When Does the Comic Book TV/Movie Bubble Burst?

[DA_Champion]

We had five comic book movies in 2013, Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Kick Ass 2, Thor 2, The Wolverine, which grossed ~1.06 billion in North America, or about 10% of the total gross of Hollywood for that year (10.8 billion), which rises to 11% if one includes GI Joe 2 as a comic book movie.

In 2014 we're getting 302, Captain America 2, Amazing Spider Man 2, X-Men 7, Sin City 2, Guardians of the Galaxy (which could be called Marvel 10), and you might also include Big Hero 6 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so that makes between 6 and 8 comic book movies.

For 2015, I only know about Avengers 2, Fantastic Four, and Ant Man, but moving forward DC will probably have at least 1 movie a year (maybe 2), Sony wants 1 movie a year, Fox wants at least 1 movie a year, and marvel will probably upgrade from 2 movies a year.

On TV, we have Arrow and AoS doing well, but DC has three additional shows in development, and Marvel has 4 netflix series in development, don't know how many people will keep up with 9 shows

When does the bubble burst? Will things crash down to a grind with comic book movies being as dead as the 1950s westerns or 1980s action movies that came before, or to a new sustainable equilibrium?

Those of you whose hearts are bleeding over WB releasing BvS on the same date as Cap 3 should get used to the pain, as more and more of these kinds of movies are released, leaving aside Star Wars 9, Avatar 2, Transformers 5, etc, there will be more and more occurrences of this.

 

[johnrain]

Let's just hope they make Squirrel Girl before comic book movies fizzle out.

 

[Silvermoth]

Never. People have loved superheroes since Greek mythology times

 

[DA_Champion]

Never. People have loved superheroes since Greek mythology times

Yes, but Hollywood is not making a ton of movies on the Greek classics, are they? Is there a 150 million dollar production of Lysistrata coming up? Why not? What about Perseus?

Similarly if you check my opening post I brought up the examples of the 1950s westerns and the 1980s/1990s action movies (Stalone, Schwarzenegger, etc). We also have no modern analogues to the Jean-Claude van Damme and Steven Seagal movies. A was replaced by B which was replaced by C which will eventually be replaced by D.

Even if it doesn't for a long time, it's the norm in capitalism for new industries to explode past their sustainability level when they emerge on the scene, as new players try to exploit the new source of profit.

 

[dark_b]

hollywood is trying to force me to hate comicbook movies.

i can watch stupid movies where you have to turn of your brain.5 every year. but i have a problem watching the same movies with the same story all over again.

 

[Brian Braddock]

I dont think that the bubble will burst. Comicbook movies are not far removed from that of sci-fi and we dont see anyone asking if the sci-fi bubble has burst, do we?

 

[Laderlappen]

I dont think that the bubble will burst. Comicbook movies are not far removed from that of sci-fi and we dont see anyone asking if the sci-fi bubble has burst, do we?

Sci-fi is a whole genre. Thats like asking when they will stop making dramas.

 

[:eek:]

I dont think that the bubble will burst. Comicbook movies are not far removed from that of sci-fi and we dont see anyone asking if the sci-fi bubble has burst, do we?

Well, with sci-fi in general there are a lot of different kind of movies you can make. Superhero-movies feels more limited. Especially if you're going with the big, established characters from Marvel and DC. If you're going to reboot Spider-Man or something over and over again after three or four movies people might get tired of it. I think superhero-movies in the future will follow the trend we see in the comic-books to keep people interested. More and more big crossover events with various heroes and villains. There's already signs of it happening after the success of Avengers; the upcoming Batman vs. Superman-movie, talk of Sinister Six and Venom spin-offs and so on.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Superhero movies have been being made pretty consisently since 1978. I think they are here to stay. There will be a point where the market won't be able to handle 4 or 5 a year so fewer will get made, but the genre isn't going to die any time soon.

 

[kguillou]

I think 2016 will be a very defining year. We will have BvS, Cap 3, Asm 3 and X-men Apocalypse. All of those are huge properties. 2016 will either be a year of enormous box office for comic book movies or it will be the year people finally get tired of them.

For the record, I think Marvel Studios is very conscious of "superhero fatigue" which is why theyre trying very hard to make their movies as varied as possible.

 

[DA_Champion]

Superhero movies have been being made pretty consisently since 1978. I think they are here to stay. There will be a point where the market won't be able to handle 4 or 5 a year so fewer will get made, but the genre isn't going to die any time soon.

Actually, it's not consistent at all, it's been an exponential growth curve, which is an indicator of bubbles.

1970s: Superman: The Movie (0.1 movie per year)
1980s: Superman II, III, IV, Supergirl, Batman (5 movies, 0.5 movies a year)
1990s: Captain America, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Judge Dredd, Steel, Spawn, Men in Black, Blade (9 movies, 0.91 movies a year)
2000s: ~30 movies, so 3 per year
2010: Kick-Ass, Jonah Hex, Scott Pilgrim, Red, The Losers, Iron Man 2 (6 movies)
2011: Green Hornet, Priest, Thor, X-Men First Class, Green Lantern, Captain America (5 movies)
2012: The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, Amazing Spider Man, Dredd, Ghost Rider 2, Men in Black 3 (6 movies)
2013: Iron Man 3, Man of Steel, Kick Ass 2, Thor 2, The Wolverine (5 movies)
2014: 302, Captain America 2, Amazing Spider Man 2, X-Men 7, Sin City 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Hero 6, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (8 movies)

That's an exponential growth curve. You'll also notice that the budgets of the 2012-2014 movies are larger than those of the 2010-2011 movies.

 

[Warhammer]

The superhero is not going to burst. Like many of said, it is a sub-genre of science fiction. It's not a particular niche like say...dance movies are.

 

[Doppelganger]

http://badassdigest.com/2014/04/10/can-cinema-withstand-the-current-glut-of-superhero-movies/

TLDR: 6 movies a year is like nothing. And Sin City 2 and 302 aren't even superhero movies but "comic" movies. And they are not even a coherent genre like the western so probably never.

 

[DA_Champion]

http://badassdigest.com/2014/04/10/can-cinema-withstand-the-current-glut-of-superhero-movies/

TLDR: 6 movies a year is like nothing. And Sin City 2 and 302 aren't even superhero movies but "comic" movies. And they are not even a coherent genre like the western so probably never.

Obviously Devin Faraci would be in favour of there being one 200 million dollar Marvel blockbuster per month, I think he's even said as much.

He referred to 61 westerns in 1957, but how much did each of those cost? 200 million dollars in constant 2014 dollars? Or less?

 

[Blitzkrieg Bop]

Eventually, there won't be as many superheroes hitting the screens annually as there are now. How many Spider-Man movies can you make?

 

[hammerhedd11]

I don't really think Comic Book movies can even be considered a genre. It can cover so many different genres and types of film that I don't think that it can ever be something that'll "burst". I think the real question should be superhero films. But once again, even looking at what's coming at us in the next few years, even those are so varied in their approach that it's hard to say that those will go out of style any more than Action or Sci Fi films in general.

 

[Teelie]

Eventually, there won't be as many superheroes hitting the screens annually as there are now. How many Spider-Man movies can you make?

I don't know, how many Spider-Man stories have been written? That Sony has reset the story was dumb but they didn't repeat the exact same story. They retold it a different way. If they stop resetting it every few years there are a few hundred stories that could be told.

The X-Men franchise shows that you can keep going without resetting it every time you recast someone or reach the trilogy/quadriology length.

The Marvel Universe movies show you can interconnect multiple movies and stories into one larger story and keep it coherent.

Comic book movies are not a genre (comic books can incompass multiple genres), superhero movies are (anyone who is super-powered or otherwise beyond normal can be called a superhero). A superhero does not have to be from a comic book. They have been around for longer than comics.

Comic book super heroes which is what we're talking about are not going anywhere. I'd compare them to zombies where before Night of the Living Dead we didn't have zombies as a genre.

It's a glutton of movies now and it will be until they start to fail at the box office for whatever reason: audience tiring of too many, badly written stories, financially too expensive for the studos, etc. and they will fall back from their current numbers.

There can be a decline or a lashback against the superhero movie but it won't just burst and go away like some bubble. They will continue to go on and on. The main reason we are seeing so many right now is the technology (and more importantly the studios) have finally caught up with how to make them properly.

Eventually like zombie movies they will be less frequent but they won't go away.

 

[metaphysician]

There won't be any bubble to burst, because there is always a demand for action and spectacle. Superhero films fill that demand perfectly, and with a lot of flexibility to adjust for the current zeitgeist.

What you may eventually have happen is that some of the more extraneous studios will lose money on bad attempts to cash in on the genre, and decide to move their cheap cash-in efforts elsewhere. So, Fox might cut back their efforts when they realize they won't ever make Avengers money. Sony might find themselves forced to cut back, if their attempts to spinoff from Spider-man fail disastrously. But even with that, your still going to have Marvel Studios pumping out its new age serials, and you'll still have WB putting out something with Batman in it every few years.

 

[John Locke]

They will stop being popular but they won't fade away completely. It's like the Westerns, they were everywhere on TV and movies and then one they weren't but that doesn't mean they're not still around.

 

[Teelie]

That brings up a point I forgot to make: Superhero movies are not westerns. Westerns never had the massive appeal and box office popularity of the current superhero movies. Westerns were popular but they were never massive hits like this.

Adjusting for inflation, the highest western movie was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ringing in at 34 whereas The Avenger's tops out at 27 with The Dark Knight behind at 29. Spider-Man is right on it's tail at 36. I don't even see another western until Blazing Saddles at 49 and that's a spoof of westerns. The 1989 Batman is behind it at 50 by a hair ($525,671 to Saddles' $528,050).

On down the line is Spider-Man 2 at 55, The Dark Knight Rises at 63, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at 81 and finally another western at 92 with Duel in the Sun. Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man 3 are both squeezed out of the top 100 at 101 and 102 respectively.

No sign of the "classic western" movie you see frequently on television has ever cracked the top 100 excepting Butch Cassidy.

I can go on down the list but I think my point has been made. Superhero movies might not stay at their current levels but they already beat the western at whose more popular by a long shot.

Source: Box Office Mojo

 

[John Locke]

Westerns did have the same mass appeal. Look at how many Westerns were made between the 50's and 60's. More than as many superhero movies in the last decade. Western shows sometimes lasted for decades. They have the same mass appeal but in different ways. Now Westerns have all but fade away and unfortunately superheroes films will too.

 

[CyclopsWasRight]

I don't think it will burst so much as deflate. At some point they'll start plateauing and make less money.

The important thing imo is too keep the movie franchise you're going to see to about and flowing to the title franchise.

With the connected universe trend things can get convulted as you have to see movies about other characters to know what's going on in the sequel to the movie character you have seen.

 

[X-Maniac]

I think if they're spread through the year, have interesting character-driven stories and are different from each other, it will be fine.

 

[Raiden]

Superhero movies are already divisifying and branching out to different genres; TWS is like a political thriller, DOFP is time traveling with a post apocalyptic future sci fi, and GOTG is renegades from outer space. Only TASM 2 seems to be a pure comic book movie. As long the quality is kept high and we have movies like TDK and TWS out every once in awhile to raise the bar, I can see this genre keep going for a long time.

 

[Teelie]

Westerns did have the same mass appeal. Look at how many Westerns were made between the 50's and 60's. More than as many superhero movies in the last decade. Western shows sometimes lasted for decades. They have the same mass appeal but in different ways. Now Westerns have all but fade away and unfortunately superheroes films will too.

Westerns were almost exclusively successful in television where the format is different. And of the multitude that were made only a handful ever made it more than 5 years. For every Gunsmoke how many were attempts to replicate it that failed to make it past a year?

We're at the very beginning of the "superhero movie golden age" and it will end but I don't see it ending abruptly or completely. Inevitably it will be superceded by some new genre. Maybe giant monsters or robots will have their hey-day but for right now there is no sign of them stopping.