Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios is an entertainment company that produces films and television series based on characters and stories created by Marvel Comics. It is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios and a division of the Walt Disney Company. Marvel Studios has produced some of the top-grossing superhero films of the early twenty-first century, notably the Iron Man and Avengers franchises. These and other films such as the Spider-Man, Thor, Black Panther, and Guardians of the Galaxy movies are part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an umbrella franchise that had grossed more than $25 billion globally as of February 2023.

Background

Although Marvel Studios is relatively young, Marvel Comics has been around since October 1939, when pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman noticed the growing popularity of comic books and added a division called Timely Comics to his company. The first issue, Marvel Comics no. 1, features heroes such as the Human Torch. Goodman was so pleased with the success of the first issue that he hired artist Jack Kirby and writer Joe Simon to produce more comics. He hired a teenage relative, Stan Lee, as an errand runner, but soon Lee began writing stories for comics. In time, Lee became the chief editor of Timely Comics.

The 1940s is known as the Golden Age of comics. Many characters and stories of the first half of the decade were fighting Nazis and Japan because the news and people’s thoughts were dominated by World War II. Working at Timely, Kirby and Simon created the hero Captain America, a patriotic figure, during these years. However, by the end of the decade, superheroes were no longer popular, and the final Timely Comic of this genre was published in 1950. Within a few years, Goodman had renamed his business Atlas Magazines. Popular comic book genres included comedy, horror, science fiction, and westerns.

The Silver Age of comics began in 1956, when Atlas’s chief rival, DC Comics, reintroduced some of its superheroes with some success. However, a book published several years earlier claimed that comic books promoted delinquency in children, and the US Senate held hearings on crime and comic books. To avoid official censorship, the comics industry agreed to self-police its products. The Comics Code Authority, which was established in 1954, hampered the artists and writers, because comics without the official stamp could not be sold in stores. To get the stamp, comics could not contain cursing, drugs, nudity, or sex, and the villains always had to lose. The code loosened over time as society’s attitude toward these topics changed and comic book fans aged. Marvel, which was Atlas Comics until the early 1960s, withdrew from the Comics Code Authority’s regulations in 2001.

Lee was disheartened by the limitations but continued to press on. He introduced the Fantastic Four superheroes in 1961, completely changing the superhero genre. These characters were astronauts who gained superpowers while in space. They bickered, doubted themselves, and generally behaved in ordinary human ways. Lee and artist Steve Ditko next created the character Spider-Man, who like the Fantastic Four was an ordinary person before he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Introduced in 1962, Spider-Man proved popular with the public.

Lee developed what he called the Marvel method while writing. His system involved Lee creating summaries of stories and passing them along to the artists, who had a great deal of freedom as they developed these ideas into full-length stories. Lee later added the dialogue and wisecracks for which many of the characters were known.

Goodman sold his publishing businesses in 1968. The new owners, the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation, put all the properties under a subsidiary, Magazine Management Co. Goodman continued to serve as publisher until he retired in 1972, when Lee took over the job. Comic books lost their luster again, but Lee adjusted by adding new characters and genres including sword-and-sorcery titles and satire. In 1973 Magazine Management Co. was renamed Marvel Comics Group to represent its primary property. Lee hired Jim Shooter as the editor in chief. Shooter introduced the crossover to comic books in the 1980s. In 1981 Marvel bought an animation studio, renamed it Marvel Productions, and began creating shows featuring Spider-Man, Muppet Babies, and the Transformers.

New World Entertainment bought Marvel in 1986 but sold it again three years later to MacAndrews & Forbes, a company owned by Ronald Perelman. Perelman sold the company’s back catalog and closed the animation studio, but the company created the Marvel Films division to license superheroes to movie studios. Marvel filed for bankruptcy in the 1990s, but again Lee revived the comics business in 1998 with the Marvel Knights imprint, a collection of characters including Daredevil, Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, Moon Night, Shang-Chi, and Spider-Man. The company also created Marvel Studios, which created new characters and stories, and relaunched many characters in a parallel universe in the early-twenty-first century Ultimate Marvel imprint. This allowed writers and artists to ignore the characters’ backstories when developing new stories while the main-thread stories continued. The company licensed film rights to Spider-Man to Columbia, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment, in the late 1990s. The Walt Disney Company purchased Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for $4 billion.

The earliest Marvel character films were produced by film studios such as 20th Century Fox, which released The X-Men in 2000, X2 in 2003, and X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. Sony Pictures had licensed Spider-Man and produced five films featuring this character from 2002 to 2014. The 2002 film made about twice as much as any previous superhero film and prompted the studio to keep producing them. Origin and prequel films, spinoff movies, and television series, and other movies were subsequently released. Marvel Studios regained the rights to the X-Men and other characters in 2019 after the Disney company acquired 20th Century Fox studios.

Overview

Marvel Studios is based in Burbank, California, at the Walt Disney Studios, but corporate offices are in New York City. The films have been nominated for a range of awards, including multiple Academy Awards nominations for best visual effects. Marvel Studios has collected Oscars for best costume design, production design, and original score. In 2023 Angela Bassett won a best supporting actress Golden Globe for her work in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Marvel launched Marvel Studios in 2005 to make films using its own characters. However, its most popular characters—such as Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four—were licensed to other studios. So, the company started making movies using second-tier characters such as Iron Man and Thor. The films were highly successful, leading the company to produce sequels and create crossover opportunities, which the studio called its Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Marvel Studios regained use of X-Men and Fantastic Four when Disney purchased 20th Century Fox and was able to integrate some of those characters into the MCU.

Spider-Man has arguably been the biggest star of Marvel Comics. The character lives in New York City. However, major battles in other franchises were taking place in that locale, and Marvel Studios could not use the character in its films. Marvel had to come to an agreement with Sony. Sony’s first three Spider-Man films were successful, but the studio decided to reboot the franchise as it maintained its contractually obligated release schedule. The fourth film, which introduced Spider-Man/Peter Parker and the origin story using a new actor, did not do well at the box office, and the sequel performed even more poorly. Marvel film producer Kevin Feige met with Sony producer Amy Pascal, who had produced the Spider-Man movies, to discuss the character’s future usage. Feige suggested that Sony allow Marvel to make the next Spider-Man movie. Although this idea was initially rejected, eventually an agreement was reached and Spider-Man’s debut in the MCU took place in the trailer for Captain America: Civil War. The character was featured in this film and returned in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Later Marvel characters had sizeable roles in three Sony films starring Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man.

As of early 2023, the most successful Marvel movie was Avengers: Endgame. The 2019 flick has earned $2.8 billion worldwide at the box office. Its domestic opening weekend take was $357 million, more than its budget of $356 million. The second-biggest film, Avengers: Infinity War (2018), which was made for $321 million, collected $257 million during its opening weekend in the United States and $2.05 billion globally.

Marvel Studios has been litigating ownership and usage of some characters for many years. Several of these disputes relate to Spider-Man. Regarding the film rights, Sony’s licensing deal requires the studio to release a new Spider-Man film every five years and nine months or the rights revert to Marvel, though the studios reached an agreement to share the character in specific instances and ways. Ownership of the character is another issue. Lee’s method of providing a summary rather than fully writing comics left many artists feeling that the characters were largely their creations, but Lee was taking full credit. This belief led Ditko and Kirby to leave Marvel in 1966 and 1969, respectively. Under copyright law, authors or their heirs can reclaim rights that were held by publishers after a period of years from first release. Ditko died in 2018, and his estate began legal proceedings in 2021 to claim Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. The Ditko family argued that Ditko and Lee jointly created the characters, which Marvel Comics purchased. Marvel, on the other hand, said creation of these characters was work for hire—the company requested the work of employees Ditko and Lee—which meant ownership remained with the company.

Although Marvel Studios initially focused on films, it has also produced multiple television series and shorts. WandaVision (2021), for example, is a spinoff of the Avengers movies. Many Marvel series have aired on the Disney streaming service, though several streamed on other services, and three—Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Agent Carter, and Inhumans—aired on the ABC network.

Bibliography

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Clark, Travis, and Samantha Delouya. “All 31 Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies, Ranked by How Much Money They Made at the Global Box Office.” Business Insider, 25 Feb. 2023, www.businessinsider.com/marvel-movies-ranked-how-much-money-at-global-box-office-2021-11. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

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