Outsider Vision
Here is a minor spoiler:
A couple of minutes into Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019), the Marvel Studios logo expectingly materializes.
And alongside that now-iconic brand plays Whitney Houston’s (née Dolly Parton) ballad “I Will Always Love You.”
Yesterday, it was announced that Disney ($DIS) and Sony ($SNE) couldn’t come to terms on how the billions of dollars that would be generated from the next two planned Spider-Man films would be shared:
“Much of today’s news about Spider-Man has mischaracterized recent discussions about Kevin Feige’s involvement in the franchise. We are disappointed, but respect Disney’s decision not to have him continue as a lead producer of our next live-action Spider-Man film. We hope this might change in the future, but understand that the many new responsibilities that Disney has given him — including all their newly added Marvel properties — do not allow time for him to work on IP they do not own. Kevin is terrific and we are grateful for his help and guidance and appreciate the path he has helped put us on, which we will continue.”
These days, Disney and its shareholders hold much more clout in the form of a $240 billion company compared to Sony’s fading Japanese star of $70 billion.
To Sony’s credit, it revitalized the superhero genre with the original Spider-Man (2002) after Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) had their respective generational influences.
And yes, Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) was the deserved Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature besting Pixar’s Incredibles 2.
How the Marvel fans respond at the box office with this new disruption of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is to be determined if both sides remain apart.
Similarly, on the topic of tribes, Alex Danco wrote a blog post titled “Secrets about People: A Short and Dangerous Introduction to René Girard”:
“Perhaps one of the paradoxical benefits of the internet, in the long-term, is shifting the way we think about peer relationships from ‘opt-out,’ which it’s been since pretty much forever, towards ‘opt-in.’ In an opt-out peer set relationship, we default towards needing to look good in front of people; towards caring what people think, towards being embarrassed about aspects of ourselves, almost automatically — regardless of who the other person is. Not caring about what other people think has to be this deliberate act of bravery that’s hard to do. But in an opt-in peer set relationship, we only people in as peers and role models selectively and deliberately; not caring about what most people think comes naturally, because it’s on by default. This is a healthy thing, I think.
People talk about this as ‘finding your tribe,’ which gets at part of it. But the other part is a conscious recognition that a lot of the bad things that we think and do and see aren’t the result of individually bad people but because of the dynamics of group behavior — when we do something bad, our peer set is in a way responsible. Fortunately, being aware of this means we’re able to ignore or reject this group dynamic while still appreciating individuals, and even being friends with them. Opt-in is a kind of happy humility: it means accepting that we are not the peers and equals of many of the other people that we see and might otherwise admire and that that’s okay.”
Meanwhile, as Apple hovers below $1 trillion in value, it knows it has to make an impact on original programming since that’s what everyone else is doing.
Will $6 billion be enough, even with all the star power it has lined up?
I don’t know.
When Netflix ($NFLX) originally announced House of Cards in 2011 with David Fincher attached, it made an industry impact.
Today, with even names such as Acorn TV and Crunchyroll attracting millions of eyeballs around the streaming world, Apple is hardly on Emmy’s radar:
“Unlike Disney — which will allocate just under $7 billion of its estimated $24 billion content budget this year on sports properties like ESPN and another huge portion on theatrical releases — Apple is focusing its content budget entirely on streaming. So it might make more sense to compare Apple’s creative budget to Netflix’s. While Netflix is currently spending upwards of $15 billion on its own original series and films this year — more than 300 originals shot around the world — it took six years to get to that level of spending. When Netflix first started looking into developing original content back in 2012 and 2013, its budget was much smaller.”
Today, Hollywood has few names that stick around and stick out from the pack from generation to generation like the original founder of Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor, which is a name you should learn:
“Under [Adolph Zukor], Paramount had been the first to induce stars from the legitimate theater to make movies, the first to make movies in Hollywood, first to produce feature-length films, first to distribute and exhibit color movies, first to import foreign talent for American movies, and the first to introduce American films abroad.
Zukor had a lot of courage. Even after he was wiped out, the old man never lost his bearings. Until he was ninety-seven, he went to the studio every day for a few hours. He had an almost innate sense of what people wanted to watch.
To me, Adolph Zukor was the greatest showman of his generation. His appreciations of programming, promotion, and advertising remained unfailing almost up to his death… his mind remained crystal clear. He wanted to know everything about each picture. Not only Paramount’s films but those of the other studios as well. He made the most astute observations as to why a picture didn’t do well. His counsel benefited the company almost to the day he died, at age 103, in 1976.”
Zukor would’ve probably found a way to keep the universe intact…
