by: Dave Gieber
The public fascination with comic book superhero characters have been exploited by movie production companies for years. Hollywood has been creating feature length comic book movies, movie serials and TV shows to continue to whet our appitites. But as special effect technology and costume designs became better and better, Hollywood kicked it up a notch with feature-length high budget productions. Superman, the Movie and the 3 sequels started in the 1970s and the '90s and beyond brought us Batman, The Hulk, the X-Men and the now infamous Spider-Man, to name a few.
Why all this interest in producing comic book superhero movies? Big bucks!! The two Spider-Man movies alone have netted about 800 million dollars apiece in worldwide ticket sales. That's not chicken feed. This kind of income could not be generated without an avid public interest in comic book movies. So if you feel you are alone in your voracious passion for your own comic book collection, think again.
And now a new twist has been added. Directors, screenplay writers, and even actors are writing for, of all things, comic books now. Big name Hollywood writers are helping to sell more comics. For example, Joss Whedon, perhaps best known for creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has written stories for Marvel in the series Astonishing X-Men. Back in the 90s, who would have known that all these fan boys had been hiding in the Hollywood woodworks waiting for comics to gain some cultural credibility?
If you haven't followed some of the comic news of the last several months, Stan "the man" Lee has been fighting his personal battle with His life long employer, Marvel Comics. Stan is probably one of the most well known character creators in the comic book industry. He has characters like Batman, Spider-Man and the Hulk credited to his creative imagination.
Seems Stan had a contractual agreement with Marvel for 10% of any revenue acquired by Marvel from comic book superhero movies and TV projects centered on Stan characters. But apparently the high dollar superstructure of the corporate mind doesn't want to part with all their income. Now this is nothing new, but Stan Lee managed to win the first round for the little guy. The judge presiding over Stan's case agreed that Stan should receive his share of the agreed on profits.
Now maybe Stan will get his share and maybe he won't. Sounds like Marvel will be appealing the decision. At any rate, if there weren't big bucks involved in the production of comic book superhero movies, this case would not have been such an issue.
I believe the near future is going to bring many more of my favorite comic book superheroes to the silver screen. I have already started my own DVD collection and as more comic book superheroes get transferred from the screen to round disc, I will continue to increase the size of my collection. Do you think a DVD comic book movie collection will be worth as much as a comic book collection in the future? Probably not, but that won't stop me from building my collection anyway.
What does the future hold for comic book superhero movies? It almost seems that we can call the present and near future the Golden Age of the comic book movie. I spend a lot of time researching comic book superheros and creating new content for my comic book site. Is there a movie in the planning stages for your favorite comic book superhero? A frequent visit to my site may inform you as to when you can expect the next comic book movie. See you there.