[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NerfTW

edit- and I forgot that X-men is still a Fox property, not Marvel Studios, and we know the only reason they're making movies is to hang onto the licenses for X-men, Spider-man, Daredevil, etc. So after all that marketing speculation, I forgot the simplest reason: Fox wasn't trying to make money on this film, they were just trying to keep the license so they can do more Wolverine stuff.

As stated above, Spider-Man is Sony.
Also, while Fox does want to hold onto the properties, they want successful movies, not just a means to keep the rights. This is a company, and their main goal is to make money, not lose money. Deliberately making a bad movie is how you lose money. That's been refuted before, but the headline wasn't as catchy and many outlets intentionally missed it as not being something fans want to hear. The IESB report fuels the fan fires though, so it keeps getting touted as the flagship insider report despite being disproven on record, at least on the intentionally bad movie front(Marvel had also gone on record to say they had no plans to even attempt to get the rights back, so this histeria is entirely fan driven). Sony themselves also worked out something with Disney. Giving them back the animation rights of Spider-Man in a bid to not have a fight over the movie rights. The main problem being the iesb report had spread like wildfire, whereas when it was refuted was such a tiny headline it's impossible to google for unless you favorited it when it first popped up in headlines. That also begs the question do you trust someone willing to go on record as a representative of the company, over an anonymous source who takes no fallout from any comments said. It goes back and forth with hollywood politics. Hollywood politics are also something Marvel themselves aren't that good at just yet. Which you can see looking at the Terrence Howard debacle, as well as the Edward Norton debacle. Marvel has a tendency to burn bridges but be forgiven for it because of the wealth of childhood heroes of actors and actresses they are in control of. Just as we often turn a blind eye to their mistreatment of their own properties, alongside the rampant idea and concept theft they do because we also grew up with these characters and have on glasses of blind fan worship.

There is proof to it though when you look at the rights. In particular Marvel fighting the original creators over the rights. If they really wanted the rights back from film companies, they'd let the rights go to the original creators with a contract stipulation of selling them back only to Marvel, which in turn would circumvent any movie contracts, as the rights would have been considered never Marvel's to have sold in the first place. With Disney backing them on this course of action, they could effectively null and void any current movie contracts. Then again though, that'd mean they'd have to pay back the royalties to the creators those movies brought in... Oh wait, that's right. Marvel doesn't have to pony up any money at all for those movies to have been made, and reaps the benefits through the royalties... Hmm, this seems like it's much more complicated than what one 'insider' headline would lead you to believe it is. Disney Marvel will get the rights back eventually, but to say they can make better movies than Fox or sony is hit or miss. Some characters they could, others I doubt there'd be any real change whatsoever. Then again though, I'm not fond of Marvel's business practices either when it comes to rights and similiar concept theft. We tend to be blinded by fan glasses, but one company really isn't any better than another when you boil it down. You don't have to look any farther than how they mistreat their own characters in comics. (Stuff that personally makes me scratch my head how Marvel Editorial could okay it. Stuff that proves they are just as bad as the companies they allegedly dislike for 'legally' stealing their characters and mistreating them. It really is just bickering over who can have the more proceeds from the films in question, not who can make it better.) In all of this, at least you can see that Sony cares about the characters and has a willingness to work with Marvel for good will, as they've also had employees, not higher ups, going on record about this Marvel vis-a-vis quid pro quo. So really when you break all this down. It's all about money, and who can have the biggest piece of the pie, and not about any alleged integrity reasons that are used to fluff those reasons. It always was, and always will be about money. If you want another example of Marvel messing up properties, take a look at the nosedive Heroes made and all the continuity errors after they let Jeph Loeb start writing it. Plus the legal battle over a show called Mutant X. Even Marvel's attempt to copyright the word 'mutant' itself. So yeah, it definitely just boils down to money on all sides, and not character integrity as they so claim. (I'm also reminded of how bad some of the 70s marvel movies were, and those didn't even have the rights issues these current ones do. Captain America and Captain America 2 in particular. Though I did enjoy the 90s one and the 70s Dr. Strange.)

As for a toyline, yeah as others stated the turn around was too soon to do it.
With Cap(easy to push under the current patriotic histeria in USA) and Thor(unproven as a standalone line, hence no campy costumed comic line and sole focus on Title and movie characters) already on shelves alongside IM2 and MU, it's better to just wait for the next X-Men/wolverine film and load it down with both. After the recent bombing of the X-Men toon line, Hasbro may have felt it prudent to wait awhile and just filter in some comic characters into the MU line instead. With XFC already going to have sequels, one missed film won't hurt it. There will be a chance later again anyway. So there's no real rush for it now, as opposed to a year from now(when marvel's Avengers films will be consolidated into one line) and again the year after.

With next year's comic storylines allegedly being very X-Men heavy, we can probably expect more from MU, besides 'The Wolverine' film among others.

The question I want answered though, what are the licensing fees associated to using Fox titles on figures. There was a marginal mark up on merchandise using it compared to the normal lines.