.png)
2 months ago
18 ARTICLE AD
It’s a pivotal weekend for superhero movies, one in which they’ll refuse to die.
For two powerful forces are set to make one big cosmic boom: The media loudspeaker epicenter that is San Diego Comic-Con (July 24-28) is coinciding with the opening of Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine on Thursday, a movie that’s expected to notch the biggest box office opening YTD with possibly $200M. It’s arguably the first time that the mega global comics confab and an MCU movie opening have fell on the same weekend.
In the further splitting of atoms, Marvel Studios will be in full force with two Hall H panels –one celebrating the opening night of Deadpool & Wolverine on Thursday night and Saturday night’s big Marvel Cinematic Universe preview — reminding the fanboy faithful that the brand hasn’t tarnished from deep universe attempts and box office misfires such The Marvels and The Eternals. An appetizer before the MCU’s big event on Saturday is HBO and DC Studios’ first look at the Matt Reeves The Batman spinoff series, The Penguin. The James Gunn and Peter Safran run Warner Bros comic book studio is also buzzed to possibly pull a couple of Wonder Twins-like surprises during the confab (‘Form of surprise headline news!’).
“It’s important for Marvel to win back their core,” observed one rival studio publicity exec about Marvel’s return to Hall H with its feature presentation, and the superhero fatigue which crippled the box office of late with such movies as Sony/Marvel’s Madame Web, and DC’s weak streak of The Flash, Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom and Blue Beetle.
However, don’t shame Marvel for being shrewd during these erratic moviegoing times with a double big splash at SDCC. Audiences are even more fickle about when they head to cinemas, and Marvel, unlike some other studios, knows that a loudspeaker at SDCC goes a long way. Meanwhile, with all this talk that superhero movies are going the way of CinemaScope musicals, Hollywood hasn’t bailed on their $80M-$200M-plus per pic investments in pumping out the genre.
More interesting than who’s attending Comic-Con this year, is who’s skipping and there are several titles which have opted to leave a massive promotional opportunity on the table to speak directly to a social-media charged 200,000 who can send gongs around the world.
Per Deadline sources, it doesn’t cost much for a studio to be here, anywhere from a cost in the hundreds of thousands to possibly the low single millions. What racks up costs is the last-minute rush to create footage with perfect sound, VFX and music. Syncing ensemble casts’ travel schedules, well, that’s just child’s play.
Among those big upcoming films sans panels, casts and footage are Warner Bros.’ massive Tim Burton directed sequel Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (Sept 6) and DC’ ‘s Todd Phillips directed Joker: Folie a Deux (Oct. 4), which are both opting for Venice Film Festival global premieres. While Joker 2 is clearly looking to recapture the Oscar glory of the original 2019 movie which had a Venice launch, sources say it’s all about Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice positioning itself toward a broader audience. Still, why deny fans of Jenna Ortega, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Burton their sheer presence? They’re here! San Diego Comic-Con attendees are the ones who can champion these films over the hump.
Also sitting out are Sony/Marvel’s Venom: The Last Dance (Oct. 25), R-rated Kraven the Hunter (Dec. 13), Spider-Man: Beyond the Spiderverse (still undated), as well as Universal’s Wicked and Paramount’s Gladiator II, which are both locking horns on the same weekend of Nov. 22, and New Line’s animated Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim. Some may argue that Wicked and Gladiator II won’t lend themselves to Comic-Con crowds. If moviegoers are going to dress up like the characters on opening weekend at movies theaters, well, then the movies are ripe for Comic-Con. (Paramount is here with their big September animated film Transformers One and castmember Chris Hemsworth and Bryan Tyree Henry, while Universal’s has DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot.
Even if a studio doesn’t have a panel, staging a fan experience in the Gas Lamp quarter is arguably equally as effective in raising an upcoming title’s profile. While the Comic-Con Wednesday eve is typically a time when attendees mosey in, Lionsgate was out in full force with a bloody hockey masked Borderlands street team this afternoon, shouting away about the pic’s Aug. 9 opening and handing out EW‘s Comic-Con issue with the Eli Roth pic’s cast on the cover.
It’s a first this week in many pushes for the Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Haley Bennett, Jack Black movie based on the videogame, read Lionsgate is opening a Moxxi’s Bar in the Gas Lamp from July 25-27, the infamous watering hole in the video game. Aside from having a drink menu inspired by the film, stars of the film will be making a pitstop.
Studios’ reasons for avoiding SDCC vary from Marvel sucking all the oxygen out of the conference ( despite the fact that they’re technically the big closing act on the final night) to studio executives’ belief that the confab has lost its cultural relevance and only caters to a niche audience. For those studio anti Comic-Con execs, the broader reach for hip is at SXSW where such movies as A Quiet Place, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Ready Players One blasted off. The added pressure with SDCC for studios is that they have to certainly have a prime trailer ready to drop to the public. Despite being perfect, history has shown that in a YouTube age, you can’t keep footage a secret in Hall H.
Despite the flood of movies about men and women in tights that have faltered of late, to combat any crippling from superhero fatigue, Disney and Sony’s Marvel labels and Warner Bros’ DC are making fewer films, yet of a higher caliber, and ones which won’t lose John Q consumer in a Byzantine multiverse. They’re also aiming to space superhero movies out on the release schedule.
In a good way, the bombs have set studio execs back on their heels. They know they can’t inundate the marketplace and recycle formulaic films. One movie taking its time to gestate is Marvel’s highly anticipated reboot of 1990s’ Blade first announced at SDCC 2019: A new director has yet to be announced for the Mahershala Ali-Mia Goth project after losing two, Yann Demange and Bassam Tariq’s d, and it’s not expected we’ll learn of one during this Comic-Con. As Goth told Deadline‘s Natalie Sitek at the premiere of MaXXXine, the MCU m.o. for the movie is “They want to make a great movie. That’s the sense that I get from them and that feels good.”
Gone is the conveyor belt approach to TV and movies implemented during the Bob Chapek-run Disney which was about feeding the beast, the birth of Disney+. Largely slowed down or dormant is the MCU’s interconnected plan to bridge Disney+ series with big screen fare. In such cases, the plot strings didn’t make sense (i.e. WandaVision‘s bridge to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) or wasn’t widely watched (read, Ms. Marvel series connecting to the MCU dud The Marvels ($206.1M). “Don’t make it a homework assignment,” cries one major entertainment company marketing boss.
Deadpool & Wolverine is the only MCU title this year, but 2025 boasts Captain America: Brave New World (Feb. 14), Thunderbolts on May 2, and Fantastic Four on July 25.
In regards to the rest of 2024 DC Studios only has the adult-R-rated Joker: Folie a Deux (Oct. 4) and so far one next year in James Gunn’s Superman (July 11) which will usher in the new DC universe Gods & Monsters being built by the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise director and Safran.
“Humanity has been telling stories about heroes for 5,000 years, and Hollywood isn’t going to stop telling those stories,” exclaimed one studio executive about the future of superhero movies.
It’s not as easy as it sounds, but character is king, and when paired with the right star, it’s what makes any superhero movie transcend, no matter how unknown the IP is in the universe. While Marvel kicked off the MCU with the first Iron Man in 2008 with $586M worldwide, remember the character wasn’t one of the comic book company’s stock A characters, but one of their Bs. Leave it to Robert Downey Jr’s comedic timing to turn Tony Stark into affable, cocky jerk who doubles as a big brother-mentor. Ditto for Ryan Reynolds in his foul-mouthed cracking Deadpool. The offbeat superhero turned Reynolds into an even bigger leading man, while the actor turned the Merc With a Mouth into a marquee name. The trick is when you go deep, make ’em cheap, which was the case with the first Deadpool which was made for $60M before P&A and yielded a $322M-plus profit after all ancillaries.
Marvel Studios President and Producer Kevin Feige told Deadline recently, “I’ve never been a big believer in superhero being a genre in and of itself. We made films that are based in graphic narrative format originally, but we make different types of movies.”
However, fatigue really isn’t a superhero problem.
“The answer to that question (of fatigue) is the same answer to movies in general: making engaging, entertaining films that have to be experienced in a theater with a crowd and is worth people getting into their cars and making the trip. Of the many forms of entertainment that people can get scrolling on their screen in their pocket, we as a Hollywood industry need to make product that stands above all of that and that represents a destination entertainment that you can’t get anywhere else.”
