Thursday, October 4, 2012

A Marvelous Makeover


Sean Howe examines how Marvel Comics turned its poor fortunes around to become a darling of Hollywood. A key player was Toy Biz CEO Avi Arad, who became the founder of Marvel Studios:

“While corporate lawyers screamed obscenities at one another, Arad wooed bankers with a stirring speech about the value of Marvel’s characters: “Spider-Man alone is worth a billion dollars,” he pleaded, as recounted in Dan Rviv’s Comic Wars. “But now, at this crazy hour, at this juncture, you’re going to take 380 million for the whole thing? One thing is worth a billion! We have the X-Men. We have the Fantastic Four. They can all be movies.”

(Image: Howard and Lea Thompson in Howard the Duck, Universal Pictures. The 1986 movie remains one of the most poorly received films, both critically and financially, based on a Marvel Comics character.)

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