[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jmacq1

Quote a source yourself. Bearing in mind that makers of the film can talk with "Marvel Writers" all day without it having a damn thing to do with Marvel as a company. "Marvel Writers" are not slaves owned by Marvel Comics...they are permitted to talk to people without it reflecting the opinions of Marvel Entertainment or Disney as an organization. Nor does Marvel as a company (Bearing in Mind Marvel COMICS and Marvel STUDIOS are two different branches) saying they are "excited" for First Class (if indeed they have) have anything to do with whether Marvel studios wants the rights back to ALL their cinematic properties, even if they know it's an unlikely thing to happen anytime soon.

Nevermind that I didn't say diddly-squat about whether or not Marvel was "excited" for the film. Only that Marvel wants the rights to X-Men back. Source?

Disney Wants the Movie Rights Back for Fantastic Four, X-Men, Daredevil and Spider-Man - Nerd Reactor

Again, I am not agreeing with the above poster that says "Marvel wants this film to fail." But it takes some serious stupidity to honestly believe that Marvel Studios wouldn't LEAP at the chance to get the X-Men or Spider-Man (or Fantastic Four for that matter) rights back in their hands if it wouldn't cost them so much as to risk the future of the company (see below).



Since you're so big on sources, please find a source that says Marvel Studios/Disney are "indifferent" about getting their rights back. I'll be waiting.

As for the second part of your statement. WRONG. The contracts that Marvel Entertainment signed with 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures for X-Men and Spider-Man (and some of the other characters that have been made into movies at other studios) are "in perpetuity" contracts. This means that Fox and Sony can keep both of them effectively FOREVER as long as they continue to make movies based on those characters within a pre-set span of time (I believe it's 5 years between movies, but usually ends up being shorter than that). There is NOTHING Disney can do to get the rights back short of giving Fox or Sony MASSIVE payoffs, and by "massive" I mean payoffs in the billions of dollars range...which would effectively double (or more) the price Disney paid for Marvel as a whole ($4 billion). Effectively Sony and Fox can "name their price" for Disney/Marvel buying back those rights, and it ain't gonna go cheap. Not even Disney has that kind of cash just laying around waiting to be used. So again...no matter how much Disney/Marvel might WANT the rights back, there's nothing they can do about it until Sony or Fox violates the original contracts in some way, or simply chooses to hand the rights back to them (unlikely unless the property has been driven into the ground to the point of utter unprofitability).



Another logical fallacy. If by some unlikely miracle the rights came back to Disney while the X-Men or Spider-Man properties were still profitable at the movies, I can guarantee they'd GLADLY push aside all the Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, Runaways, and Inhumans movies in the world to make room for an X-Men or Spider-Man film by Marvel studios ASAP. There's nothing that stops Disney/Marvel from "re-prioritizing" their slate of movies, and with Disney's backing behind them there's really nothing that stops them from having a ton of films in development at once (particularly when many of them are still in scriptwriting stage, which is hardly a resource-intensive level of production). A major studio like Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, or Disney (particularly when you consider their multiple subsidiaries) can put out enough movies in one year to completely encompass all of the films Marvel has "in development" at the moment. The amount of films "being worked on" has NOTHING to do with Marvel's ability to make more films. People act like Marvel's slate of proposed films is ambitious, when in actuality it's small potatoes in the grand scheme of filmmaking.

But again, it's a moot point, because Fox and Sony are NOT going to give the rights back. It is, however, idiotic to believe that Disney/Marvel wouldn't LIKE to get the rights to two of Marvel's three most profitable franchises back in their own hands.

That's a business analyst, not marvel or disney themselves. So it is still speculation.

Sony gave the animation rights back as a bid to keep the movie rights for spider-man to play nice with disney, because they were afraid Disney would take back the rights. Fox never fretted losing the rights, but since your link pointed out it's the same contract, if sony had the chance of losing it, and was actively trying to appease disney to avoid that, it's safe to say fox would have had the same issue.

Blog@Newsarama » Blog Archive » Sony gives up Spectacular Spider-Man rights Plus hundreds more if you look in google. Straight from Sony and Disney as well.

http://tv.ign.com/articles/102/1020699p1.html
Also straight from the people who worked on the sony spectacular spider-man toon.

As for X-Men, you have to go no further than marvel.com itself.
Calling All X-Perts! | X-Men | Movie & TV News | News | Marvel.com
On top of the marketing, you'll also see hundreds of more marvel entries about being excited about it, and how they've helped. Marvel will even defend the older brother/father Havok as Ultimate X-Men itself has Havok being older, and many other stories in the multiverse where they aren't even related.

Both of those are straight from the horse's mouth, not side analysts who are guessing what marvel or disney think or want.

If you add X-Men: First Class | Movies | Movies & TV | Marvel.com to your RSS feeder, or other news aggregator you can stay on top of that too.

If you look up small faces, you'll see the 'insider remarks' at first then direct quotes from marvel about why they've pushed it back. Which was because they have so many features in the works as is, they need to slow down development or be overwhelmed and oversaturate the market. If you look up the announcements for Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Luke Cage, Ironfist, and all the others, you can see a common thread of not having to do Spider-man and X-Men has allowed them to explore other lesser known characters and make them be even more profitable than the rights the others have. So not having those two has actually helped them since they still make money off of whatever sony or Fox do, and are cashing majorly on their own wealth of characters without using the mainstays.

http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/marv...down-runaways/ Insider remarks since it was the first mention. Following articles to that go into more detail with actual quotes.

Marvel themselves has said their slate is full. If you continue on looking up about Small Faces/Runaways.

You have to balance release schedule alongside saturation. Could disney release a movie every month of marvel? Sure. But it would overwhelm the market to the point of not being profitable. As for idiotic to not want them back, that's a fallacy in itself. Marvel gets paid for the X-Men movies still in royalties. Yet don't have to pay to make the movies. Yeah I'd say it's an even break there. Ditto to spider-man with Avi Arad. Considering how much they pale in comparison to what the avengers line up is making anyway. So yes, Ant-Man would stay, while X-Men etc would be on hold. The movies before it have already proven more profitable than the X-Franchise as a whole. Thor even has already outperformed the opening weekend of Wolverine, and the final results from the weekend aren't even posted. Meaning it's still missing a day from the total results.

Everything I had said was common knowledge straight from marvel, disney, fox, and sony if you followed the movie news about the projects being developed instead of the speculation. So yes, Marvel/Disney is indifferent to it, and if they wanted them back, could get them back. Disney is great at that as history has proven. This is why Sony opted to give the animation rights back as a gesture of good faith to keep the movie rights. When in the long run, they could have just outright lost both if Disney pushed the issue.

And if you want proof about how marvel writers don't care about continuity, you can look no further than heroes when Jeph Loeb started writing for it.

And let's not forget that Marvel tends to not play hollywood politics well, calling Terrence Howard a diva. (Honestly I can't argue that though, they are right.) And how they actively keep bouncing the director's around on projects like their recent announcement about removing Favreau from Ironman 3 and adding the lethal weapon director. Let's also not forget the Norton debacle either.

As for X-Men being profitable, it is if the budget is under control, but the avengers line up of movies is by far more profitable(which all these side character movies will tie into within the Marvel-19999 universe). Ironman 1 and 2 did far better than all the x-men movies (including XMO:Wolverine)combined to date. So that's where their focus is. (That you can find by adding up the boxoffices from boxofficemojo. Pure numbers, so no speculation needed from analysts.) Thor is on pace to do about as well. So yes, marvel has proven they can make more profitable movies than Fox or Sony without using Spider-man or X-Men.

It is illogical to think that fox wouldn't give up the rights if it was no longer profitable. If they make enough consecutive flops, they would view the rights as not worth it as they are paying more to make these movies than they are making from them. That's just not smart business. (The reason the punisher rights went back to marvel even as well, which led to them doing War Zone.)
As it is, Fox is pretty hands off while they are made, as opposed to sony who does interfere with spider-man. Heck even Avi Arad recently tweeted that the new spider-man isn't a reboot. (when it obviously is, BCN covered it, as did other comic outlets.) So if Disney really wanted the rights back, they could throw a hefty enough wad of cash to get them back. Just as they did to paramount to get the distro for the avengers series after thor and cap. Considering how much Fantastic 4 and Daredevil/Elektra didn't make, I can say with confidence that if the price tag to buy them back was right, they'd consider it, and go for it. Those two properties alone haven't turned out to be all that profitable movie-wise. Which is the only rights they have for them. (Again BoxOfficeMojo, and if you want further info you can look up the contracts themselves.) Even at 42million, elektra didnt make it's budget back. Bringing in only 24 Million. Low budget films still cost, and if they don't sell and make the money back, it's a bust, and in turn hurts stock/shareholders and effects the bottomline. In fact, if the new reboots of those two franchises don't profit, we'll probably start seeing articles of those studio's wanting marvel to buy them back so they can at least profit on the buyback. Would disney pay a hefty fee? Considering how much the marvel movies have made under marvel, if they felt they could make more than the royalties yield, they would pay out the hefty price for the long term payout benefit. (pay a billion now, for several billion later? That's a no brainer.)

For X-Men, it's mostly Singer handling it as producer. Hugh Jackman is Producer on Wolverine(which won't change so long as they want him as the character). So even if it left fox for marvel/disney. If those two stay on as producers, which they more than likely would, it doesn't matter what company distributes the movies, we'd still be getting what we're getting. Just this way, Marvel/Disney doesn't foot the bill, and still reaps the rewards in royalties.

The thing is, would Marvel really bite the hands that gave them the comic movie boom? Fox/singer gave them the first X-Men which helped the door open, just as Sony gave them Spider-man that busted the door wide open. (Let's not forget Blade's help in all this either!)
Granted sony did do just that with their bickering at Raimi, but I can't see Marvel kicking Hugh Jackman to the curb, just like I couldn't see them kicking RDJ, or Samuel Jackson to the curb.

Just to clarify, when marvel talks about character mismanagement, they are refering to the Ben Affleck Daredevil film, the elektra film, the punisher movie before war zone (war zone was marvel, and it still flopped, so it's not mismanagement, it's the actual character), and the fantastic 4 movies. Spider-man and X-Men aren't considered part of the mismanaged licenses as yet. Note I said 'as yet.' Given time that may change, but for now it's not the case.

So yes the contracts are a mess, but it's a mess that works in Marvel's favor for now, plus if they really wanted, nothing is stopping them from a direct to dvd/tv market for animation or live movies/series, the contract only covers theatrical films. Also, it's been over 6 years since the last Daredevil(elektra) movie and counting.

Also that original IESB article they quote, has since been pulled.