Soaring to a billion
Who will be the next billion dollar superheroes from Marvel and dc?
WELCOME to the Marvel and DC superhero age of movies. Out of 19 films that have grossed more than US$1bil (RM3.6bil) worldwide, four of them are superhero movies – The Avengers, Iron Man 3, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Dark Knight.
By 2020, the exclusive billion dollar club could well double to 40 members (though this could be due to ever-increasing cinema tickets prices), with a slew of superhero movies from both Marvel and DC to look forward to from this year all the way to 2020, and new entries in the Star Wars, Toy
Story, Avatar, Pirates Of The Caribbean, and
Transformers franchise still to come. With a battle for box-office supremacy between Marvel and DC to come in the future, who will be the next billion dollar superheroes?
An analysis of the current 19 in the club indicates that most franchises take time to build up an audience, and once that is achieved, the sequels will reap the rewards (for example, the Transformers and the
Pirates Of The Caribbean franchises). What this means it that movies like the two-part Avengers: Infinity Wars and Justice
League, Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, and possibly Captain America: Civil War (in which Cap battles the box-office-friendly Iron Man) stand a good chance of making it past US$1bil.
The dawn of DC
Over at DC, their best billion dollar bet is, what else, next year’s Batman vs. Superman:
Dawn Of Justice ( BvS:DOJ) as Batman, with two movies already in the billion dollar club, should be able to boost the movie into the club as well.
When Hollywood studio Warner Bros (WB), the parent company of DC Comics, finally revealed all 10 titles of their superhero movies for 2016 right up to 2020, the most welcome development is that WB is no longer solely fixated on endless cycles of solo Superman and Batman movies. Instead, DC’s big two caped crusaders are shouldering the burden of powering a whole DC cinematic universe, stating with 2016’s
BvS:DOJ, to be followed by the two-part Justice
League in 2017 and 2019. In the comics, the Man Of
Steel and Dark Knight often cross paths, usually as partners in crime busting; and any comics fan will tell you that much of the fun is not just having the good guys battling the bad guys, but also the heroes fighting among themselves. BvS:DOJ is no exception, with Supes (Henry Cavill) in conflict with Bats (Ben Affleck).
This movie will lead to the founding of the Justice League super team, with the inclusion of Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and Cyborg (Ray Filler). The Justice
League sequels should see the induction of The Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and Green Lantern (yet to be cast). Happily, there will be also solo movies for Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Flash, Aquaman, and a second chance for Green Lantern to get over the box-office disappointment of the 2011 movie starring Ryan Reynolds.
Rounding off the DC slate are two unexpected choices – Suicide Squad (sort of a cross between the Dirty Dozen and Mission:
Impossible, about imprisoned DC supervillains given the choice to redeem themselves by undertaking suicide missions), and Shazam (which already has Dwayne Johnson as the anti-heroic Black Adam).
Marvel movie madness
Of course, Marvel isn’t resting on their laurels either. From 2008’s Iron Man to 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, Marvel’s 10 movies have already grossed a whopping collective total of US$7bil (RM23bil).
Soon after WB unveiled their ambitious slate of two movies a year, Marvel upped the ante by announcing their 2017-2020 line-up, which will see them releasing THREE movies each year.
Already, anyone who has seen the awesome trailer for 2015’s Avengers vs. Terminator, sorry, I mean Avengers: Age Of
Ultron ( A:AOU), would have instantly made it their No. 1 must-see movie of the year.
Barring any attacks by Thanos or Galactus, A:AOU is probably a good bet to break the US$1bil mark, and may even challenge 1997’s Titanic’s No. 2 spot on the all-time box-office list ( Avatar is still top, by the way).
2012’s The Avengers was especially unfor-
gettable thanks to the clashes among the superheroes – Iron Man versus Thor, Thor versus Huck, Black Widow versus Hawkeye – with only Captain America staying out of the family squabbles.
Besides introducing the malevolent menace from the super-robot supervillain and fascinating new heroes Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen), the A:AOU trailer also tantalisingly revealed intriguing snippets of more internal conflicts, with a rampaging Hulk against Iron Man in his humongous Hulkbuster armour, and Thor grabbing the throat of Tony Stark.
The obvious camaraderie of the actors portraying the Avengers is so infectious that it leaps from the screen into our minds, reminding us of the way the Marvel Age of Comics in the 1960’s won over comics fans, at the expense of the longer-established DC comics.
Among Marvel’s coming slate, this writer, having collected Marvel and DC comics since 1963, is especially excited about 2018’s
Inhumans, about a hidden race of superhumans led by a royal family comprising Black Bolt, Medusa, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, Crystal, and Lockjaw the giant teleporting bulldog. If you liked Guardians Of The Galaxy, you will probably love
Inhumans too. Also upcoming are third chapters for
Captain America and Thor, Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, first outings for Ant-Man (starring Paul Rudd), Doctor Strange (starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the Sorceror Supreme!),
Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman as T’challa, King of the African kingdom of Wakanda), and Captain Marvel, which has yet to be cast. And then there’s the big one – Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 and 2019, which should see the superheroes taking on the cosmic blue-skinned villain Thanos once and for all.
Outside the MCU
Before Marvel Studios started making their own movies, Marvel characters were franchised out to various other movie studios, including Sony ( Spider-Man) and 20th Century Fox ( Fantastic Four and X-Men). These studios have also made quite a mint making superhero movies, and are also looking to build their own respective superhero universes. After churning out Spider
Man movies on their own since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002, Sony recently signed a deal with Marvel Studios to allow Spider-Man to appear in the MCU. In the spirit of the new deal, Marvel Studios has also “given up” its July 28, 2017 slot for a new Spider-Man reboot, which will see a new actor taking over from The Amazing
Spider-Man franchise’s Andrew Garfield. This resulted in a domino effect which sees the entire MCU lineup changed to the following: Thor: Ragnarok on Nov 3, 2017,
Black Panther on July 6, 2018, Captain Marvel on Nov 2, 2018, and Inhumans on July 12, 2019.
The new Spidey will then join the Avengers in battling Thanos in the two-part
Avengers: Infinity War.
Hopefully, this Sony/Marvel partnership will lead to something similar for 20th Century Fox’s franchises, as that would mean movie crossovers between the Avengers and the X-Men, as well as the Fantastic Four, just like in the comic books.
For now, however, Fox is going solo, with upcoming movies such as 2016’s Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds reprising the role of the sarcastic anti-hero first introduced in 2009’s
X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and X-Men: Apocalypse, a third solo Wolverine movie in 2017 (Hugh Jackman already holds the record for portraying the same superhero the most times and over the longest period, since 2000), and this year’s Fantastic Four reboot.
While Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic
Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007) were fairly well done, the sequel suffered from a big cop-out – not depicting the gigantic planet-devouring Galactus.
For the reboot (and its already announced sequel, slated for 2017), Fox has opted for a younger cast, with Miles Teller as Mr. Fantastic, Kate Mara as Invisible Woman, Michael B. Jordan as Human Torch, Jamie Bell as The Thing, and Toby Kebbell as the villainous Doctor Doom. Let’s hope they don’t disappoint this time.
Also in the Fox pipeline are more mutant super teams, such as X-Factor, X-Force, and even Alpha Flight.
So, will the coming glut of Marvel and DC movies result in superhero fatigue among movies-goers?
Probably, but the fact is, most of them are still likely to be box-office successes.
For now, it’s great that major Hollywood studios are bankrolling this genre. It is a great time to be a superhero/comics fan indeed.