Since purchasing Marvel Entertainment a little a few months ago, the Walt Disney company seems to have done one thing right: they have left the boys and girls at Marvel Studios to their own devices. Joss Whedon's Avengers is currently filming without any reports of micromanagement from the Mouse House, and Disney is also apparently letting Marvel continue its tradition of hiring edgy-but-not-necessarily-bankable filmmakers for its films, as evidenced by the fact that Shane Black, perhaps best known for for scripting the first two Lethal Weapon movies but who has not helmed any blockbusters, is currently slated to direct Iron Man 3.
From all indications, so far it seems that Disney is perfectly happy to simply sign the checks.
The thing is, though, that the wheels were set in motion for both The Avengers and Iron Man 3 looooong before the Disney purchase was finalized, so one could argue that, considering how late they came on board as far as those two films are concerned, Disney figured that the best thing they could do was get out of the way and let Marvel do their work. Whether this is an indication of things to come or unique to this situation only time will tell.
What I am curious about, though, is which Marvel character Disney will shepherd to the big screen, meaning; what is the first Marvel movie which will be conceived, shot, marketed and released entirely under Disney's watch, and how will it do?
There has been talk of Doctor Strange being the first such movie, but Marvel has a number of other properties stuck in "development hell" many of them with other studios like The Black Panther, Luke Cage, and The Sub-mariner to name a few. A film adaptation of the relatively-new Marvel comic Runaways was greenlit not too long ago, barely months before the Disney takeover, and one wonders what Disney plans to do with it.
Now, Disney, in the new millennium at least, has not really had a lot of quality films to their name, apart from a few with Jerry Bruckheimer's name on them, and most of the Pixar films. Tron: Legacy, the rare example of a non-Bruckheimer, live-action Disney film that was actually released under the Disney banner (as opposed to those released under their "imprints" Touchstone, Hollywood or Miramax) was reasonably fun but not breathtakingly good. In fact, since the Weinstein brothers put up their own studio, Disney has lost significant amounts of art-house cred as well. In fact, one of Disney's most high-profile, non-Bruckheimer live-action hits was the execrable Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
So at the end of the day, their true benefit to Marvel is not so much creative input, considering that their strongest product has always ever had someone else's name attached to it (Pixar, Bruckheimer), but their deep pockets and undeniable marketing muscle. However, those crucial factors could spell the difference between a Marvel movie rotting in limbo and one that's out in theaters, putting fannies in the seats.
Disney's pockets could be the solution to buying back the rights to all of those unmade movies that studios like Fox, Universal and Sony are desperately hoarding with empty promises of reboots and upcoming productions, and to pulling these projects out of development hell by waving big fat paychecks under noses of the talent that Marvel wants to land. The Sub-Mariner, for example, has been languishing at Universal for years, and the last update on production was something like five years ago. Black Panther and Luke Cage are properties that have been talked about for decades with Sony Pictures not apparently not being any closer to making the movies as they were when they were announced years upon years ago. These are the kinds of problems that Disney money and legal muscle could solve.
To my mind, Disney has been playing it right by letting the Marvel boys and girls just do their thing while just giving them money, but in other ways they could be a lot more proactive; they can try to go out there and rescue Marvel's "orphans."
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