Disney and it's affects on the comic industry.

[CIBAWAG]

I want to get a discussion going about Disney and it's relationship to Marvel, and the comic industry as a whole. It's been 2 years since Marvel was bought by Disney, and I think it's a good time for evaluation.

I just read this economist article about John Carter losing 200 million at the box office, making it one of the biggest flops of all time.

This plus the failure of the last Pirates of the Caribbean Movie, indicates to me, that Disney might be suffering. I think this is relative because to me, reading increasingly expensive comics from a slowly declining industry almost has to be reliant on someone like Disney, to distribute the comic book ideas to other media platforms, in order to survive. But how infallible is Disney? Losing 200 million on a single movie is no chump change, even for a mega-multinational.

And how many movies do they produce a year? At least a half dozen, right? This John Carter movie, apparently wasn't even half bad. It was just really expensive. Most Disney movies in the last year probably suck horribly, compared to this one. It makes me weary that FOX might somehow give up the movie rights to X-men now, because I prefer the lesser of two evils, or in this case the production house less likely to waste money.

I'm starting to think the biggest plus in having Marvel owned by Disney, is nothing but vapour. Does anyone know how close to bankruptcy Disney might be getting, or how close they will be getting if they continue to produce flops like this? And if they do go bankrupt, what does this mean for Marvel? Would they need to get picked up by some other company, or could they make it on their own again?

[Phillies64]

[CIBAWAG]

Okay, so Disney is not going bankrupt any time soon... which is.. I don't know.

And Marvel as a company is certainly being successful. But the Marvel comics, and the comics industry, and most importantly the readers. How are they affected? I can only imagine their comics publishing department must feel like a mouse finding shelter under a sleeping elephant.. Yes they are safe... provided the elephant they sleep under doesn't decide to roll over on them.

[Phillies64]

[MadroxDupe42]

A couple of other tidbits.

1) Movie studios these days exist as entities, to a certain extent, for the express purpose of losing money on movies. This allows them to sign deals offering directors, actors, and other filmmakers a portion of the net proceeds, but never actually have to pay out on those deals because the movie "lost" money. One of the more famous examples is the Lord of the Rings series; despite grossing nearly $3 billion worldwide, the books for those movies showed losses so that Peter Jackson & co wouldn't be paid. And yet, no one at Warner Brothers is sad about those "losses." To be sure, "John Carter" underperformed, but Disney Studios was likely to show it as a "loss" no matter what.

2) It's actually really, really hard for a big studio movie like "John Carter" to not be profitable in the final analysis. Yes, some movies get labeled as flops because their domestic gross is much less than the production budget. But even those have a tendency to turn a profit when you factor in global box office, home video business (sales, rentals, and streaming), merchandising, and television rights. Disney the parent company will do all right in the end, and that's before you factor in the money they'll make on "Avengers" and "Brave" later this summer.

3) $200 million IS a lot of money to mere mortals like you and I. But to put it in perspective, Disney's market cap right now is about $77 billion. If Disney were an average American household with a net worth of about $120,000, that would be an equivalent to a loss of $311. (A company's market cap and a person's net worth aren't totally comparable, but for purposes of scale it's not a totally crazy comparison.)

[Phillies64]

[Robot_Chicken_Hulk]

[DakenLeBeau]

I think the fact that Mars Needs Moms bombed and was the biggest flop of last year was the reason why Mars was dropped from the title. Which is stoooopid!

I do think that Avengers would sell more internationally if called Iron Man and The Avengers.


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[Robot_Chicken_Hulk]

[MadroxDupe42]

[CIBAWAG]

So... with the recent firing of the head of Marvel production, and the rumors that Avengers: EMH is being cancelled, is this the beginning of the Disney affect, or is this just the beginning of something better?

[MadroxDupe42]

[CIBAWAG]

[Phillies64]

Rumor has it that EMH is only being canceled so they could launch a new show more in line with Ultimate Spider-Man.

[CIBAWAG]

[Phillies64]

[CIBAWAG]

So does this seem like the disney effect to you, because I don't get why Jeff Lobe would be the one responsible for EMH being cancelled, when its really just going to be rebooted.

[MadroxDupe42]

[Robot_Chicken_Hulk]

Isn't that a little redudant. He's incharge of both TV and animation. I mean animation is in TV, smh. But anyway I don't know what to think of that. It's nice to see all.the cartoons in one universe, but on the other hand Ultimate Spider-Man isn't very good if you're above the age of 12.

[Phillies64]