Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates | Tagged: film, Jim Shooter, marvel, MVL, spider-man

Marvel Sold Separate Film Licenses For Amazing Spider-Man And Spectacular Spider-Man Because Licensing Department Thought They Were Two Separate Characters?

Published Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:10:51 -0600

Over on the left hand side of Bleeding Cool, we're running the Jim Shooter account of the Spider-Man stage event that never actually happened, as well as the full script.

But in the introduction, Jim Shooter makes much of the incompetence of the licensing side when he was editor-in-chief of Marvel – and the editorial regime on his departure.

He reveals that Marvel Licensing sold the stage rights in 1987 for only $25,000, though when it came time to renew two years later, they upped that to seven figures.

But more amusingly, giving an example of why the licensing department just didn't understand the characters they were licensing, he reveals that at one point Marvel had sold licenses for Amazing Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man to two different film producers because they thought they were separate characters. And there were lawsuits.

And that Avengers was licensed to one producer and Iron Man to another, not realising that Iron Man was part of Avengers. And there were more lawsuits.

The film side of Bleeding Cool just thought this was hilarious and worth repeating.

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