Marvel Stepping Back on X-Men

Marvel is delivering a knockout punch to other publishers by way of movies. Guardians of the Galaxy proved that a c-list (yet really good) title won’t just succeed at the box office, but break records. X-Men: Days of Future Past combined the franchises into one mega movie that is setting up success for the long haul. Amazing Spider-Man 2 even had a successful run earlier than the typical summer blockbuster season started. But even with all that success this summer, and all the blows Marvel’s delivering with announcements of future movies, the company isn’t celebrating all of those victories.

To make sense of this you have to look back at a few things. Marvel’s overwhelming presence now is shadowing its late 90’s bankruptcy. When filing for Chapter 11, Marvel knew they had to make some moves to bring in some cash and deals were brokered with Sony, New Line Cinema, and Fox giving those studios the rights to many well known characters. Although some of those studios have folded on certain titles, allowing Ghost Rider, Blade, and The Punisher to return home, Fox and Sony are still running with their successful franchises.

Guardians of the Galaxy Pic 3

Because of the deal being brokered around a bankruptcy, they were obviously not favorable for both sides with Marvel taking a major blow. Recently, Sony and Marvel renegotiated the Spider-Man rights giving them more opportunity there and allowing Sony to hold on a bit longer to that money maker, but Fox refuses to negotiate.

Recently, the press has been probing Marvel executives trying to get a better understanding as to why the company hasn’t licensed toys, promotional deals, and other normal movie franchise accompaniments. The majority of them have been quiet but Marvel’s Tom Brevoort finally shed some light on the situation.

“You’re talking about issues involving licensing and animation, and those are questions you’d need to ask to our people that oversee those areas,” opened Brevoort.

Brevoort continued with a few more details, “I will say two things, though, both of which are pretty self-evident, I think. One, there are only so many hours in the day, and so many initiatives you can have going at once,. So you need to pick and choose where you want to spend your time and your efforts. Two, if you had two things, and on one you earned 100% of the revenues from the efforts that you put into making it, and the other you earned a much smaller percentage for the same amount of time and effort, you’d be more likely to concentrate more heavily on the first, wouldn’t you?”

The X-Men deal gives Fox a considerable amount of revenue, pull, and controlling interest in the franchises they own. If Marvel goes through the efforts of creating toys and comic tie-ins, Fox collects without doing anything.

2014 Anticipated Movies X-Men Future Past

Marvel isn’t just facing the fact that two of their well known franchises are not as profitable for them as other, lesser known titles, they’re taking it head on.

The rumors have gone as far to say that certain Marvel executives have given the green light to pull the plug on the Fantastic Four ongoing series. This isn’t a huge surprise considering there are no longer Fantastic Four or X-Men artwork, posters, or promotional items hanging anywhere at Marvel Studios headquarters. Even more startling, is Marvel has a plan in place to make X-Men less prominent and replace their presence with more Inhumans.

No matter what happens, this will get more and more interesting as the success of comic book movies continue to get greater.

One thing we can say for sure, if you are curious as to why there’s no new X-Men characters being created, or why Marvel artists aren’t allowed to draw and sell Fantastic Four characters at conventions, it’s not an attempt to shift their efforts on other more profitable franchises but a move to try and get Fox’s attention.

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