The Best Entertainment Era

The first thing Ronan did when he came to New York was to understand the specific situation of Marvel comics. Although Robert Lee often called him to inform him, it was still very necessary to talk about it in person.

In the living room of the hotel suite, Robert summed up his experience during this time and said to Ronan: The situation in Marvel is more severe and chaotic than what we first knew in Los Angeles.

Ronan sat comfortably on the sofa: Tell me carefully.

Relativity Entertainment has been in contact with Marvel Comics for a long time, and Robert has always been the representative: From the mid-to-late 1980s, Marvel began to encounter various difficulties due to the impact of the overall sluggish market environment of the comics industry. At that time, Marvel's leadership In order to raise money, Ron Perelman can only publish the copyright of his characters.

Is our target copyright still in Marvel? Ronan asked with concern.

Robert replied: Some of them are there, and some of them have been sold by Marvel.

Ronan frowned: In addition to Spider-Man and other characters, did Marvel sell other characters? Let's talk about them all.

Robert introduced in detail: As early as 1985, Marvel sold Spider-Man to Cannon Films. Later, Menachem Gran, the chairman of Cannon Films, joined Twentieth Century Fox, and by the way, Spider-Man's Copyright transferred to 20th Century Fox.

These situations were somewhat beyond Ronan's expectations. Ronan thought that the copyright of Spider-Man had always been in the hands of Sony Columbia.

Sure enough, Marvel was in a bad situation before the birth of Iron Man, and the sons kept changing hands, but there was nothing they could do.

Robert continued: Later, Grant sold the copyright of the adaptation of Spider-Man to Columbia Pictures, ready to let James Cameron shoot it, and Arnold Schwarzenegger would play Doctor Octopus. But MGM Acquired part of the assets of Twentieth Century Fox, including the copyright of Spider-Man, but Columbia Pictures insisted that the copyright should belong to them, and the final result was that Columbia Pictures got the copyright of Spider-Man.

The way Marvel sells the rights is to package and sell other characters that are intuitively related to the hero character. All Sony Entertainment also has the rights to other comic characters related to Spider-Man, such as Venom, Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Mysterio. etc.

Ronan had learned about the sales model of comic book copyrights before, and said: This is the conventional licensing method for comic film copyrights. A film company can't just buy one character, otherwise the movie won't be able to be made.

He sighed: Sony Columbia Pictures has already approved a live-action Spider-Man movie, and we can't get the copyright of Little Spider.

It's impossible,

Before Ronan came to Los Angeles, the copyrights of many heroes were sold by the difficult Marvel to raise funds.

Before the Spider-Man movie came out, Marvel's routine operation was: selling sons for lack of money, and giving priority to selling valuable sons.

It's not that they don't want to sell godsons, godsons are too famous to be sold, and they can't be sold at a high price.

Marvel is very dissatisfied with Sony Columbia's Spider-Man movie adaptation, especially changing some of Peter Parker's settings. Robert shrugged: But the son who is sold is no longer what they decide.

He continued the topic just now: The Hulk was bought by Universal Pictures as early as 1990, but Universal Pictures has doubts about superhero movies and has never made a film adaptation.

Ronan knows that this is a normal situation. Now it is not ten years later. In most people's minds, superhero movies are just niche movies.

In Robert's introduction, Ronan learned that Universal Pictures not only bought the Hulk, but also held the film copyright of Namor.

Namor is Marvel's version of Atlanteans, somewhat similar to Aquaman.

There is also the X-Men. Robert's face was full of regret, because it was difficult to obtain the relevant copyrights: In 1994, Marvel sold the copyright of the X-Men to Twentieth Century Fox. Since the mid-1990s, The situation in Marvel is very bad, so the copyright began to be sold more thoroughly. Twentieth Century Fox not only permanently owns the copyright of all the characters of the X-Men, but also fully owns the conceptual copyright of the word mutant, and can expand any X-Men Police manga character.

For some unknown reason, a sentence from the other side of the Pacific Ocean suddenly flashed in Ronan's mind: I don't feel sorry for my son.

Where are the Fantastic Four? Ronan asked.

Robert's tone was full of regret: Marvel sold the copyright of the Fantastic Four to Constantine Pictures in 1986.

Konstantin from Germany? Ronan's mind suddenly became alive. If the copyright was in Constantine's hands, he might still get it.

But Robert's words disappointed him again: In 1999, Constantine Films sold the Fantastic Four to Twentieth Century Fox.

Ronan shook his head, it was difficult to dig out the things that fell into the hands of the six major companies.

A lot of things are not that he doesn't want to make a move, but that he has no way to make a move.

When Ronan came to Los Angeles, Marvel sold all his sons who could sell for a price, including Iron Man!

This was the last thing Ronan wanted to hear.

In 1990, right after Marvel sold the Hulk to Universal Pictures, they sold the Iron Man-related character to Universal Pictures.

Robert glanced at Ronan, this is the list that Ronan gave him, the copyright of all Marvel characters ranked first, but things far exceeded the expectations of the two: In 1996, Twentieth Century Fox The company bought the copyright of Iron Man from Universal. In 1999, the copyright of Iron Man was resold to New Line Pictures.”

Ronan was speechless when he heard what happened to Iron Man. Tony Stark's fate turned out to be so rough.

Poor child, my father doesn't love me, and my uncle doesn't love me.

But this situation can be understood when you think about it. After all, strictly speaking, Iron Man can only be regarded as a second-line hero in Marvel comics. front-line heroes.

None of these three companies paid much attention to Iron Man. Robert's words also proved this point: I didn't even have the idea of ​​making a movie. It is said that after New Line Pictures purchased the copyright, it was determined that this was a burden. I once contacted Marvel Comics and asked Do they want to take back the copyright.

Taking back the copyright is certainly not free, Robert said: Marvel's financial situation is very bad, they can't raise enough funds at all, and ... they don't pay much attention to Iron Man.

The copyright ownership of the really well-known characters in Marvel comics is intricate. Marvel not only sold the sons, but also let the person who sold the sons resell them back and forth.

Ronan asked a little strangely: These companies resell copyrights back and forth, Marvel has no objection?

If it were his work, the copyright would be resold like this, and he would have been furious.

Marvel not only has no opinion, but is also happy to see its success. What Robert said also refreshed Ronan's understanding of Marvel: Every copyright transaction, Marvel can extract 10% of the copyright fee ,so……

Ronan was speechless for a moment, and after a while, he asked, Has Marvel fallen to this point?

Yes, said Robert.

Afterwards, he gave Ronan a detailed explanation.

Since the mid-to-late 1980s, the comics market in North America has declined sharply. In the 1990s, it faced a period of ice. The entire comic publishing industry, including peripheral industries, dropped to less than 400 million U.S. dollars in annual output.

Marvel is one of the three major comic companies in North America. Although it has sold so many sons, it still has not escaped its fate.

In 1996, Marvel's internal power struggle finally filed for bankruptcy, and the huge comic book empire was facing collapse.

But in 1997, Avi Arad counterattacked and became the new chairman and CEO of Marvel, which also temporarily prevented Marvel from slipping into the abyss.

According to Robert, Avi Allard is very capable.

Avi Arad was not a senior executive of Marvel before. He once invested in a peripheral toy manufacturer. Later, this peripheral manufacturer was acquired by Marvel. Avi Arad became one of Marvel’s many small shareholders. After filing for bankruptcy, Avi Arad saw an opportunity to show his talents. He borrowed from the bank and united with other institutions to acquire Marvel and became the new CEO.

Of course, Avi Arad doesn't hold many shares, only 10%, but it is enough to become the largest individual shareholder.

It's a pity that this didn't really change Marvel's situation. The debts raised by Avi Arad were naturally passed on to Marvel. Marvel has still struggled in the past two years.

Let's put it this way, now Marvel is so poor that it is almost ready to sell the entire Avengers. Robert also felt a little shocking. The seemingly huge comic book empire is actually strong from the outside, and it may collapse at any time: This year, Marvel came close to striking a deal with Artisan to raise funds, but luckily we stepped in.

Ronan heard about this from Robert when he called before.

Marvel has several huge debts that will expire at the end of this year, and it will be very troublesome if they don’t repay them. If they can’t raise funds, Marvel can only call the attention of their sons again.

At present, the only thing under Marvel that can really exchange funds to solve operational problems is copyright.

When Robert came to New York, Marvel had just approached Artisan Pictures, and Marvel planned to include Captain America, Black Panther, Black Widow, Deadpool, Iron Fist, Ant-Man, Punisher, Humanoid, Vampire Mobius , Longshot and more than a dozen characters, including film and television copyrights, were packaged and sold to Artisan Films.

However, Artisan Pictures did not reach any cooperation with Marvel in the end, and Robert played a key role in this.

Ronan did not have a detailed understanding of how Robert squeezed out Artisan Pictures, and there is no need to pay special attention to it, because the result is very good.

With the withdrawal of Artisan Pictures, Marvel had no other choice but to negotiate a copyright deal with Relativity Entertainment in a short period of time.

(These copyrights sold by Marvel all happened for real. The crisis of Marvel is not only a problem brought by the comics industry, but also the power struggle among high-level executives. Interested friends can check it online, and a profit leading super tearing battle)