Amph Avengers: Doomsday (and Secret Wars)

Marvel Studios on the Avengers Movie

The Hollywood Reporter says that Marvel talked about the live-action The Avengers feature:

Some time after Marvel Entertainment unleashes "Iron Man," "The Incredible Hulk" and a few other choice superheroes as stars of their own feature films, the company intends to release a live-action "The Avengers." Set to pen the screenplay is Zak Penn, the writer behind the last two X-Men movies from 20th Century Fox and Marvel. Executives spoke briefly about their "Avengers" plan Wednesday during a presentation to Wall Street analysts at the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference in Pasadena. The comic book "The Avengers" began as a team consisting of superheroes Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp, Iron Man and Hulk. Later, Captain America and a host of others joined. Marvel calls the Avengers "Earth's mightiest heroes."

More of the article is at the link above (subscription required).

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As cool as it sounds and excited as I am for this. What about the multiple studio rights to the different characters? Isn't that what pretty much tells us crossovers in the Marvel Universe won't happen on the big screen? (i.e. Spiderman/Daredevil, Fantastic Four/Spiderman, X-Men/Spiderman, etc.)

 

Is this one with Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes too?

 

I don't want to remember that.

 

Marvel bought the rights to Hulk back from Universal IIRC. The movie rights for Iron Man, Captain America, Ant-Man, and Thor have all been kept by Marvel. So there's your core group right there.

Also: Fox owns most of the rights to characters at this point. X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil are all Fox. Spider-Man is essentially the sole character who couldn't potentially show up in a major crossover.

 

Actually Marvel didn't buy back Hulk. It reverted back to them because Universal wasn't doing anything with it, but thats neither here nor there. The point is I'm still trying to figure out what Marvel is hoping to acomplish with all of these characters nobody else wanted.

 

Wait, I thought someone else still owns Captain America. That would explain the whole "well, he joined later" part of that announcement.

 

I remember reading somewhere that paramount bought the rights to cap.

 

Nope, he reverted back to Marvel as well.

 

now the thing is once these movies come out for the individual heroes will the actors and actresses come back for this movie?

 

They could sign the actors for both movies from the get go, then they won't have to worry about it down the line.

 

hmmm. would the studios be willing to co-distribute? i wonder what story line they'd go with for the Avengers movie.

 

Good question. I'm not very well versed when it comes to the Avengers so I don't know any of the big arcs. I didn't start getting into them until after Dissasembled when New Avengers started.

 

This sounds cool in concept but I've gotten serious concerns about it coming together. First off, the budget for this thing would literally go through the stratosphere. Next is making sure that none of the plot winds up contradicting the individual movies of whichever Avengers we get in this. Also who would the villain be? There's three main canidates IMO:

Ultron
Could audiences stand another evil robot? Sci-fi films are already drowning in this cliche. Plus if we drag The Vision into the picture we might have to bring in Hank Pym, and possibly Wonder Man, and things might become overcomplicated.

Baron Zemo
A power hungry evil genius, how original is that? Plus his costume has always been kinda of dorky.

Kang
Time travel is always a pain. Nuff said.

 

even though it's not a comic book movie, Univeral and Fox will be co-distributing the Halo movie when that comes out so now that i think about it I can see them willing to co-distribute for this movie and any comic book crossover one.

 

Yeah, but Halo is one of the most popular video game series so it's not too surprising for Universal and Fox to co-distribute it. This movie might not appeal to big enough audience for them to take such a risk with it.

BTW, what is rough estimate of numbers for video game players and comic book readers(each group individually not together).

 

It'll never happen the rights are owned by three companies...

 

Rights to what?

 

I think he's referring to the different studios that have rights to the various marvel characters. although I'd think Marvel ultimately gets the rights to them. it'd make sense with them planning to do an Avengers movie.

 

Adapt The Ultimates. Problem solved.

 

Not if they want to attract readers from the past. I say using a classic plot is better than adpting the ultimates.

 

Well thats why I asked. Most of the characters that make up the Avengers are owned by Marvel which is why they wouldn't have any problems doing it. If we're talking some huge eventual Marvel crossover it would probably be more difficult because I don't think that the rights to some of the characters would ever revert back to Marvel. For example I don't think that Sony would ever give up Spidey without a fight but that just brings me back to my orginal question because it wouldn't really matter for an avengers movie.

 

Unless it's a New Avengers movie. But then they'd have to get Wolverine from Fox as well.
And I doubt that any studio currently has the rights to Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, or The Sentry.