Sunday 8 May 2011

MARVEL STUDIOS: Going Big on Entertaining us Mortals


Marvel on a Superhero roll
It's all about Marvel at the moment; the other day we had a Thor, Iron Man 1 & 2 movie marathon. I really got into the Shakespearian style conflicts, the good old will-or-won't they chemistry between the leads and the pretty amazing soundtracks. Plus, I do enjoy techno-gadget-costume fantasy sequences, apparently the military are actually testing out an Iron Man suit for combat, read here about the XOS2 suit - pronounced 'exo'. With all this in mind, I thought it'd be interesting to take a quick look at Marvel's success and story to date.

Thunderous Box-Office Performance
Thor looks like it will storm the Box-Office and replicate the kind of takings for Marvel Studios, that Iron Man achieved. So far it has collected £6.4 million already in the UK and $93 million in the US. Iron Man 1 & 2 collectively made over a BILLION. It hasn't always been this successful for Marvel comic creations, I took a look over their box-office receipts since the release of their first feature in 1986, the legendary dud, Howard the Duck.

Howard the Duck cost Universal $30 million to produce and took just $37 million worldwide. So the film broke even but the studio took a huge hit financially and critically. It took eleven years before another Marvel creation made it to the multi-plex, this time Sony took the risk. Men in Black, produced for $90million made a staggering $590 million world-wide. Then in the summer of 1996, Marvel Studios was set-up. They re-claimed their comic book creations and produced a mix of high profile, Spider-man, X-Men, and lesser well known comic book hero films, The Punisher, Elektra.

Disney's Epic Strategy
Interesting to note Marvel Studios produced two Hulks, both made with comparable budgets and generating similar Box Office. I'm curious why they re-made it - did they expect a bigger success on second outing? I think Marvel know now to never have a Duck in their movie title, and stick to featuring the words 'Man' and 'Men'.

In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Studios for $4billion, so that kind of explains their strategy for releasing in quick succession Thor, Captain America, Iron Man over the last few years. They are acquiring and building audiences for this EPIC outing: 

All-Star Superhero Film 'The Avengers'
I am really late on this, however Marvel studios announced at the 2010 at Comic-Con how they are putting all of their top heroes into one movie, The Avengers. 'That's the most ambitious movie ever seen', quipped Robert Downey Jnr at the all-star press announcement. See the press call video, it's quite exciting.


It's going to be HUGE. Then again, I have been writing lately about giving fans too much of what they want, which is not a bad thing, but the danger of over-kill. I really hope this is not a super-hero packed nightmare of s competing stories and OTT marketing. It will be really interesting to see how they integrate the different worlds of the heroes. In the meanwhile, check out this fan-made poster, I mean look at it, I am already picking on being on the Hulk's side.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Where New TV is At: YouTube's Next New Networks


YouTube's Investment in User Generated Content
Exciting news about YouTube's acquisition of Next New Networks and creation of YouTube Next, a team that will focus on 'supercharging content creator development on YouTube, driving deeper expertise in partner audience development, and incubating new ideas that can be shared with the broader community.'

One of Next New Networks' projects is Beyond the Trailer which is a YouTube movie review channel fronted by Grace Randolph (in the video above) because she says 'Movie Critics Can't be Trusted'. She is very funny and her channel shows what a little bit of marketing and investment can do. Apparently since signing with Next New Networks, she has developed her show and built up a strong audience (in September 2010 alone, BTT racked up 2.8 million views).

Essentially, it seems that Next New Networks is YouTube's plan to help amateurs/or online producers take it to the next level. What I find personally exciting this this invitation from Next New Networks:

So what's your specific interest? Is there a community you're a part of that lacks, wants or needs shows that only the Internet can provide? Let us know. And if you're a writer, producer, or creator who's passionate about your community, then maybe you should join Next New Creators and be a crucial part of our next new network.

What does this mean for broadcasters/production companies?
Mike Henry at Ad Age Digital writes about the impact of this acquisition and investment in YouTube talent, and sees it as a red flag to traditional producers and production companies. Henry says they need to get more serious about their Multi-Platform strategies and investment, and offers these 5 tips if the want they want to be well positioned to compete with the the going-Pro YouTube creators:

5 Useful Guidelines to Producing Online Content:
  1. Start with great characters and stories
  2. Consider not the just age/gender/psychographic of their audience, but where and how this audience will likely consume the content
  3. Carefully develop production strategies and cycles to deliver assets that can be packaged in different ways for various platforms, audience and markets
  4. Consider and explore international markets from project inception
  5. Place a high value on the social networks attached to talent with whom they work