WEBVTT - How Marvel Survived Certain Doom 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:06.840 Welcome to the Brink, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:14.600 How Stuff Works. When last we left our intrepid heroes, 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.720 they were facing events that might spell certain do People 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.479 were starting to predict the beginning of the end for 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.799 comic books and movies. This far had been a bust, 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:26.920 and it looked like Marvel's days might come to an end. 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:30.720 But they adapted to the supercharged world around them, taking 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.479 a heroic leap into the film industry. Will it be 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.479 enough to save our heroes? Find out in the thrilling 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:50.040 conclusion of Marvel on the Brink. Hey, I'm Jonathan Strickland 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.400 and I'm arial casting, So full disclosure, we're doing this 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:55.920 as if we decided to do it two part on Marvel, 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.520 but in reality, we recorded a super long episode on Marvel. 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.520 There was way too long for a single episode, but 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:06.120 it was all important because comic books and Marvel and 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:09.440 DC have had a roller coaster of a ride. Yeah, 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.920 They've gone from being this really obscure type of art 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:18.160 form that people were ashamed to even admit that they enjoyed. 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:21.800 The ones who loved it unabashedly were looked on as 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:26.400 outcasts and now their mainstream baby. But we're going to 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.920 talk about how that all happened in this episode. Yeah, 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:33.000 so let's look at where we left off. Marvel had 0:01:33.040 --> 0:01:35.760 just been sold to a company, So what happens next? 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.520 So next in New World Pictures, which had bought Marvel, 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:42.560 had suffered three years of losses after buying Marvel, and 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:45.160 so they sold again to mc andrews and Forbes Group. 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.200 So so we went from Marvel getting sold to Marvel 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.600 getting sold. Yes, yeah, just three years later. Now, mc 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:56.640 andrews and Forbes was owned largely by Ronald Perelman, not 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:02.960 ron Pearlman, just Twoges. But Ronald Perelman is a different person. Yeah, 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.640 he was a multi millionaire investor. He also owned Red 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:07.520 Lawn as a part of mc andrews and Forbes, and 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.799 he bought Marvel for eighty two point five million dollars. 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.720 So whereas New World had bought it for forty six million, 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:15.080 they were able to sell it for eighty two and 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:17.280 a half million. So so it's not we're not seeing 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:21.560 a reversal unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah, So then Perelman decides that 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.799 he wants to turn Marvel into a publicly traded company, 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.320 not a privately owned one. So they start selling stocks 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.480 and think about the company. Yeah, like and it was. 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:38.760 The more you read about Perelman and his business proceedings, 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:42.799 the more you figure some of this seems pretty questionable. 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:45.919 He wanted people to invest, he wanted people to think 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:48.959 they were in control, but he didn't want to lose control. Yeah, 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:51.120 that would become a big problem. He wanted to have 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.240 his cake and eat it too. Yes, so we start 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:57.320 seeing interesting moves here. One of the other things that 0:02:57.560 --> 0:02:59.520 Perelman would do is he bought some stock in a 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:03.600 different company called toy Biz and uh. He also didn't 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:06.480 hold on to all of the properties that Marvel had. 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:09.480 He sold some of those off, including Marvel Productions, the 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.400 the Animation Studio. He sold the back catalog for Marvel 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.919 Productions to another company to Saban, who was then later 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.000 bought by Disney, who then later bought Marvel. So you know, 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.000 Circle of Life reunited and feels so good. Yeah, but 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:27.920 the close Animation Studio and decided to outsource their cartoons 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:31.480 instead of making them in and then into Pearlman also 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:37.360 acquired Fleair and I believe also sky Boxing Panini card companies. 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:40.880 I know, at least Flair. I know they also distributed 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:42.920 cards through sky Box and Panini, but I don't know 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:45.200 if it was the same year. That's those details are 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.280 a little bit fluid. And they bought it to distribute 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.640 Marvel Trading cards, of which my husband owns a lot 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:56.560 a lot of Marvel Trading cards. In ninety three they 0:03:56.560 --> 0:04:01.040 started up Marvel Films. But this was also right at 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:05.480 the beginning of another major dip in comic book sales. 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:09.600 It was an industry slump. This was a real problem. 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:13.600 So Perelman had sold the company, not literally, but he 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:18.279 had sold the idea of the company to shareholders with 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.640 this promise for an incredible and return on their investment. 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:25.279 He was able to do that in a way that 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.919 was a little questionable. So what he essentially did was 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:33.080 he started creating a bunch of special edition type comic books, 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:36.640 and he was essentially selling the same title of comic 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:40.320 book multiple times to the same people by creating different 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:47.880 collectors editions. And because older comic books had become incredibly valuable, 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:52.000 they were collectors items. Now, the idea was, hey, if 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.760 you buy these comic books because these are limited runs 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.560 or collectors editions, and a few years they're going to 0:04:57.560 --> 0:04:59.640 be worth way more than what they're worth right now, 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:01.800 which and he could also up the prices on the 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:06.160 comics now it hopes for a better return on investment later. Yeah, 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:09.480 So what he's doing is he's telling the collectors, I 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:11.960 bet you all wish you had an issue of Action 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:14.840 Comics number one with Superman holding the car over his head, 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:18.080 because you would all be, you know, multimillionaires if you 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:20.560 just had those old comics. Well, here's your chance to 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:23.159 get in on the ground floor by all these comics, 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.320 and in a few years you can sell them off 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.440 for a huge profit. So that's how he that's how 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.840 he's selling it to the customers, and that in turn 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.320 is what's driving the investor's interests and the fact that 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.320 he's telling them, we're gonna just keep doing this. We're 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.320 gonna make this bigger and bigger and bigger. You guys 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:41.479 are gonna make huge amounts of money on your investment, 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.200 so make sure you buy more stocks. And then he 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:46.240 doubles down because he bought Sharon toy Biz, he has 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.560 some start selling action figures of these characters that people 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:51.800 are collecting. So now you've got the collector comics and 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.039 you've got the collectible action figures. Yeah. And it's interesting 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:58.560 because right around this same time, Neil Gaiman, the famed 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:02.080 author who would end up actually being he's also a 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.640 comic book writer. He's written on several comic books, including 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.400 like Sandman, some of the Marvel comics as well. He 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.080 actually talked to some retailers and he said, this is 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:13.800 a bubble that you're you know, you're inflating a bubble, 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:16.400 and eventually this is going to burst. It's not sustainable. 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.960 It's like the tulip craze from the seventeenth century. Those tulips. 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:23.880 People were speculating in them and buying up more and 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.640 more tulips and it just was a crazy This is 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.359 a true story. This really did happen, and that ultimately 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.440 when the market crashed, you had people had warehouses full 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:34.720 of tulips that just would rot away because no one 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:38.040 wanted them anymore. It was everyone thought everyone was going 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:39.920 to want them, and that's what led to the buying. 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:41.520 He said, the same thing is going to happen with 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.120 comic books. And this was as it turns out, he 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.039 was spot on the money. You would take a few 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:49.960 years for that to really come to fruition, but he 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:52.960 was he was absolutely right. Yeah, but you know, you 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:56.120 start to see that turn in ninety three, Marvel starts 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:58.600 trying to gain some other markets, so they start like 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:03.320 seeing out their characters around this time. Yeah, they also, uh, well, 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:07.640 a movie company made a Fantastic Four film, yes, but 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.840 didn't get released. It was produced by Roger Corman. It 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:16.400 was an amazing movie. I actually, really, on ironically, genuinely 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.560 love this unreleased Fantastic Four movie. You can find bootlegs 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:21.440 of it. I'm sure it's even on YouTube at this point. 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:23.080 You know, I don't know. I watched it on an 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:27.680 old VHS I got off a bootleg DVD, and it's 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:33.000 it's like the nineteen sixty Batman TV show meets The 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:37.240 Music Man meets Days of Our Lives. It's fantastic. It's 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.240 very it's definitely very low budget, but I feel like 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.280 they nailed the spirit of the comic book, whereas I 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.760 would argue the later Fantastic Four films failed to do that. I, 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:50.840 in my personal opinion, it is the best Fantastic Four 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:54.000 movie there has been, I agree to date. Now, now 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:55.680 our listeners are going to go and seek this out 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:57.240 and watch it, They're gonna be think why are you 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:01.280 thinking these effects all credibility? In ninety four, they buy 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:07.560 Heroes World as a distributor for their exclusive use by 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:10.520 They were really starting to feel a crunch. They were. 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:12.320 They owed a lot of money to a lot of 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:14.760 different companies. I mean they owed one point seven million 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.600 to Disney. Yeah, and by nine this would mean that 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:21.960 the company, in order to remain a company, was going 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.280 to have to make some major cutbacks and that included 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.440 laying off a third of the people working for the company. Yeah. 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:32.280 That's about a hundred and fifteen people, which doesn't seem huge, 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:34.920 but it is a third of the company. Yeah. So 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:39.480 then we get into a corporate battle in Marvel. This 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:44.600 is this is like the corporate version of a massive 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:47.840 slug fest in a Marvel comic book. I would say 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:51.280 Perelman buying Marvel was the start of their brink, but 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:56.240 this is the true brink moment. Yeah. So he sees 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.600 the need to restructure the company in order to make 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.480 it profitable. But he's made all these promises to stockholders 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:06.040 that and the stockholders are a little irritated more than 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:08.480 a lawyers, and the things have not gone as planned, 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:11.160 So it would become kind of a battle between him 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.160 and another major shareholder, someone that we talked about occasionally 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:19.120 on this show because he's had his hand in numerous 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.680 major corporate upheavals, and that would be Carl Icon. Carl 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.640 Icon owned a significant number of shares of Marvel and 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.320 so they often call him an activist investor because he 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:36.160 uses his shares to influence the actual inner workings of corporations. 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.200 So you had kind of a power struggle between Perelman 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:43.679 and Icon, and you meanwhile also had other entities involved, 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:47.040 not just Marvel, but toy Biz because Perelman wanted to 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.720 get even more control of toy He wanted to buy 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.960 up the remaining like he wanted to buy outright toy Biz, 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.840 so everything that he didn't currently own in them, And 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:58.480 he was thinking of merging Marvel and toy Biz together 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:03.480 in order to make Marvel of more sustainable, uh stable company. Yeah, 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:05.560 But then he wanted to keep like most of that 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:07.839 stock for himself, Like he wanted to fund the buy 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.160 so that he was like more of a majority owner 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.880 despite the fact that he was a public group, and 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.199 then just leave the old stock to the shareholders. And 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.240 that's rightned the value of their stocks. Yeah, to the 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.160 point where they saw a massive drop in stock price. 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.880 And by massive drop I mean nearly thirty six dollars 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:29.040 per share down to less than two dollars fifty cents 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.640 per share. That's a that's a monumental drop. Yeah, and 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.520 so and so they said, no, no, perimn we don't 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:37.560 We're not gonna, We're not going to agree to this. 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:40.720 And he said, fine, I'm gonna file for chapter eleven 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:42.920 and then I don't need your permission yep, which is 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:46.960 exactly why he diddy. We filed for bankruptcy protection and 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:52.360 they underwent another restructuring plan and secured funding from the 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.400 The Andrews Group, which is an investment firm three and 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:59.839 sixty five million. And this would allow them to help 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:06.240 poff creditors and to continue working on making the business profitable. Yeah. 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.199 They figured they would be out of bankruptcy by the 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:13.240 middle They knew that to keep Marvel on track, they 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:15.400 just needed to resolve all their issues as fast as 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:17.800 possible because the market is ever changing and you don't 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.880 want to have to play more catchup than you have to. Yeah. 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.880 And so this leads up to seven, where you have 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:27.480 the kind of the massive conclusion between the Icon and 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:31.000 Perilman fight because I was still going during this whole process. 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:36.160 So they're both struggling for control of the company. So 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:41.440 who wins neither of them. Yeah, toy Bis wins. Yeah, 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:45.920 toy Biz, owned by Isaac pearl Mutter and A Manly, 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:49.880 got the ownership. They booted Perilman, they booted Icon, They 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:52.400 booted the CEO of Marvel at the time, Scott Sassa, 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.040 who had only been in that position for eight months. Yeah, 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:57.120 I feel like he kind of got largely caught in 0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:58.760 the cross. I think I think it was in a 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:04.280 really tough position, like just you can't really blame Marvel's 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:07.439 struggles on the CEO at that time. He didn't even 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.040 really have the time to get a handle on. Yes, 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:13.960 And they named Joseph Calamari the new CEO of Marvel. 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.199 That's such a great name. Yeah. And so it's interesting, 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:19.679 you know, Ared and pearl Mutter had both been on 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.479 the board of directors for Marvel already because of these 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:27.280 previous business dealings between toy Bus and Marvel, and this 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:30.880 would be the mark of what would allow Marvel to 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.320 return from the brink. Yeah, this is this is truly 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:38.760 the turning point is this change in leadership where the 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:41.360 two super heroes who were slugging it out like this 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.400 is when Captain America and Iron Man are both fighting 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.400 each other and yeah, and and it turns out they 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:49.760 knock each other out and Squirrel Girl comes up and 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:54.240 she takes over. She is the most powerful. It is 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:56.800 true she can take on Galactus. But that again, that's 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:59.439 a tangent. And you know what we're gonna talk about 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:06.240 how this new leadership was able to rescue Marvel. We 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:08.880 have more to say about Marvel, but first let's take 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:21.959 a quick break, all right. So it took a little 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:26.000 longer than Marvel wanted, but they were back at of bankruptcy, 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:29.480 still struggling, but in a better position than they were in. 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:34.480 They started expanding their offerings beyond comic books so that 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:38.560 the next comic books slump wouldn't hit them as hard, right, 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.120 so that if it turns out that these are cyclical, 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.440 like let's say that's every generation there's a high point 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:47.840 and a low point, that those low points don't wipe 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.240 out the business. Yeah, and you know we said that 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.120 Pearl Letter and Rod had been on the board before 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:57.120 Joseph Kelley Murray had a hand in running Marvel prior 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.760 to being named the CEO. In so much like staying 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.640 with people who had helped make the company successful in 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.240 the past, they decided that they really needed to stay 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:11.120 true to the core concepts of Marvel, the heroes and 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:14.120 the ideals that made them successful in the first place. 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.120 Taking these and moving them into the modern marketplace is 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.040 what would make them successful. It's not new characters, right, 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.840 It's not like taking your most iconic character and making 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.760 that iconic character a dark antihero. And that iconic character 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.800 had been such a glowing bastion of goodness up to 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.960 that point. Superman. I mean, you've you've got evil versions 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:37.560 of Superman like Bizarro, but you already have them, alright. 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:40.280 But they also had some ideas that were not so great. 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.200 They thought they were going to make some well. They 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.960 did make some themed restaurants and video games and trading 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:48.960 card initiatives, and like the restaurant marvel Mania was only 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:51.360 around for about a year or so, and the other 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:53.720 ones were so so. Marvel video games are hit or miss, 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:56.840 like I like them, but some of them are good, 0:14:57.400 --> 0:14:59.360 like It's some of the more recently, the most recent 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.640 Spireman game is one of the best games ever. It's 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.440 a great one PS four game. The But they also 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:10.120 were responding to changes in technology, right, and you started 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:13.800 to see them embrace the concept of digital comics, and 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.240 they start creating apps and making their titles available for 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:22.480 digital download, which appealed to people who wanted the comics 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:25.320 for the stories, but they weren't necessarily interested in actually 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:29.160 collecting physical comic books and then storing them and all 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.120 that kind of stuff. Well, and they also worked to 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.760 expand their characters more into the cinematic universe. Instead of 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:39.000 just licensing out their characters for a movie here or 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.640 a movie there, they started just selling the rights to 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.320 their characters outright to studios. Yeah, this is what has 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:47.920 led to what a lot of people are upset about today, 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.680 is that they don't all belong to Marvel Cinematic or 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:55.240 Marvel Studios. Well, it's it's because in Abvis kind of 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:57.640 oversaw this. They would try to write a movie and 0:15:57.680 --> 0:15:59.200 sell it to a studio. But when a studio is 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.920 looking at a ton of movies at a time, it's 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.080 hard to get yours seen, especially if HER's as a 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.960 superhero movie. When previous superhero movies have been questionable quality. 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.440 I mean apart from things like say the Tim Burton 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:17.080 Batman films or the Night Superman film. Yeah, there there 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.800 were a lot of failures, like that Captain America movie. Anyhow, 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:24.080 Salinger's Kids, Yeah, it's it's not great. They sold some 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:27.400 of their i would say most profitable characters at that 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:31.280 time spider Man to Sony X Men to Fox. Now, 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.480 they also sold Daredevil to Fox, which was a Golden 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.760 age hero but not as popular in the public eye. 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:40.880 And they also sold Blade to New Line Cinemas. And 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.520 this is important because when these companies did make these 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:48.400 movies with these characters, they were successful. Blade made seventy 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.080 million dollars, and because Marvel had kind of sold the 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:52.680 right and they only got a little bit of the 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:56.160 profits from licensing out the rights, they got about two 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:01.000 of that. Yeah, so while it was a profitable move, 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:04.840 it wasn't breaking in huge amounts of money. Meanwhile, they 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:09.880 were still breaking in some licensing profits from their other efforts, 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.520 like through toys and merchandise. Yeah. And then in two 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.120 thousand three we get a huge change that would put 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.919 Marvel in prime position, and that was when David Mazel 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:23.800 would go to Arad and Paul Motter and say, you 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:25.639 know what you guys need to do. You need to 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:27.520 make your own movie studio. You need to make your 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.160 own movies. Don't license your characters to these other movie companies. 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:33.840 Keep all your profits. Yeah, if you do all the work, 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:36.080 you get to keep all the Money's you just got 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:37.960 to make sure your movies are good. That's all you 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:41.760 gotta do. It's easy. Two years later, the Marvel board 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:46.600 improved that plan and they got a loan from Meryll Lynch. Yeah, 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.520 a small loan of half a billion dollars billion dollars 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:53.600 for a seven year span. But to get it, they 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:58.200 had to put up for collateral ten of their characters 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:02.879 and properties, so Captain Mary, the Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.480 ant Man Cloaken, Dagger, Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, the power Pack 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:09.720 who I don't I'm not familiar with in shang Chi, 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.280 which meant that if this movie push was not successful, 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:15.879 if they could not pay back that loan, yeah, then 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:17.920 they wouldn't have the rights to any of their most 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:21.280 popular character and the bank would own them. Yeah yeah, yikes. 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:24.920 But first, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor, 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:39.960 so um they knew they couldn't go out and launch 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:42.400 a film with the X Men or with Spider Man. 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:46.080 They did not hold those movie rights, so they were 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.520 limited in which characters they could put forward. So they 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:53.439 had to start making tough decisions about what what was 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:57.160 going to be their first attempt. Now, hilariously, they settled 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:01.080 on iron Man because he had been poppler to comic 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.560 viewers and they figured they could adjust him and make 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:07.080 him popular to the general public as well. But if 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.200 you listened to the list of the characters that were collateral, 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.240 iron Man wasn't in that list. He was licensed to 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.119 New Line Cinema, and then their option on him ran 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.399 out two months after the bank deal closed, and Marble said, oh, 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:19.800 we're going to do a movie on iron Man. This 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.320 is great. He's a golden nagu here o. He's he's 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:24.600 popular with our readers. But because he wasn't a part 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.440 of their their deal, they had to fund that movie themselves. 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.639 So they start working on that, and at the same 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:35.399 time they really concentrate on getting into the digital comics 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.960 in a big way. In two thousand and seven, and 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:42.840 the iron Man project, as you may be aware, was successful. 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.920 It was. It ended up bringing in five eight five 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:50.720 million dollars at the box office. That's that's revenue, not 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.679 necessarily profit, but five million, and they took out a 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:56.600 loan for five hundred and twenty five million, So with 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.320 one movie they proved that they could at least get 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:01.640 a revenue that was equal to the loan that they 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.760 had secured. And Kevin Fiegi would become the president of 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:08.159 production for Marvel. Now, he had been the producer for 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:11.359 several Marvel films, not just Marvel Cinema films or Marvel 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:14.920 Studio films. He was the producer on Fox's X Men, 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.880 He was the producer on Sony's Spider Man, which are 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:20.600 both great movies, they are, and he was also the 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:24.639 producer for the Marvel Studios film Iron Man. And once 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:28.240 that was such a monumental success, Marvel said, we should 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:31.760 put this guy in charge of everything, and that is 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:35.720 what set the stage for Marvel to get eyed by 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.960 the Mouse House. Yes, in two thousand nine, Disney bought 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:41.719 Marvel for four billion dollars. You're probably familiar with that. 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:43.639 It made a lot of news. Yeah, it was like 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:46.160 the estimates tend to go between four billion and four 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:48.560 point three billion. It all depends on how you measure it, 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:53.119 but either way, everyone thought, this is a company that 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:55.720 sold for eighty two and a half million dollars a 0:20:55.720 --> 0:21:00.560 couple of decades earlier, that was in bankruptcy a decade earlier, 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:06.640 and now is being bought by Disney, the global powerhouse 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:11.080 of a company, for four billion dollars. And beyond that, 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.320 Disney has the power to try to get back some 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.199 of those iconic characters that Marvel didn't have rights to, 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:17.840 So they made a deal with Sony in two thousand 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:22.280 fifteen to share Spider Man between studios and ma'am I 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.040 love it. Oh yeah, no, that's that. Spider Man Homecoming 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:29.760 is a great movistic fantastic And in two thousand eighteen, 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:32.760 last year as of recording this episode, Disney bought Fox 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:35.960 for seventy one point three billion dollars, which is opening 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.120 up discussions to X Men crossover and bringing X Men 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:43.720 under the Marvel Studios umbrella. So the the great story here, 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:47.280 I think is that this comic book company took a 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:52.480 huge risk in following the advice of Masal and creating 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:55.320 a movie studio of its own when that was not 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:59.360 its business before, and yet was able to leverage that 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:02.840 but one partly because I mean, they knew those characters, 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:07.560 they knew what resonated with fans, and they were able 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:11.600 to take those traits that resonate with fans and then 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:15.720 to adapt them because they Any comic book fan will 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:18.960 tell you the movie versions are not exactly the same 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:22.000 as the comic book versions, but most of those changes 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:25.160 were made in an effort to appeal to a mainstream 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.840 audience that isn't familiar with these characters backward and forward, 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:32.080 and I think for the most part it works too. 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:37.120 So an enormous success. And this year is a special 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:41.080 year for Marvel. Yep. This year, two thousand, Marvel is 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:44.800 hitting its eightied anniversary. They've got a whole bunch of 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:50.359 really big plans to celebrate it, reimagining characters, doing stuff 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:54.000 on social media, including a bi weekly animated series called 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:57.520 Today in Marvel History, a bunch of stuff over all 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:00.639 of their venues. You can go to Marvel com to 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:03.960 learn about it, specifically Marvel dot com, slash Marvel eighty, 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:07.080 or you can look for hashtag Marvel eight because there's 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:11.119