just distract you from an incredibly good dynamic.

Also, here's a consideration that might switch around the math in terms of buying IP rights. I bet that The Hulk movies, Captain America, Thor, and even Iron Man are all seeing a resurgence in DVD sales, rentals and the like. I think Hollywood might discover that realistically, the owners of something like Spiderman, Daredevil or the like might as well offer to pay for the right to have there characters put in the next Avengers movie. Wanna bet that more people would see a new, say, Daredevil movie if people recognized him from Avengers? Instead of making a new Fantastic Four movie that tanks to keep the rights, perhaps they pay a small sum of money to put Fantastic Four in the next Avengers, and release THEIR movie a month or so later, and watch as legions of Avengers fans flock to their movie, even if it sucks, to eek a little more out of the universe they have come to love? Like bob said, this movie continuity is an experiment, and I suspect that changing dynamics in the business end might be an unintended consequence.

I'm probably not alone on thinking that Black Widow, Hawkeye, or Black Widow and Hawkeye would make a pretty awesome movie. I'm probably pretty close to alone when I say that I think the new Spiderman looks like it could actually be pretty decent. I mean, it kind of looks like it goes back to the web slinger being a technological invention, not a mutant power. That's something, right? Right guy? Guys...?
 

Rorro

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Dec 27, 2011
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Hmmm... Maybe this is why the X-Men events in comics are usually more self-contained when related to the rest of the Marvel universe?