Sunday
26Oct
Marvel Might Get 'Strange'
Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 3:38AM
There have been so many comic book movies coming down
the chute that we were bound to miss one major one sooner or later. And it
wasn't even so much that we missed, but rather that we weren't particularly
moved by the news one way or the other so we waited for a slow(er) news day.
The good doctor is Marvel's reigning sorcerer dude - a mystic - which isn't even close to the sort of thing the company is putting on screen these days. So a Dr. Strange movie would definitely be something different. There are two ways of looking at this. If you're a huge fan, you're probably, thrilled, relieved, and excited to hear that Marvel may go down this road. The flip side is that although Marvel has a pretty good success rate, would this movie be in the Punisher range or X-Men range? Just what do they want this movie to do?
I think the next three years are absolutely critical to Marvel, more than the past five years, even. Look at the slate: Wolverine next year, and possibly movies about Magneto and Silver Surfer (although those are longshots for '09), then a jam-packed 2010 with Iron Man 2, Thor, and maybe Ant-Man, and I think two of those might be viewed as mistakes. Marvel is keying in on 2011, with Captain America, The Avengers, and Spider-Man 4 all slated for that summer.
A lot of those will generate a bunch of interest, provided that comic book movies are still in vogue a decade after the first Spider-Man. Marvel is really hoping that the whole Avengers thing pans out, and it probably will. But do you think Ant-Man is going to be big? I kind of put Dr. Strange in that category where it just may not be that big a deal to audiences. The Punisher wasn't before and won't be again. Daredevil did OK, but it made just under half its money on the opening weekend. To me, unless they cast the hell out of the role, this property just doesn't translate as easily as the others.
And when you get right down to it, Marvel has only had three franchises that have been bankable: Spider-Man, X-Men, and Iron Man. So simply raiding the catalog may not be the wisest move.
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