- Court is in session, and welcome everyone,
to another episode of Super Suits, the internet comic book
show where I tell you everything you need to know
about famous lawsuits and trials from the world of
superheroes and comic books.
Only, on today's show we're going to be doing something
a bit different.
While we won't be looking at any actual trial,
we will be tackling a much-requested viewer topic.
That, of course, being all those wonderful superhero movies
and why the film rights to said superheroes
can be so screwy so often.
Yeah, that's right.
Fan requested.
I'm totally doing this because you all asked for it,
and, uh, not because I've got a New York Comic Con
trip coming up in October and I waited too long
to research an actual trial.
Yeah.
Yeah, that uh all sounds very believable.
Now for this video we're mostly going to be dealing
with the Marvel film rights,
because, well, Warner Brothers owns all the DC film
and TV rights so they can do with them whatever the like.
For example, have a Flash on TV and in the movies.
They can also choose to do nothing at all,
and for periods of time they have.
Let us not forget the famous "bat embargo" that kept
Batman related characters from showing up in stuff
like the Justice League cartoon while Christopher Nolan
was developing his Batman movie.
But, just to reiterate, we're going to be talking about
Marvel here,
and the legal reasons behind why all their stuff seems
so chopped up.
You see, back in 1996, the House of Ideas
was not doing so hot at all.
Not only were they losing money left, right, and center,
but they owed about 1.7 million dollars.
There were lots of reasons as to why.
For one, the bottom had fallen out of the speculator
market pyramid and that's a topic for a whole 'nother
video right there.
Marvel also was hemorrhaging money thanks to some
trading card deals gone bad,
again, this was the '90's, and cards were all the rage,
you gotta understand.
I know I have a couple shoe boxes filled with these
cheap pieces of cardboard.
With impending bankruptcy looming, Marvel had no choice
but to sell their intellectual properties to movie studios.
It's like a college student having to hawk
his favorite guitar for his ska band to make
that month's rent,
only a guitar isn't a beloved pop culture icon
with legions of followers both young and old.
Believe it or not, it was actually Ike Perelman who decided
that Marvel should push into the realm of movies
with the creation of Marvel Studios.
This led to a huge battle with shareholders like Carl Icahn,
who feared what this new venture could do to the price
of their shares.
By 1998, the dust settled and Toy Biz
and Marvel Entertainment Group were actually merged
into one giant company.
I bring this up because what also happened
that very same year?
Oh yeah, the release of "Blade" under New Line Cinema's
banner.
"Blade" would be a hit and in many ways the first shot fired
in a whole new age of superhero movies.
These were not the Roger Corman Fantastic Four or even the
previous Captain America movies.
These were something new.
You see, the way it broke down at the time was,
Spider-Man and Ghostrider as well as all their
related characters would go to Sony.
Fox got the X-Men catalog as well as Daredevil and
the Fantastic Four.
Universal got the Hulk and Namor the Sub-Mariner,
even Lionsgate had the Punisher and Man-Thing for a time.
And lastly, we have Marvel Studios and Disney,
who got Iron Man and pretty much everything else
that wasn't already sold.
Granted, if you listen to famous toy man turned movie
power producer Avi Arad, he claims that it was under
some rather dubious stalling tactics that Marvel Studios
was able to get Iron Man back to the Mouse House.
What do I mean by stalling tactics?
Well, follow me on this one, because this is where
things get complicated.
Something Marvel managed to put into the contracts they
had with these studios was a special stipulation
that entailed if the studios didn't make a new movie
based on their properties every four years,
the film rights would revert back to Marvel.
It's because of this stipulation Daredevil,
Ghostrider, and eventually even the Punisher
all managed to make their way back under the Marvel banner.
Now the situation with Spider-Man was much more complicated.
You see, the web head actually sat around in legal limbo
for a long time before he could even be sold off to Sony.
You maybe have heard once upon a time about
a supposed James Cameron film that was gonna get made
involving Spider-Man.
Yeah, Spider-Man has been through a lot.
In fact, that within itself sounds like an interesting idea.
Mark that off on the calender and let's do that one
at a later date.
Sony, as you'll all know, made at least three Raimi movies
and two Marc Webb reboot movies before a email scandal,
coupled with general poor reception,
forced Sony's hand to work out a deal with the Mouse House.
The deal was, Marvel and Disney will let Spider-Man
hang out with the Avengers, but Sony gets to re-cast
and re-boot the series on their own.
Both studios will also keep their box office receipts
from their own respective film projects.
Think of it as a messy divorce,
only now Papa Marvel gets visitation.
Now, the X-Men is an even more complicated affair
to untangle, especially when you stop and consider
characters like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch,
who are not only mutants but are also founding members
of the Avengers, which means Fox and Marvel
are kind of forced to share.
This is why you'll never also hear the word "mutant"
in a Marvel Studios film.
And that's just the movies.
The X-Men get even weirder when you consider what's
happening with those new X-Men TV shows like Legion.
You see, while Fox had the movie rights to the mutants,
they didn't have the TV rights, which means they had to
make a deal with Marvel to make those shows happen.
Then we have the strange case of the Hulk,
whether you knew it or not, there's a strange
legal framework that's been hanging over the Jade Giant
from day one.
You see, while Marvel owns the character,
Universal reserves the rights of first refusal
on the release of Hulk movies.
So while Banner can show up in the bigger group pictures,
Universal still gets to decide distribution.
This could be a big reason as to why Thor Ragnarok
will be a buddy picture and why we might not be seeing
a solo Hulk movie for a very long time.
While on the subject of Universal, they also have,
or had, Namor the Sub-Mariner, who is referred to
as the first mutant, has a long history with
the Fantastic Four as a supporting character,
but who, as Joe Quesada put it in an interview
from this year, is actually still owned by Marvel.
Maybe. Again, it's all very confusing.
So, there you have it.
A little legal look into the sometimes tangled mess
that is studio politics and movie rights.
I hope I was able to clear some stuff up for all of you
out there, and if I only managed to make you more
confused, hey, don't blame me.
I didn't draft these deals.
And with that, the gavel has been smacked
and that will just about do it for me
and another episode of Super Suits.
As always, for more educational comic book videos,
please by all means subscribe to Scott and NerdSync.
Again, if you want to see what I'm doing
over at the Caped-Joel channel, well, you can do that too.
Until next time everybody.