A while ago it was confirmed that Daredeveil had indeed returned to the hands of Marvel due to 20th Century Fox not being able to keep the property in production long enough to retain the rights. Today, we learn about three more properties that have been returned to Marvel (Disney).
According to an article in the most recent EW magazine, Ghost Rider, Blade, and The Punisher have returned to the parent company. Though this may have you jumping up and down wondering what will happen to your favorite franchise, Kevin Fiege, President of Production at Marvel Studios, makes it clear that just because it’s back, doesn’t mean new movies are just around the corner.
Whenever a character comes back to us, it’s usually because the other studios don’t want to make the movies anymore – and that usually means the [previous]movies may not have been particularly well received. They all have potential, but we’re not going to say, ‘We got it back – make it!’
This is certainly good news for Marvel and Disney as they have the ability to do whatever they want with these characters without worrying too much about sharing the money with other studios. Of course with the way distribution deals have been going these last couple of years, I wouldn’t weep for the competition just yet, as cost cutting throughout the studio system still finds studios working deals to shoulder the burden of publicity and distribution world wide.
This leaves Spider-Man at Sony/Columbia Pictures, with X-Men and the Fantastic Four at 20th Century Fox.
While this seems like a good thing for fans, is it really? By splitting up the characters and properties it should breed competition between the studios to top one another in order to make more money. On the other hand, with the characters all together, we finally see what is in store for us with the third wave of Marvel movies – Marvel MAX. I wonder what the plans are for Moon Knight?
10 Comments
How did Marvel get rights to Ghost Rider back right after a movie was released?
A couple of thoughts.
First, the rights going back to Disney / Marvel don’t really matter to me. What’s been more disappointing is that Ghost Rider and Punisher just haven’t had a good writer / team in place to put a good movie to screen. I’ve been very disappointed in all of the movies that have come out of those titles.
Blade, however, has been decent. The first was entertaining, the second was tolerable, the third I enjoyed for some reason even though I know a lot of people just pan it.
Second, I agree – while it would be glorious to get Wolverine and Spider-Man into Disney / Marvel hands to add to the Avengers series, competition is a good thing. I was sorely disappointed with X-Men: First Class (though I know many call it one of if not the best X-Men movie), and I have hopes that the success of the Avengers movies will push X-Men: Days of Future Past to be a much better movie; similar to what looks like a solid movie coming from Man of Steel.
As a movie, X-Men: First Class was solid and entertaining.
As a comic book movie, X-Men: First Class was worse than Elektra.
could NOT agree with you more
Thomas Jane’s Punisher was something was really slept on. His take, I think, was the strongest out of every attempt.
But would have to disagree with you. Prior to the Dark Knight franchise, or even X-Men 2 or Spiderman 2; Blade 1 and 2 was comic book films to beat.
Personaly I thought Punisher War Zome was awesome.
Could care less….
FF needs to revert.
I think this is great news! Disney at least has some sort of quality control. Sony, 20th etc didn’t really seem to have any vested interest in these characters and didn’t realize making a bad Ghost Rider/Punisher movie hurts the character in every project.
I think with Daredevil, Punisher and Ghost Rider all being back under one roof, they’d be foolish not to consider a ensemble movie centered around the street level. Think of the Marvel Knights line from the early 2000s. Yes I’m aware that Spider-Man had a role in that, but you can get by with Daredevil, The Punisher and Iron Fist.
I think there was a special ‘no fire-urine’ clause in the agreement that Columbia overlooked and caused them to lose the rights to produce GR movies.