Marvel Movie Rights

Yan Albaladejo- Ramirez

When you compare Marvel's biggest blockbusters to their most popular characters and comics you seem to notice a certain trend. Some of the company's biggest heroes and comic icons like Spider-man, Wolverine, Blade, and the Fantastic Four seem to be missing, completely forgotten. Search all over the MCU, Disney+, and even Netflix and you won't find them or their supporting cast. Sure Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man are there to reap in the profits but to comic readers and those of us who lived before the MCU this feels nearly impossible. Why is Marvel's biggest project to date missing some of their biggest franchise players? How did this come to be, how did some of comics greatest seem to fall out of the silver screen?

Picture this the year it's the 1990s, and your Marvel Entertainment, everything around you has basically fallen apart. Your profits are sharply declining with the Comic Bubble bursting leading to your most valuable and reliable comics now being worth a fraction of what they were previously. However you put it, it looks like you’re on the way out with DC Comics and other competitors like Image Comics seeming to be on the rise. Spider-man, X-men, Avengers, and the other big hitters are failing to bring in the funds you desperately need. Also to add insult to injury some of the company's best artists and writers begin to walkout. Creators like Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld, and Jim Valentino become fed up with Marvel's lackluster creator control and royalties and move on to other ventures away from the company. So where do you turn? What do you do? At this point the company seems nearly unsalvageable. They seem left with only one choice, to turn away from the comic industry that has brought them this far. Marvel's left with no choice but to start looking at other options. Toys, films, animations, merchandise, and anything else that looks like an escape or possible way out are floated by Marvel Executives. The company seemed desperate for any answer that could bring them into financial stability or profitability.

Marvel's first bailout venture came from Toybiz, a rapidly growing toy manufacturer that used Marvel character licenses to climb to the top. Pushing Spider-man, Captain America, and Hulk action figures to the front stage of toy stores. After acquiring Marvels master toy license the once no name company would go on to rise to the top. Toybiz would become a ludicrously profitable toy titan, so profitable in fact that they would go on to buy Marvel in 1998. While comics failed, toys seemed to bring in the revenue the company was desperate for. At the helm of this rising toy empire was Avid Azra, the Israeli American CEO of Toybiz. However Azra was a man who had much higher aspirations than just action figures and knick knacks. Sure these brought in profit but nothing like his next ventures would, motion pictures and animation. Azra had seen Marvel's decline as an opportunity, one for cinema. Realizing toys could only get them so far and being pushed by Azra, the company began looking at other options like animations, then shows, and then eventually films.

But how was a company freshly out of chapter 11 bankruptcy and still on the verge of folding supposed to make blockbusters? Simple answer is they couldn’t, not very well at least. After Toybiz and Marvels merger, Azra (Toybiz’s CEO at the time) had himself appointed the director of a new department “Marvel Studios”. As director Azra attempted to streamline control of Marvel productions. Him and the company preferred to keep production, writing, casting, and other aspects in house. This worked at first with animations like The Incredible Hulk, Spider-man, and X-Men being smash homegrown hits, however when it came to films the story was much different. At first Marvel tried to direct and manage their own feature films themselves however this seemed to be a nearly impossible task for a small company with Azra himself saying "When you get into business with a big studio, they are developing a hundred or 500 projects; you get totally lost. That isn't working for us. We're just not going to do it anymore. Period.". So instead Marvel began to outsource it's IP’s (Intellectual Property) at first partnering with other studios and then eventually taking their biggest franchises to the auctioning block. Even the in house studio which was responsible for the previously mentioned cartoon's was sold to Fox in 1996.

The first marvel IP to be licensed was Blade in 1998. The black vampire slayer that had swooned African Americans and Marvel fans alike would gross a blazing 131 million dollars worldwide. The film which starred Wesley Snipes as Blade would seem to push Marvel out of bankruptcy allowing executives and stockholders alike to breathe a breath of fresh air. The fact that one of Marvel's less popular franchises had raked in so much money opened ears in the company. Even though the movie was made by New Line Cinemas it opened the doors for other studios like Fox, Lions Gate and Sony. This proved to be just the beginning with a slew of Marvel IP’s working their way to the silver screen and box office.

To truly understand the topic one must first understand licensing deals, more specifically movie ones. Usually whenever movies are licensed out by the holder of the IP a few strings are attached. First of all the rights are not sold out right but instead on a picture by picture deal or on a rights relapse basis. When a picture by picture deal is struck each new movie must be green-lit by the IP holder, in this case Marvel. This is the type of deal struct for earlier movies like Punisher and Blade. While it allows the IP holder to maintain some type of creative control it's rather risky for studios because it limits their control and ability to plan ahead. A rights relapse basis basically means that as long as movies keep being released in a certain time frame (usually four to six years) they studio can retain the rights. This form of licensing is the one preferred by studios because it allows them to keep the rights for as long as they want but also keeps the rights out of the IP holder's hands indefinitely. This is the type of deal that was struck for X-men, Spiderman, and Hulk among others. When a licensing agreement is made it usually includes broad rules for the studio and minor royalties.

Fox would be Marvel's biggest customer buying the rights to X-Men, Daredevil and the Fantastic Four, three of the company's biggest franchises would find their homes at 20th century studios. Even though Blade released in 1998 an X-Men movie had actually been confirmed and in the works since 1993. Blade had proven to be a major success however X-men would absolutely blow it out of the water, pulling in a whopping 296.3 million dollars. Other then drowning Blade in pure profit X-men would also jumpstart another trend, the Cinematic Universe. Unlike Blade that had simply been licensed Fox had basically bought the rights to a whole line of comics that could interconnect into a cinema universe. Properties like Deadpool, Wolverine, and Dr. Doom could host their own movie series and draw in profits. Infact until the Disney-Fox merger Fox would release 13 highley profitable X-men movies and spin offs that would take place in their own universe that at times rivaled. Even less profitable franchises like Daredevil and the Fanstastic Four would have their own spin offs. In total Fox released 18 movies based off of Marvel IP’s, with the X-men movies becoming the sixth highest grossing cinema franchise ever. Characters like Dr. Doom, Wolverine, Deadpool, Quicksilver and Galactus were in the hands of 20th Century Fox. On the eve of Iron Mans release (the first MCU movie) these three blockbuster franchises would see themselves tied up at Fox competing the the MCU. However this would all come to an end with Disney’s (Marvels parent company) purchase of Fox. Now all of these IP’s have started to slowly trickle back to Marvel. With the exception of Daredevil and Elktra who’s rights would return much earlier after their respective cinematic failures.

Of those characters missing from the MCU one stands out among the rest, one character so integral that Marvel themselves seemed puzzled on how to build a universe without him. The web head himself Spider-man and his supporting cast like Venom and Black Cat seemed to be nowhere insight. While the Avengers would battle Ultron, Loki, and slew of other threats Spider-man would find himself over at Sony with his own separate series of movies. This is due to the fact that during Marvels fire sale in the 90s Sony had picked up the web slinger for a measly 7 million dollars. This amount seems absolutely paltry when compared to the 9 and a half billion dollars Sony has grossed from the IP. Before the start of the MCU Sony would truly usher in the superhero age with Sam Riami Spider-man movies and eventually Marc Webbs Amazing Spider-man series. These films along with various DC projects and X-men would bring super heroes to the main stream and open the door for the MCU. Sony seemed unwilling to share arguably the most popular super hero ever with Marvel, that is until the failure of the Amazing Spider-man 2. This failure along with an email scandal that rocked the company in 2014 would open the mind of desperate Sonys executives who found themselves in an eerily similar position to that which Marvel did in the 90s. After weighing their options Sony would decided to agree to a profit sharing agreement with Marvel and allow Spider-man into the MCU. The release of Captain America: Civil War would mark a new era for the character, with a new Spider-man portrayed by Tom Holland finally joining the MCU. However many of the franchises most popular characters like Venom, Miles Morales, and The Sinister Six remain at home back at Sony. Even though Spider-man has found himself rubbing elbows with other Marvel greats Sony is still planning and produce movies that take place in their own separate Spider-man universe christened Sonys Universe of Marvel Characters. Even though Spider-man is the most popular superhero owned by Sony another Marvel staple found themselves at Columbia Pictures, Ghost Rider. The motorcycle riding demon of vengeance would receive his own duo logy before being returned to Marvel due to a lapse in the movie rights.

Even Universal Studios would take a bite of the Marvel cookie, walking away with the cinematic rights to the Incredible Hulk and Namor. Ang Lee and Universal would helm a lackluster 2003 Hulk movie that was labeled mediocre at best by movie goers and film critics alike. It produced luke warms reviews and profits, eventually leading to a scraping of any future planned projects. Even though Fox and Sony would move towards the creation of cinematic universes Universal would seem content with smaller more contained projects. In fact they would return the rights to the Hulk in return for the right of first refusal on any future Hulk projects. Namor himself would receive no cinematic or tv show appearances with his rights returning to Marvel sometime in the late 2000s.

Lionsgate and New Line Cinema, two of the studios that at first headlined this new era of movies would seem to fall into Marvel obscurity. Even though at first these studios were planned to be home to franchises like Black Widow, Punisher, Blade and Iron man nothing seemed to come to fruition and the projects eventually fell through. Blade and Punisher actually did release and garnered 400 million and 64.8 million dollars respectively however this was not nearly enough to peek the respective studios and interest and keep the projects alive. With both of the movie rights eventually lapsing and returning to Marvel. Punisher would actually star in two other outsourced Marvel productions, Netflix’s Punisher and Defenders.

The last outside studio to truly helm a Marvel IP would be Netflix, which would produce 13 series among 6 shows. Daredevil, Punisher, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and a series featuring a team-up of the five christened The Defenders. Marvel (and their parent company Disney) had learned from their past mistakes and kept Netflix on a short lease, refusing to license the series outright in the same manner that they previously had. They kept a tight hold on creative control and casting eventually canceling all of the wildly popular shows by 2019. This init self coincided with the release of Disney's own streaming service and new home to the MCU, Disney+. With the canceling of these would come the return of the respective Character rights after a short non-competition period.

As the toll of the clock clicks and clangs the pieces of the Marvel universe have fallen back together.