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The Business of Marvel.
The Marvel shareholder’s conference call was released today, and I decided to take a listen… As a lay person, this is what I gleaned from it:
1) The publishing division is less important (financially at least) than their toy/merchandising division.
2) Interactive is really taking a back burner because…
3) They are betting the farm on Marvel Film Group. To the point of buying out previous licensing deals, which I think they bought back film deals to be able to do it themselves. The self-financing is only going so far, and they are borrowing to pay for post, and the studios are handling the advertising/distribution. They also mentioned “profit participation deals” cutting into profits a bit.
Other things of note. 2009 will only maaaybe have 1 film as opposed to the 2 outlined, due to the writer’s and possible actor’s strike. These possibly include Cap, Thor, Avengers. 2010 should have 2 as their schedule of 2 films per year.
They also mention a few other things, a stock buyback program, and a bullet point that seemed to be re-iterated. They want to be at the helm of all their franchises, and protect themselves from buyouts, which makes perfect sense. Studios have never really had any long term interests (i.e: beyond the sequel) in the longevity of any of these franchises, and therefore could be seen to maximize short-term profits, this was more apparent in the late eighties’ mid nineties, but Ghost Rider, Elektra and Daredevil’s seems like cash-out on capes short-term decisions taken in their developments.
Sounds like Marvel want to change that. However, *if* the Marvel Film Group is a success, what will it mean for the publishing division? What will failures mean? What about the fact that all of these characters are 40-60 years old? Shouldn’t the fact that there aren’t that many new characters coming out of the ranks worry them?
I’ve wondered about that last question myself. It seems like there should be a progression of characters that will give us a chance to really get into new characters rather than trying to figure out how to make the older characters not be old. It’s the whole Spider-Man argument from last month. Do we really need a ’60′s Spider-Man now? I’d actually rather have an older Spidey that has a family and passes the mantle onto someone I can naturally relate with, not someone who’s constantly rewritten so I’m forced to like them. This is why I like what DC is doing with the Blue Beetle property.