With Iron Man looking to be a runaway success, Marvel Comics' film production arm is naturally looking to capitalize on the box office take to move ahead with production on future superhero franchises. So what comic book superhero is next for the House of Ideas? How about...all of them?
In its quarterly earnings report, Marvel discloses (among other things, including that it made enough money this year to buy Stan Lee a Silver Surfer-themed iron lung) that it's in the process of developing a boatload of new multimedia projects for release in the next four years. In addition to a plethora of video games, TV shows, animated series and direct-to-DVD animated features, Marvel Film -- the company's in-house production unit -- has scheduled for release The Incredible Hulk, an Iron Man sequel, a Thor movie, a Captain America solo adventure, an Avengers team picture, and, of all things, a feature film starring perennial sad-sack second-stringer Ant-Man. (We're hoping that this one sticks to the current comics approach to the character and plays as straight-up satire.) In addition to all of that, Marvel has two licensed properties set to release in the next year: a Punisher sequel, entitled War Zone, is releasing through Lionsgate this Christmas, and an X-Men prequel, entitled Wolverine, drops a year from now through Fox. All that, and no Dr. Strange? I guess no one wants to take on the supreme challenge of out-acting Peter Hooten.
Speaking of the X-Men prequel, who better to write the screenplay than, uh, the guy responsible for Gossip Girl? In an interview with Black Book magazine (that, ominously, has since been deleted from the site's archives, leading Comics2Film to speculate that he spoke a bit too soon), Josh Schwartz slagged on previous X-Men franchise directors, took a cheap shot at a movie he hasn't seen yet, and salivates at the big paycheck he'll be getting, but tells fans not to worry: "It's not like I'm adding new characters like Toaster Head, or anything like that." Angry Toaster Head fans immediately flooded Marvel with e-mails.