Though many of us are still high on the fumes created by the movie industry pumping us full of fantastic franchise flicks featuring superheroes, Susquehanna Financial Group’s Vasily Karasyov says you better get your fix now.
Virtually all of the most popular films of the last decade couldn’t have been made without CGI. Within that group Karasyov counts 16 superhero films, not counting sequels, resulting in four franchises: Fox’s X-Men, Sony’s Spider-Man, Warner Bros’ Batman, and Paramount’s Iron Man. Yet nothing has taken off since Iron Man came out in 2008, he says, largely because studios have already tapped their hottest properties. “As film studios dig deeper into catalogues for characters for new films, we think the chances of finding a break out property are diminishing fast” — even though the films still come with high production costs — Karasyov writes. If superhero films fail to catch on, then studios can forget about raking in lots of additional revenue from licensed merchandise.
According to the analyst, investors should expect “growing risks to estimates”. While I’m no expert in money making (as evidenced by the lack of products in the Major Spoilers Store), What Karasyov fails to mention are all of the other comic book properties that are not superhero related that are still getting snagged up left and right by the studios. I think there are still about 10 years worth of worthwhile films to be made from comic book properties before the bottom drops out.
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He’s also measuring success as Franchises. There are succesful movies that aren’t made for a franchise. He’s also not taking into account how many more superhero movies come out each year, and that divides up the dollars a bit.
Also, since 2008 not a lot came out that would start a new franchise, except for Thor and Green Lantern, which already have been slated for sequels. This is flawed.