Posted in: Avengers, Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Ike Perlmutter, Marvel Comics, Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: black panther, mcu, Wall Street journal
The Black Panther movie may have made north of a billion dollars, but some people at Marvel were nervous about the appeal of such a film.
In April 2015, Bleeding Cool broke the news that Marvel Chair Ike Perlmutter was briefing against the idea of a Captain Marvel movie. Something that other news reporters managed to catch up with three weeks later (crediting someone else with the discovery, of course). Perlmutter was accused of blocking Captain Marvel and Black Panther films by Disney boss Bob Iger in favour of his pushing The Inhumans and an X-Men beating franchise. Iger is quoted as saying, “I called Ike and told him to tell his team to stop putting up roadblocks and ordered that we put both Black Panther and Captain Marvel into production.”
Back in July, The Wall Street Journal’s podcast, The Journal, hosted by Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson, ran a series of episodes by Ben Fritz looking at the rise of Marvel Studios from comic book publisher to film studio to Disney purchase and the executive and creator battles within. It made a few headlines, but there are lots of gems that seemed to be missed, such as Marvel’s initial relationship with Sony Pictures, led by our favourite Marvel executives, Avi Arad, and Ike Perlmutter, two toy manufacturers who took over the comic book company and made it profitable again. Catch up on more of our coverage with this tag.
John Turitzin was Marvel’s former Chief Administrative Officer, Executive Vice President, and General Counsel, with a different take. “Well, we had a long history doing diverse characters in our comic books. But promoting one of those characters, elevating one of those characters to a movie, and backing it with a $250 million production budget was a whole different level of concern and a whole different level of risk. So, for us, we were quite concerned about audience reaction [and] audience reception to breaking the mold of the traditional successful superhero movie starring a white guy… We had a published film lineup of movies we intended to make over the next several years, and one of them was Black Panther on that list. It was on the list. We wanted to make the movie, but we were cautious about it.”
Black Panther – and Captain Marvel – were both ten-figure revenue movies. And that frog was never going to be put back in the box. Ike Perlmutter only lasted a few more years before he was fired.
Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!
Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!
