Chapter 457 Key Projects
All in all, Blue Valley Capital at this time was still unknown in the United States.
This company acquired Summit Entertainment, but coincidentally, Summit Entertainment was not very well-known at this time. Although they released some good movies, there were too many similar small companies in Hollywood. Outside of Hollywood, Summit Entertainment It is also not known.
Although Marvel Entertainment is no longer a great company at this time, at least its popularity is still there - who doesn't know Spider-Man and the X-Men?
Therefore, the sudden news that Marvel Entertainment was acquired by Blue Valley Capital also attracted the attention of some people, but most of them thought that-oh, someone is ready to try (toss) on Marvel, that's all. .
There are also people who will investigate the situation and information of Blue Valley Capital, but most of them are companies that have dealings with Marvel, such as Sony and 20th Century Fox, which own the film and television rights of its characters...
After the agreement to acquire Marvel Entertainment is reached, it also means that Blue Valley Capital needs to come up with US$2 billion in cash in a short period of time, of which US$1.7 billion will be paid to the original shareholders of Marvel Entertainment, and the other US$300 million will be It is necessary to inject Marvel Entertainment to ensure their business continuity - especially the most important superhero movie projects.
Blue Valley Capital first obtained a loan of up to US$2 billion from Rich23 Capital - these loans were obtained from Standard Chartered Bank as collateral for part of the company's shares held by Rich23 Capital.
Blue Valley Capital needs to bear the interest on this part of the loan, and then use the US$2 billion to complete the acquisition and capital injection of Marvel Entertainment.
After the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment, Avi Arad served as the CEO of Marvel Entertainment, and Kevin Feige served as the Vice President of Marvel Entertainment and concurrently served as the CEO of Marvel Studios.
The main thing they need to do is to promote the grand plan of the "Marvel Universe", but whether this plan can be carried out depends on the results of their first self-produced movie "Iron Man".
Here, let’s talk about the “Iron Man” project.
As early as 1990, Universal Pictures acquired the film and television rights to the Iron Man character from Marvel, but Universal Pictures' "Iron Man" project has been delayed for a long time and has not been finalized.
The main reason was that Universal Pictures was willing to take over the copyright of Iron Man at the time. It just wanted to ride on the popularity of superheroes and was not prepared to invest too much money in filming - Iron Man's reputation at that time was really too low. If you are not a fan of comics, not many people know about it.
The heroes that the public is familiar with are Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. These are the top "superheroes".
So to put it bluntly, Universal Pictures wanted to make a low-cost superhero movie to ride on the superhero trend.
But everyone knows that the selling point of the hero Iron Man is various armors. Let’s not talk about whether the technology of the 1990s can produce such cool effects, but purely from a production point of view, the cost cannot be too low.
After discovering this, Universal Pictures' Iron Man project has been put on hold - you must know that when Marvel sells the copyright of a hero, there will be a treaty, that is, the other party must film the hero's film and television works within a specified number of years. Otherwise, the copyright will automatically revert to Marvel.
Universal Pictures only held the rights to Iron Man for 15 years, so they transferred the rights to Iron Man to 20th Century Fox in 1996.
At that time, Fox could be said to be Marvel's favorite customer, because it spent a lot of money to buy the copyrights of heroes such as the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil from Marvel.
You know, at that time, Marvel's most popular hero team was not the Avengers, but the X-Men. In addition, the Fantastic Four were also very popular.
Initially, Fox was very interested in the Iron Man project. After news of the project spread, it attracted the interest of heavyweight actors such as Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage, who both expressed their willingness to play the role of Tony Stark.
Fox also planned to let Quentin Quentin direct the film, but later the project was still delayed.
There are several reasons. First, in 1997, Warner's "Batman and Robin" suffered an unprecedented failure and suffered serious losses, making superhero movies the hardest hit area at the time.
Movies with such a popular character as Batman have been scrapped. What about other characters? Who dares to take pictures?
Secondly, in Fox's project process at that time, X-Men had the highest priority, and Iron Man was ranked last. Moreover, Iron Man movies were too expensive. With "Batman and Robin" affecting the market, Fox is also unwilling to invest so much money in a character who is not very popular.
After all, even for "X-Men", Fox only gave a budget of 75 million US dollars. If you want to film Iron Man, it will cost at least hundreds of millions of dollars. With Iron Man's popularity, in their opinion, they will definitely not be able to get such a high amount. investment.
In fact, the production of "X-Men" was already full of twists and turns at that time, and it was almost impossible to complete smoothly. Naturally, Iron Man, which had the lowest priority, could not be seen.
In the blink of an eye, the copyright was about to expire again, so Fox transferred the copyright to New Line Cinema.
After New Line Cinema obtained the rights to Iron Man, it didn't take long for New Line Cinema to start producing the project very seriously.
Including hiring George Whedon (later the director of "Avengers") to direct, and also inviting a number of screenwriters who have written superhero movie scripts to make a good story.
The reason why New Line Cinema is so interested in "Iron Man" is not only that the senior executives are very visionary (New Line's senior executives once accurately saw that the "Lord of the Rings" series would be a hit, and devoted all their efforts to support the filming), there is also some external factors.
At that time, Fox's "X-Men" had already been released, and it was a success at the box office and word-of-mouth, proving that the superhero market affected by "Batman and Robin" had begun to return to normal.
Of course, what's more important is that it proves that superhero movies don't have to be Superman or Batman to be successful.
In 2002, Sony's "Spider-Man" caused an unprecedented sensation and broke the record for superhero origin movies in North America.
Under this circumstance, it's no wonder that New Line Cinema values "Iron Man" so much.
Unfortunately, in the end, this project still came to nothing.
why?
It's interesting to say that because Iron Man's copyright has expired.
However, New Line Cinema still hoped to renew the contract with Marvel. However, at this time, two things happened.
First, New Line Cinema was acquired by Time Warner in the 1990s, and Marvel's rival, DC, happens to be owned by Warner.
Warner won't be so stupid as to let its subsidiaries cause trouble for itself.
Second, Kevin Feige, a genius, had already controlled a certain amount of power within Marvel at that time. Marvel had already planned to make its own movies at that time, which meant that the plan for the "Marvel Universe" was already in early planning. So they have no intention of renewing the contract.
What's more, since 1990, after more than ten years of tinkering, the Iron Man movie has never been made. Who knows what will happen when the contract is renewed.
In the end, "Iron Man" was developed by Marvel itself.
It is also a risky move for Marvel, because Marvel, which has no funds, has already mortgaged some of its heroes to banks and relied on borrowed money to develop movies.
If you don't succeed, you will be benevolent.
But now that there are new bosses and "funders", the backbone of Marvel Entertainment who prefers to create the "Marvel Universe" on their own has also taken control of the company's rights.
From this moment on, Marvel Entertainment will devote all its energy to the production of "Iron Man", a movie that is crucial to Marvel's movie strategy.
Currently, both Marvel Entertainment and Summit Entertainment have been acquired by Blue Valley Capital, but there is not much relationship between them.
