“Iron Man 2,” Captain America” and “The Avengers” might be on deck for the next two years, a powerhouse slate of movies, but Marvel apparently isn’t finished draining the pool of their potential franchises just yet. The studio is evidently looking to finance modestly budgeted films ($20-40 million) for their second-tier characters like Dr. Strange, Dazzler, Iron Fist, Ka-Zar, Power Pack & Luke Cage. Buzz on the street is they are already meeting with writers and directors.
This is hardly surprising: Marvel like to keep their costs down (see the “Captain America” and Nick Fury/Whiplash low-balling scenarios) and most of their film budgets, initially intended to be low, have risen exponentially. And with most of their major characters already in films, or in projects that are in active development, Marvel are keen to keep cranking out content. Some of these potential character movies aren’t necessarily new. “Luke Cage” was at one point attached to John Singleton who complained that development, at the time, stalled because a black superhero was a hard sell. Tyrese was set to star in that version. “Dr. Strange,” “Iron Fist,” and “Dazzler” have been kicking around in development for years. Our guess is that Marvel’s decision to scale back the budgets on these has made the projects far more feasible.
It remains to be seen however, if general audiences will respond to comic characters they aren’t that familiar with. The project that probably holds the most immediate crossover appeal is “Power Pack,” about a group of pre-teen superheroes who are like a clean cut version of “X-Men” (need a director who can make pictures for the price of a song and is very comfortable with kids films? Hello, Robert Rodriguez). “Luke Cage” and “Iron Fist” seem like easy no-brainers as well for the big screen. Only “Dr. Strange,” about a master magician (boring, audiences won’t care) and superheroine “Dazzler” (audiences seem to stay away from female led comic franchises) seem like tougher material to bring to the big screen, even though Marvel has been very keen to bring ‘Strange’ to the screen for what seems like forever (silly rumors had Christian Bale rumored at one point, but goal seemed like 2012 or 2013 in 2008). As for “Ka-Zar,” the less said about that, the better.
Of course, being part of the Marvel universe, there is plenty of opportunity for crossover cameos from some of their bigger franchises and they will undoubtedly do so. Marvel is taking the smart approach to these smaller characters and it will be interesting to see what kind of talent ends up circling these projects, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they go with unknowns or at least inexpensive actors (see the relative unknowns that were in discussions for “Captain America” that would have taken that 300K low paycheck). This is all early days too. While announcements could be made in the next several months, it remains to be seen if any of these will get off the ground before “The Avengers” hits in the summer of 2012.
Since Marvel is going deep into the well of 2nd and third tiered characters you can bet they wish they had their hands on more viable flagship properties like “Spider-Man” (Sony), “X-Men,” “Wolverine” and all those spin-off characters (20th Century Fox owned), Daredevil (Fox), Fantastic Four and all those spin-offs (Fox) and even “Punisher” (Columbia Pictures) and “Ghost Rider” (Columbia). Still, they licensed those characters for millions, but they’d surely love to re-own them if they could (and reboot some of the lesser ones).