Tom’s Column Feb/Mar 15
Superhero Studios Need to Look at the Present, Not the Future by Tom Beasley
In 2014, Marvel Studios announced their slate of superhero movies up until 2019, including new solo outings for Thor and the long-awaited Doctor Strange film. Their rivals DC, best known for Superman and Batman, went one better with Warner Bros. revealing their comic book plans up until 2020.
This reflects a rather odd trend in the film industry in which studios compete with each other to have the most ambitious and lengthy future strategy. It shows a remarkable and perhaps misplaced confidence on behalf of these two studios.
The whims of cinema audiences are difficult to predict, so it is impossible to know whether superhero films will still retain their popularity in five years’ time. If there’s a sudden drop in the box office fortunes of the superhero genre, then Marvel and Warner Bros. are both going to have egg on their face, with their cinematic empires collapsing around them. Planning so publicly in advance makes it very embarrassing if things go wrong.
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