Marvel can be a pacemaker, as studios increasingly keep in mind during the green light process to send expansions, expansions or sequels to big-budget theatrical films to provide big fandoms that can promote streaming subscriptions. Every time the studio sends a stream series to Disney +, its parent goes to checkout revenue to feed its stream service. But Feige sees the potential in using the service to build his films, and vice versa, as characters in both will weave in and out. The studio, for example, initially entered into an agreement with Jeremy Renner to play his Avengers character Hawkeye in a solo film before turning the project into a Disney + series to appear this year.
WarnerMedia, which aims to boost its HBO Max service, has made huge strides in this regard and supports Zack Snyder’s $ 70 million plus savings Justice League, probably the result of fans’ constant calls to revamp the critically acclaimed 2017 film. The studio also bothers the concept of a multiverse (think: alternative timelines that exist in the same plot line) to create narrative cohesion for dozens of DC projects. To that end, Michael Keaton will return as Batman in Warner Bros. after 30 years. ‘ The flash film, which will appear in 2022. DC is also busy with the big budget of the HBO Max series, like James Gunn Suicide Squad spinoff Vredemaker, which began filming in Toronto on January 15, as well as a version of Robert Pattinson The Batman theater function.
This approach carries the risk that demand outweighs demand. This is a lesson that the comic book industry learned the hard way, which went from a boom to an eruption in the 1990s, while major publishers planned seemingly endless launches and expansions of popular properties, but none unknown to studios. not; Paramount took Star Trek from a successful franchise in movies and TV in the late 80s and early 90s to one considered creatively exhausted, thanks to overexposure and increasingly generic narration by all but the devoted fans. ‘Narrative logic is important to people. They want to be amazed and want it to make sense, ”said Michael Niederman, a television professor at Columbia College Chicag.o studying fan culture.
The blueprint for collapsing stream series can be predicted by an experiment on linear TV. Since 2014, The CW has held annual crossovers among its DC superhero properties, culminating in 2019’s Crisis on Infinite Earths – an adaptation of a DC Comics storyline that features shows such as Super girl, Bat, The flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow which also features comedos from other DC series and movies, including Ezra Miller’s big screen flash. “We started with the litmus of: ‘Do we think it’s cool? “But expressions like ‘The fans will love this’ and’ People are going crazy ‘will seep into our discussions,’ says author and producer Marc Guggenheim. “I think the Venn diagram between what we wanted and what the fans wanted is virtually a circle.”
This is a tactic Sony Pictures draw from as it expands its stall of Marvel movies with Jared Leto’s Morbius. The feature, dated January 21, 2022, will be the first of the films to refer directly to Spider-Man and features Keaton, repeating his role as Vulture from 2017 onwards. Spider-Man: Homecomingsuggesting that Sony and Marvel’s Tom Holland movies may be joining the universe of movies Sony is building for the first time. There seems to be a big plan indeed for the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, the name the studio gave its budding universe.
Sony has been paying attention to reactions from fans because of its Marvel spinoffs. After a muted reaction to the first trailer of 2018s Poison, the studio’s marketing group, which monitors fans on social media and makes recommendations on developing scripts through the marketing phase, suggested proposed beats for the following preview: edgy humor and Venom biting someone’s head. The film surpassed $ 856 million worldwide.
And Marvel Studios’ multiversity is growing like Jamie Foxx, who played the Spidey villain Electro in 2014 The Amazing Spider-Man 2, come back for the next Holland function, just like Alfred Molina, who played the villain Doctor Octopus in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 in 2004.
Meanwhile for Universal’s Jurassic World: Dominion, the sequel to his $ 1.3 billion 2018 film Fallen Kingdom, the studio started again with the cast of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, all original stars of the Jurassic franchise.
While fans are cheering, director Colin Trevorrow notes that it is not enough to put these characters on screen. “There’s the superficial reason why we’re all excited, but the moment we get over it, we’re going to ask the deeper question, why?” says Trevorrow, which has season two of Netflix’s Jurassic World Camp Kryt January 22nd. “What are they going to do to make it absolutely essential that they will be part of this film?”
Up until that point, Stan Lee’s protégé Roy Thomas had often told a story that retold a perhaps apocryphal quote from the brain of the Marvel Comics: no matter what they say, the public does not really want change. . Instead, Lee explained, they want ‘the illusion of change’. Studios will show this line more closely this year. Guggenheim says: “Of course I always write with the fans, but they do not dictate the creative direction of what I do.”
This story first appeared in the January 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to sign up.