Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: disney, entertainment, film, fox, guardians of the galaxy, iron man, marvel

How the Disney Buyout of Fox Could be Bad for Marvel Fans

Published Sun, 17 Dec 2017 12:15:48 -0600

One of the downsides to the proposed Disney buyout of Fox is the likelihood of another Guardians of the Galaxy becomes slim. When Marvel Studios first launched it was met with headlines touting how the company was relying on C-list heroes to build a brand. They didn't have the X-Men or Spider-Man and had to start off with the little known character of Iron Man. That said, the expectations for the first Iron Man film were minuscule. They could hand it to Jon Favreau to direct and tap an unreliable Robert Downey Jr., an indy film star like Gwyneth Paltrow and get Jeff Bridges as the bad guy because there was not big Hollywood Studio making demands. It may be one of the reasons why Warner Bros / DC is having such a hard time with their films is the expectations are so damn high that they focus on making money and not making a good movie.

Marvel's success lead to trying other somewhat obscure characters like Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy. It also lead to the eventual buyout of Marvel by Disney and the eventual deal with Sony to co-produce a Spider-Man film. And once Spider-Man was put on the schedule… no one really talked much about The Inhumans that came off the schedule. Yes, there was a television series and a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on, but at one point the Inhumans was on track to be a feature film and came off the schedule and other things got moved around to put Spider-Man into a nice summer release date. Why take a gamble on an unknown team of characters when you can put out a film with a much more popular character like Spider-Man?

Buying up Fox's assets gives Disney the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. It gives them Wolverine and Deadpool. People would be upset if they recast Wolverine… except now it would be a new Wolverine as done by Marvel Studio. Just like people were tired of Spider-Man recasting and reboots until Marvel was going to do it. And why would Disney take a chance on a movie with a new character like Moon Knight or when they can put out a new Wolverine movie?

Marvel Studios got to where it did because they were willing to take chances on less popular characters, picked actors for their talent not their name, and told the stories they wanted to tell. Disney doesn't seem to have gotten into the mix too much, but if it spends that much money on Fox buying back some of Marvel's most popular toys… they'll definitely want them to be played with.

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