Speaker 1: Welcome to the Brink, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. When last we left our intrepid heroes,
Speaker 1: they were facing events that might spell certain do People
Speaker 1: were starting to predict the beginning of the end for
Speaker 1: comic books and movies. This far had been a bust,
Speaker 1: and it looked like Marvel's days might come to an end.
Speaker 1: But they adapted to the supercharged world around them, taking
Speaker 1: a heroic leap into the film industry. Will it be
Speaker 1: enough to save our heroes? Find out in the thrilling
Speaker 1: conclusion of Marvel on the Brink. Hey, I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm arial casting, So full disclosure, we're doing this
Speaker 1: as if we decided to do it two part on Marvel,
Speaker 1: but in reality, we recorded a super long episode on Marvel.
Speaker 1: There was way too long for a single episode, but
Speaker 1: it was all important because comic books and Marvel and
Speaker 1: DC have had a roller coaster of a ride. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They've gone from being this really obscure type of art
Speaker 1: form that people were ashamed to even admit that they enjoyed.
Speaker 1: The ones who loved it unabashedly were looked on as
Speaker 1: outcasts and now their mainstream baby. But we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about how that all happened in this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's look at where we left off. Marvel had
Speaker 1: just been sold to a company, So what happens next?
Speaker 1: So next in New World Pictures, which had bought Marvel,
Speaker 1: had suffered three years of losses after buying Marvel, and
Speaker 1: so they sold again to mc andrews and Forbes Group.
Speaker 1: So so we went from Marvel getting sold to Marvel
Speaker 1: getting sold. Yes, yeah, just three years later. Now, mc
Speaker 1: andrews and Forbes was owned largely by Ronald Perelman, not
Speaker 1: ron Pearlman, just Twoges. But Ronald Perelman is a different person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a multi millionaire investor. He also owned Red
Speaker 1: Lawn as a part of mc andrews and Forbes, and
Speaker 1: he bought Marvel for eighty two point five million dollars.
Speaker 1: So whereas New World had bought it for forty six million,
Speaker 1: they were able to sell it for eighty two and
Speaker 1: a half million. So so it's not we're not seeing
Speaker 1: a reversal unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah, So then Perelman decides that
Speaker 1: he wants to turn Marvel into a publicly traded company,
Speaker 1: not a privately owned one. So they start selling stocks
Speaker 1: and think about the company. Yeah, like and it was.
Speaker 1: The more you read about Perelman and his business proceedings,
Speaker 1: the more you figure some of this seems pretty questionable.
Speaker 1: He wanted people to invest, he wanted people to think
Speaker 1: they were in control, but he didn't want to lose control. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would become a big problem. He wanted to have
Speaker 1: his cake and eat it too. Yes, so we start
Speaker 1: seeing interesting moves here. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: Perelman would do is he bought some stock in a
Speaker 1: different company called toy Biz and uh. He also didn't
Speaker 1: hold on to all of the properties that Marvel had.
Speaker 1: He sold some of those off, including Marvel Productions, the
Speaker 1: the Animation Studio. He sold the back catalog for Marvel
Speaker 1: Productions to another company to Saban, who was then later
Speaker 1: bought by Disney, who then later bought Marvel. So you know,
Speaker 1: Circle of Life reunited and feels so good. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the close Animation Studio and decided to outsource their cartoons
Speaker 1: instead of making them in and then into Pearlman also
Speaker 1: acquired Fleair and I believe also sky Boxing Panini card companies.
Speaker 1: I know, at least Flair. I know they also distributed
Speaker 1: cards through sky Box and Panini, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was the same year. That's those details are
Speaker 1: a little bit fluid. And they bought it to distribute
Speaker 1: Marvel Trading cards, of which my husband owns a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of Marvel Trading cards. In ninety three they
Speaker 1: started up Marvel Films. But this was also right at
Speaker 1: the beginning of another major dip in comic book sales.
Speaker 1: It was an industry slump. This was a real problem.
Speaker 1: So Perelman had sold the company, not literally, but he
Speaker 1: had sold the idea of the company to shareholders with
Speaker 1: this promise for an incredible and return on their investment.
Speaker 1: He was able to do that in a way that
Speaker 1: was a little questionable. So what he essentially did was
Speaker 1: he started creating a bunch of special edition type comic books,
Speaker 1: and he was essentially selling the same title of comic
Speaker 1: book multiple times to the same people by creating different
Speaker 1: collectors editions. And because older comic books had become incredibly valuable,
Speaker 1: they were collectors items. Now, the idea was, hey, if
Speaker 1: you buy these comic books because these are limited runs
Speaker 1: or collectors editions, and a few years they're going to
Speaker 1: be worth way more than what they're worth right now,
Speaker 1: which and he could also up the prices on the
Speaker 1: comics now it hopes for a better return on investment later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what he's doing is he's telling the collectors, I
Speaker 1: bet you all wish you had an issue of Action
Speaker 1: Comics number one with Superman holding the car over his head,
Speaker 1: because you would all be, you know, multimillionaires if you
Speaker 1: just had those old comics. Well, here's your chance to
Speaker 1: get in on the ground floor by all these comics,
Speaker 1: and in a few years you can sell them off
Speaker 1: for a huge profit. So that's how he that's how
Speaker 1: he's selling it to the customers, and that in turn
Speaker 1: is what's driving the investor's interests and the fact that
Speaker 1: he's telling them, we're gonna just keep doing this. We're
Speaker 1: gonna make this bigger and bigger and bigger. You guys
Speaker 1: are gonna make huge amounts of money on your investment,
Speaker 1: so make sure you buy more stocks. And then he
Speaker 1: doubles down because he bought Sharon toy Biz, he has
Speaker 1: some start selling action figures of these characters that people
Speaker 1: are collecting. So now you've got the collector comics and
Speaker 1: you've got the collectible action figures. Yeah. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because right around this same time, Neil Gaiman, the famed
Speaker 1: author who would end up actually being he's also a
Speaker 1: comic book writer. He's written on several comic books, including
Speaker 1: like Sandman, some of the Marvel comics as well. He
Speaker 1: actually talked to some retailers and he said, this is
Speaker 1: a bubble that you're you know, you're inflating a bubble,
Speaker 1: and eventually this is going to burst. It's not sustainable.
Speaker 1: It's like the tulip craze from the seventeenth century. Those tulips.
Speaker 1: People were speculating in them and buying up more and
Speaker 1: more tulips and it just was a crazy This is
Speaker 1: a true story. This really did happen, and that ultimately
Speaker 1: when the market crashed, you had people had warehouses full
Speaker 1: of tulips that just would rot away because no one
Speaker 1: wanted them anymore. It was everyone thought everyone was going
Speaker 1: to want them, and that's what led to the buying.
Speaker 1: He said, the same thing is going to happen with
Speaker 1: comic books. And this was as it turns out, he
Speaker 1: was spot on the money. You would take a few
Speaker 1: years for that to really come to fruition, but he
Speaker 1: was he was absolutely right. Yeah, but you know, you
Speaker 1: start to see that turn in ninety three, Marvel starts
Speaker 1: trying to gain some other markets, so they start like
Speaker 1: seeing out their characters around this time. Yeah, they also, uh, well,
Speaker 1: a movie company made a Fantastic Four film, yes, but
Speaker 1: didn't get released. It was produced by Roger Corman. It
Speaker 1: was an amazing movie. I actually, really, on ironically, genuinely
Speaker 1: love this unreleased Fantastic Four movie. You can find bootlegs
Speaker 1: of it. I'm sure it's even on YouTube at this point.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I watched it on an
Speaker 1: old VHS I got off a bootleg DVD, and it's
Speaker 1: it's like the nineteen sixty Batman TV show meets The
Speaker 1: Music Man meets Days of Our Lives. It's fantastic. It's
Speaker 1: very it's definitely very low budget, but I feel like
Speaker 1: they nailed the spirit of the comic book, whereas I
Speaker 1: would argue the later Fantastic Four films failed to do that. I,
Speaker 1: in my personal opinion, it is the best Fantastic Four
Speaker 1: movie there has been, I agree to date. Now, now
Speaker 1: our listeners are going to go and seek this out
Speaker 1: and watch it, They're gonna be think why are you
Speaker 1: thinking these effects all credibility? In ninety four, they buy
Speaker 1: Heroes World as a distributor for their exclusive use by
Speaker 1: They were really starting to feel a crunch. They were.
Speaker 1: They owed a lot of money to a lot of
Speaker 1: different companies. I mean they owed one point seven million
Speaker 1: to Disney. Yeah, and by nine this would mean that
Speaker 1: the company, in order to remain a company, was going
Speaker 1: to have to make some major cutbacks and that included
Speaker 1: laying off a third of the people working for the company. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's about a hundred and fifteen people, which doesn't seem huge,
Speaker 1: but it is a third of the company. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: then we get into a corporate battle in Marvel. This
Speaker 1: is this is like the corporate version of a massive
Speaker 1: slug fest in a Marvel comic book. I would say
Speaker 1: Perelman buying Marvel was the start of their brink, but
Speaker 1: this is the true brink moment. Yeah. So he sees
Speaker 1: the need to restructure the company in order to make
Speaker 1: it profitable. But he's made all these promises to stockholders
Speaker 1: that and the stockholders are a little irritated more than
Speaker 1: a lawyers, and the things have not gone as planned,
Speaker 1: So it would become kind of a battle between him
Speaker 1: and another major shareholder, someone that we talked about occasionally
Speaker 1: on this show because he's had his hand in numerous
Speaker 1: major corporate upheavals, and that would be Carl Icon. Carl
Speaker 1: Icon owned a significant number of shares of Marvel and
Speaker 1: so they often call him an activist investor because he
Speaker 1: uses his shares to influence the actual inner workings of corporations.
Speaker 1: So you had kind of a power struggle between Perelman
Speaker 1: and Icon, and you meanwhile also had other entities involved,
Speaker 1: not just Marvel, but toy Biz because Perelman wanted to
Speaker 1: get even more control of toy He wanted to buy
Speaker 1: up the remaining like he wanted to buy outright toy Biz,
Speaker 1: so everything that he didn't currently own in them, And
Speaker 1: he was thinking of merging Marvel and toy Biz together
Speaker 1: in order to make Marvel of more sustainable, uh stable company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then he wanted to keep like most of that
Speaker 1: stock for himself, Like he wanted to fund the buy
Speaker 1: so that he was like more of a majority owner
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he was a public group, and
Speaker 1: then just leave the old stock to the shareholders. And
Speaker 1: that's rightned the value of their stocks. Yeah, to the
Speaker 1: point where they saw a massive drop in stock price.
Speaker 1: And by massive drop I mean nearly thirty six dollars
Speaker 1: per share down to less than two dollars fifty cents
Speaker 1: per share. That's a that's a monumental drop. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so and so they said, no, no, perimn we don't
Speaker 1: We're not gonna, We're not going to agree to this.
Speaker 1: And he said, fine, I'm gonna file for chapter eleven
Speaker 1: and then I don't need your permission yep, which is
Speaker 1: exactly why he diddy. We filed for bankruptcy protection and
Speaker 1: they underwent another restructuring plan and secured funding from the
Speaker 1: The Andrews Group, which is an investment firm three and
Speaker 1: sixty five million. And this would allow them to help
Speaker 1: poff creditors and to continue working on making the business profitable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They figured they would be out of bankruptcy by the
Speaker 1: middle They knew that to keep Marvel on track, they
Speaker 1: just needed to resolve all their issues as fast as
Speaker 1: possible because the market is ever changing and you don't
Speaker 1: want to have to play more catchup than you have to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so this leads up to seven, where you have
Speaker 1: the kind of the massive conclusion between the Icon and
Speaker 1: Perilman fight because I was still going during this whole process.
Speaker 1: So they're both struggling for control of the company. So
Speaker 1: who wins neither of them. Yeah, toy Bis wins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: toy Biz, owned by Isaac pearl Mutter and A Manly,
Speaker 1: got the ownership. They booted Perilman, they booted Icon, They
Speaker 1: booted the CEO of Marvel at the time, Scott Sassa,
Speaker 1: who had only been in that position for eight months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like he kind of got largely caught in
Speaker 1: the cross. I think I think it was in a
Speaker 1: really tough position, like just you can't really blame Marvel's
Speaker 1: struggles on the CEO at that time. He didn't even
Speaker 1: really have the time to get a handle on. Yes,
Speaker 1: And they named Joseph Calamari the new CEO of Marvel.
Speaker 1: That's such a great name. Yeah. And so it's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, Ared and pearl Mutter had both been on
Speaker 1: the board of directors for Marvel already because of these
Speaker 1: previous business dealings between toy Bus and Marvel, and this
Speaker 1: would be the mark of what would allow Marvel to
Speaker 1: return from the brink. Yeah, this is this is truly
Speaker 1: the turning point is this change in leadership where the
Speaker 1: two super heroes who were slugging it out like this
Speaker 1: is when Captain America and Iron Man are both fighting
Speaker 1: each other and yeah, and and it turns out they
Speaker 1: knock each other out and Squirrel Girl comes up and
Speaker 1: she takes over. She is the most powerful. It is
Speaker 1: true she can take on Galactus. But that again, that's
Speaker 1: a tangent. And you know what we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: how this new leadership was able to rescue Marvel. We
Speaker 1: have more to say about Marvel, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break, all right. So it took a little
Speaker 1: longer than Marvel wanted, but they were back at of bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: still struggling, but in a better position than they were in.
Speaker 1: They started expanding their offerings beyond comic books so that
Speaker 1: the next comic books slump wouldn't hit them as hard, right,
Speaker 1: so that if it turns out that these are cyclical,
Speaker 1: like let's say that's every generation there's a high point
Speaker 1: and a low point, that those low points don't wipe
Speaker 1: out the business. Yeah, and you know we said that
Speaker 1: Pearl Letter and Rod had been on the board before
Speaker 1: Joseph Kelley Murray had a hand in running Marvel prior
Speaker 1: to being named the CEO. In so much like staying
Speaker 1: with people who had helped make the company successful in
Speaker 1: the past, they decided that they really needed to stay
Speaker 1: true to the core concepts of Marvel, the heroes and
Speaker 1: the ideals that made them successful in the first place.
Speaker 1: Taking these and moving them into the modern marketplace is
Speaker 1: what would make them successful. It's not new characters, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like taking your most iconic character and making
Speaker 1: that iconic character a dark antihero. And that iconic character
Speaker 1: had been such a glowing bastion of goodness up to
Speaker 1: that point. Superman. I mean, you've you've got evil versions
Speaker 1: of Superman like Bizarro, but you already have them, alright.
Speaker 1: But they also had some ideas that were not so great.
Speaker 1: They thought they were going to make some well. They
Speaker 1: did make some themed restaurants and video games and trading
Speaker 1: card initiatives, and like the restaurant marvel Mania was only
Speaker 1: around for about a year or so, and the other
Speaker 1: ones were so so. Marvel video games are hit or miss,
Speaker 1: like I like them, but some of them are good,
Speaker 1: like It's some of the more recently, the most recent
Speaker 1: Spireman game is one of the best games ever. It's
Speaker 1: a great one PS four game. The But they also
Speaker 1: were responding to changes in technology, right, and you started
Speaker 1: to see them embrace the concept of digital comics, and
Speaker 1: they start creating apps and making their titles available for
Speaker 1: digital download, which appealed to people who wanted the comics
Speaker 1: for the stories, but they weren't necessarily interested in actually
Speaker 1: collecting physical comic books and then storing them and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Well, and they also worked to
Speaker 1: expand their characters more into the cinematic universe. Instead of
Speaker 1: just licensing out their characters for a movie here or
Speaker 1: a movie there, they started just selling the rights to
Speaker 1: their characters outright to studios. Yeah, this is what has
Speaker 1: led to what a lot of people are upset about today,
Speaker 1: is that they don't all belong to Marvel Cinematic or
Speaker 1: Marvel Studios. Well, it's it's because in Abvis kind of
Speaker 1: oversaw this. They would try to write a movie and
Speaker 1: sell it to a studio. But when a studio is
Speaker 1: looking at a ton of movies at a time, it's
Speaker 1: hard to get yours seen, especially if HER's as a
Speaker 1: superhero movie. When previous superhero movies have been questionable quality.
Speaker 1: I mean apart from things like say the Tim Burton
Speaker 1: Batman films or the Night Superman film. Yeah, there there
Speaker 1: were a lot of failures, like that Captain America movie. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: Salinger's Kids, Yeah, it's it's not great. They sold some
Speaker 1: of their i would say most profitable characters at that
Speaker 1: time spider Man to Sony X Men to Fox. Now,
Speaker 1: they also sold Daredevil to Fox, which was a Golden
Speaker 1: age hero but not as popular in the public eye.
Speaker 1: And they also sold Blade to New Line Cinemas. And
Speaker 1: this is important because when these companies did make these
Speaker 1: movies with these characters, they were successful. Blade made seventy
Speaker 1: million dollars, and because Marvel had kind of sold the
Speaker 1: right and they only got a little bit of the
Speaker 1: profits from licensing out the rights, they got about two
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, so while it was a profitable move,
Speaker 1: it wasn't breaking in huge amounts of money. Meanwhile, they
Speaker 1: were still breaking in some licensing profits from their other efforts,
Speaker 1: like through toys and merchandise. Yeah. And then in two
Speaker 1: thousand three we get a huge change that would put
Speaker 1: Marvel in prime position, and that was when David Mazel
Speaker 1: would go to Arad and Paul Motter and say, you
Speaker 1: know what you guys need to do. You need to
Speaker 1: make your own movie studio. You need to make your
Speaker 1: own movies. Don't license your characters to these other movie companies.
Speaker 1: Keep all your profits. Yeah, if you do all the work,
Speaker 1: you get to keep all the Money's you just got
Speaker 1: to make sure your movies are good. That's all you
Speaker 1: gotta do. It's easy. Two years later, the Marvel board
Speaker 1: improved that plan and they got a loan from Meryll Lynch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a small loan of half a billion dollars billion dollars
Speaker 1: for a seven year span. But to get it, they
Speaker 1: had to put up for collateral ten of their characters
Speaker 1: and properties, so Captain Mary, the Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther,
Speaker 1: ant Man Cloaken, Dagger, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, the power Pack
Speaker 1: who I don't I'm not familiar with in shang Chi,
Speaker 1: which meant that if this movie push was not successful,
Speaker 1: if they could not pay back that loan, yeah, then
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have the rights to any of their most
Speaker 1: popular character and the bank would own them. Yeah yeah, yikes.
Speaker 1: But first, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor,
Speaker 1: so um they knew they couldn't go out and launch
Speaker 1: a film with the X Men or with Spider Man.
Speaker 1: They did not hold those movie rights, so they were
Speaker 1: limited in which characters they could put forward. So they
Speaker 1: had to start making tough decisions about what what was
Speaker 1: going to be their first attempt. Now, hilariously, they settled
Speaker 1: on iron Man because he had been poppler to comic
Speaker 1: viewers and they figured they could adjust him and make
Speaker 1: him popular to the general public as well. But if
Speaker 1: you listened to the list of the characters that were collateral,
Speaker 1: iron Man wasn't in that list. He was licensed to
Speaker 1: New Line Cinema, and then their option on him ran
Speaker 1: out two months after the bank deal closed, and Marble said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to do a movie on iron Man. This
Speaker 1: is great. He's a golden nagu here o. He's he's
Speaker 1: popular with our readers. But because he wasn't a part
Speaker 1: of their their deal, they had to fund that movie themselves.
Speaker 1: So they start working on that, and at the same
Speaker 1: time they really concentrate on getting into the digital comics
Speaker 1: in a big way. In two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 1: the iron Man project, as you may be aware, was successful.
Speaker 1: It was. It ended up bringing in five eight five
Speaker 1: million dollars at the box office. That's that's revenue, not
Speaker 1: necessarily profit, but five million, and they took out a
Speaker 1: loan for five hundred and twenty five million, So with
Speaker 1: one movie they proved that they could at least get
Speaker 1: a revenue that was equal to the loan that they
Speaker 1: had secured. And Kevin Fiegi would become the president of
Speaker 1: production for Marvel. Now, he had been the producer for
Speaker 1: several Marvel films, not just Marvel Cinema films or Marvel
Speaker 1: Studio films. He was the producer on Fox's X Men,
Speaker 1: He was the producer on Sony's Spider Man, which are
Speaker 1: both great movies, they are, and he was also the
Speaker 1: producer for the Marvel Studios film Iron Man. And once
Speaker 1: that was such a monumental success, Marvel said, we should
Speaker 1: put this guy in charge of everything, and that is
Speaker 1: what set the stage for Marvel to get eyed by
Speaker 1: the Mouse House. Yes, in two thousand nine, Disney bought
Speaker 1: Marvel for four billion dollars. You're probably familiar with that.
Speaker 1: It made a lot of news. Yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: the estimates tend to go between four billion and four
Speaker 1: point three billion. It all depends on how you measure it,
Speaker 1: but either way, everyone thought, this is a company that
Speaker 1: sold for eighty two and a half million dollars a
Speaker 1: couple of decades earlier, that was in bankruptcy a decade earlier,
Speaker 1: and now is being bought by Disney, the global powerhouse
Speaker 1: of a company, for four billion dollars. And beyond that,
Speaker 1: Disney has the power to try to get back some
Speaker 1: of those iconic characters that Marvel didn't have rights to,
Speaker 1: So they made a deal with Sony in two thousand
Speaker 1: fifteen to share Spider Man between studios and ma'am I
Speaker 1: love it. Oh yeah, no, that's that. Spider Man Homecoming
Speaker 1: is a great movistic fantastic And in two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: last year as of recording this episode, Disney bought Fox
Speaker 1: for seventy one point three billion dollars, which is opening
Speaker 1: up discussions to X Men crossover and bringing X Men
Speaker 1: under the Marvel Studios umbrella. So the the great story here,
Speaker 1: I think is that this comic book company took a
Speaker 1: huge risk in following the advice of Masal and creating
Speaker 1: a movie studio of its own when that was not
Speaker 1: its business before, and yet was able to leverage that
Speaker 1: but one partly because I mean, they knew those characters,
Speaker 1: they knew what resonated with fans, and they were able
Speaker 1: to take those traits that resonate with fans and then
Speaker 1: to adapt them because they Any comic book fan will
Speaker 1: tell you the movie versions are not exactly the same
Speaker 1: as the comic book versions, but most of those changes
Speaker 1: were made in an effort to appeal to a mainstream
Speaker 1: audience that isn't familiar with these characters backward and forward,
Speaker 1: and I think for the most part it works too.
Speaker 1: So an enormous success. And this year is a special
Speaker 1: year for Marvel. Yep. This year, two thousand, Marvel is
Speaker 1: hitting its eightied anniversary. They've got a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: really big plans to celebrate it, reimagining characters, doing stuff
Speaker 1: on social media, including a bi weekly animated series called
Speaker 1: Today in Marvel History, a bunch of stuff over all
Speaker 1: of their venues. You can go to Marvel com to
Speaker 1: learn about it, specifically Marvel dot com, slash Marvel eighty,
Speaker 1: or you can look for hashtag Marvel eight because there's
Speaker 1: a ton of big stuff. Yeah, they're well, well, the
Speaker 1: company has definitely more than bounced back, especially now this
Speaker 1: part of Disney. That's not to say that every decision
Speaker 1: that has been made has been met with universal approval,
Speaker 1: and some of the decisions which I really like, a
Speaker 1: lot of the hardcore traditional fans have reacted poorly to
Speaker 1: things like Iron Man and the rise of Iron Man's protege,
Speaker 1: or Miles Morales taking on the role of Spider Man,
Speaker 1: or for becoming a woman, Like, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different things that actually I think are great changes
Speaker 1: for the overall storyline and especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: representation and diversity, But fans get fickle, especially like the
Speaker 1: hardcore ones who resist any change, Like they it's so
Speaker 1: weird because on the one part, they want it citing
Speaker 1: news stories. On the other part, if you go away
Speaker 1: from anything they think of as being important to the character,
Speaker 1: then you are betraying them. Yeah, Captain America becoming a
Speaker 1: part of Hydra Okay, yeah, but that we're not going
Speaker 1: to go into that anyhow. That's yeah, that's another episode.
Speaker 1: So the company is doing quite well, at least cinematically,
Speaker 1: where we've seen some other changes recently, Like there were
Speaker 1: several Marvel properties that were Netflix series that have recently
Speaker 1: been canceled, and while that hasn't been necessarily divulged publicly,
Speaker 1: the general speculation is that these are properties that will
Speaker 1: probably resurface on Disney's own streaming service once it launched
Speaker 1: Gosh I hope. So the conflict there is that Netflix
Speaker 1: would own the old seasons of it and Disney would
Speaker 1: own the new and so these competitors would then have
Speaker 1: to kind of work together. So we'll see how that
Speaker 1: turns out, and maybe we'll cover in a future episode.
Speaker 1: But this was a fun one for us to look
Speaker 1: at because it's again hard to imagine when you're living
Speaker 1: in a world where Marvel is running so crazy popular
Speaker 1: at the box office. It's just every every year you're
Speaker 1: hearing about another billion dollar film like Black Panther or
Speaker 1: Avengers Infinity War. We've got Avengers Endgame. You know, you
Speaker 1: hear about those things, and it's hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: this was a company that, again, just a couple of
Speaker 1: decades ago, could have gone out of business. But I
Speaker 1: think by staying true to the stuff they had created,
Speaker 1: by being flexible to try and get their content to
Speaker 1: people in the different ways that people want to access it,
Speaker 1: they were able to turn all that around. That I
Speaker 1: think is a valuable lesson for lots of people that
Speaker 1: you cannot get so married to a specific way of
Speaker 1: doing business, nor can you drift too far from your
Speaker 1: core values without endangering the entire business. And Marvel I
Speaker 1: think it's proof of that. I would agree, Well, that
Speaker 1: was fun and uh, I look forward to revisiting this
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll do an episode about d C and
Speaker 1: I can go on a rant about the movies and
Speaker 1: Arian Ariel can leave the room for a good This
Speaker 1: was a long episode that one will be forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we'll touch on that in a different time. If
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions, where can they reach out
Speaker 1: to us arial, Well, they can reach out to us
Speaker 1: at feedback at the Brink Podcast dot show, and you
Speaker 1: can check out the Brink podcast dot show website that
Speaker 1: has all of our episodes on it. A little bit
Speaker 1: more about us if you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: what makes us tick. And we look forward to talking
Speaker 1: to you again. I have been Jonathan Strickland and I
Speaker 1: have been aerial casting Excelsior. The Brink is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for My Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: The bad