Archive Page 2234
April 2025
Minecraft Movie crosses $550,562,000 million worldwide – The Numbers
Ten days of release and piling up the best haul, so far, of 2025
Marvel Comics struggle for audience retention – Bleedingcool
IDW is partnering with Webtoon Entertainment – Hollywood Reporter
Bestselling: Spider-Man beats Batman – Bleedingcool
Roger Skalbeck and Chris Irving talk about the legend of early comics publisher Victor Fox "...a swindler and a con man" – The Comics Journal
Fox’s life was a long series of business ventures and run-ins with the U.S. justice system. Over the years Fox was indicted for illegal stock trading, mail fraud, bribery, unpaid ship loans, and more. Some of this criminal activity is shrouded in confusion and mystery owing to inconsistent and convoluted documentation. All of these predate his entry into the world of comics publishing. During those years he lost copyright battles involving Superman, Batman and Robin and formed and folded countless companies to further his cunning comic empire... "
Maybe there's just too many Batman titles? – Comicbook
New Thunderbolts* Trailer
The Diamond Distributors auction is turning into a lawsuit battle – Bleedingcool
Profile of influential British humour comic artist Roy Wilson – Downthetubes
Obit for "The Mad Peck" – NY Times
John Peck, a cultural omnivore known as The Mad Peck whose dryly humorous style as an underground cartoonist, artist, critic, disc jockey and record collector was accompanied by an ornate eccentricity, died on March 15 in Providence, R.I. He was 82..."
So it looks like maybe the Diamond Distributors sell off to the Florida company Alliance isn't actually happening and someone else is going to take over?
Story at Bleedingcool
A Minecraft Movie returns hope to theaters: weekend surpasses expectations with $300+ million international haul – MSN Variety "40,300 screens across 68 territories."
One of the important things that this Minecraft film establishes is this: Hollywood had an excuse that the reason the big films (like Cap4 and Snow White) are failing is because people just won't come out to the theaters. Well, hmmmm... maybe this same dynamic is what is wrecking the comic book industry as Manga takes over the world?
A Minecraft Movie" should reinvigorate the box office after a lousy start to 2025 with disappointments that range from franchise fare such as "Captain America: Brave New World" and "Snow White" to original swings like "Mickey 17" and "The Alto Knights." Marvel's "Thunderbolts" looks to kick off summer blockbuster season in May with "Superman," "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning" and "Lilo & Stitch" among the other Hollywood offerings that hope to keep shrinking this year's box office deficit....."
Controversy around the Superman footage shown off by James Gunn – Hollywood Reporter
[Superman] is considered a critical make-or-break movie for the studio, which is heavily relying on the July 11 release to help launch a new generation of superhero titles..."
Captain America Brave New World at $409,518,073 million – The Numbers
Snow White at $147,200,161 million – The Numbers
Disney's Snow White crashing at the box office hasn't only put that production in the hole with no way to make back what it cost to produce the film, but it's a domino that has resulted in the cancelling of a live remake of Disney's Tangled (a Repunzle animated film with a good reputation from 2010) and who knows what else may get flattened in the wake of the SnowWhitopocalypse.
Meanwhile, Captain America 4 is poking along and Disney/Marvel seems to have shrugged off the disappointing earnings numbers and instead they're stirring up publicity on their future Russo Bros Avengers movies, with Hayley Atwill due to come back but as Captain Carter, apparently. It will be interesting if they mix together Mackie's Captain America with Atwill's pseudo Captain Britain (Captain Union Jack?) character.
But the real test isn't Cap4 which came out in March, rather it is Thunderbolts* in May and then especially Fantastic Four in July (up against Superman). If all these superhero films flop (unlikely) or only do a middling amount of cinema business, the big production companies are going to have to seriously rethink what they're spending (i.e., blowing) their money on.
A lot of commentators have declared that the superhero-era of movie making (and superhero-sized earnings) is over, which of course is the usual Nostradamus-type of writing that really doesn't mean anything unless the predictions actually come true. To whit, if July 2025 is a bad month for superheroes, then it has been confirmed that the $40 billion dollar earning spree for Marvel and DC since Nolan's Batman Begins (which is a marker for the rebooting of not only Batman but superhero films in general) is over.
But, but, but what about the billion+ that Deadpool and Wolverine made last year? In Hollywood history, when a genre has run its course and isn't being taken seriously anymore by audience or the people leading in the making of the films, a self-mocking, self-referencing production will come out, for example Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) which put a tombstone on top of Universal's long string (which started in the silent ea!) of horror genre films. In the 1950s horror was rebooted into a technological, atomic-powered version of itself, with the Gothic trappings of the earlier films (and the earlier style of telling a story and fashioning characters) restructured with a sense of 50s modernism and the dread of the nuclear age, but even more importantly, with no obvious allegiances to what came before in the past.
If superheroes prove to be dead in July, there'll have to be a clever innovative idea to revamp them to get the audience back. A passage of time helps because it will dull the memory of the stink from failed movies, bring in new potential audience from young people who were only kids when the big bombs crashed at the theaters, and hopefully, unless the declining importance of comic books themselves prevent it, will mirror a renaissance in the comic book industry as new ideas and strong craftsmanship (like what Nolan provided in 2005 with Batman Begins. The Marvel equivalent would be Iron Man from 2008. The comic book equivalent could be the 1980s Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and the Alan Moore deconstruction of the genre in various stories) brings together a reinvigorated, interested, large audience.
Marvels director Nia DaCosta "The way they make those films is very different to the way, ideally, I would make a film" – Superherohype
Diamond Distributors deal could be finalized on Monday, with certain limitations – Bleedingcool
Jon Bernthal working on a The Punisher special for 2026 – Comicbookmovie
Anniversary of the 1950 effort in St. Louis to ban some comic book sales – KTVI Saint Louis
An ordinance ban on "lurid comic books” that was backed by civic organizations with fines from $50 to $500.
Extended Superman movie footage at CinemaCon shows coming film to be more sci-fi oriented – Gamesradar
Batman Hush 2 review: cash grab with no reason to exist – Superherohype
Jenette Kahn - the Wonder Woman of DC Comics – BBC News
Very short written article along with a 10 minute "Witness History" audio podcast that covers Kahn's career and impact at DC Comics from 1976 until 2002, with interview clips with Kahn and bits of reportage from the DC feature films.
Copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 goes for $30K – Money Canada MSN
Looks like a CGC 2.0 in the image in the article, so $30K is well above the average $22K on that rating, but this is probably Canadian dollars mentioned in the article, and with the currect exchange rate, that comes out around $21,500 in United States currency.
"When Val Kilmer Was Batman and the ’90s Were Their Most ’90s" – NY Times
Could the Ridley Scott Comic Book "disrupt" the comic book industry? – DPA International
Massive Hollywood "nerd" collection of props and stuff from Star Trek, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Lord of the Rings, Robocop, on sale for $4.8 million – Comicbook
You want fan service? You got it!
Goofy is Spider-Man in July comic book – Marvel Inc
See the cover What if Goofy Became the Incredible Spider-Man
With tarifs being inacted, printing is going up, including for comic books
Publishing involves printing, and a lot of that has moved out of the USA in the last decades. Getting comics and books printed elsewhere, even with shipping costs and custom duties added to the bill, is/was still cheaper than American-based printing.
At one time printing was as common in US cities and towns as were Blockbuster Videos and record stores, a phenomenon of convenience and pricing that eroded quickly through a combination of factors, such as the the onset of the internet (which decimated printing jobs) and technological changes that resulted with printing being accomplished with fewer people and a more narrow list of materials needed to do it.
In theory, buying cheaper printing from China or Canada (or any of the other countries with professional printing industries) is a net positive for an American publisher trying to improve the profit margin on the price point for a copy of their comic book. But, printing is an industry in a whole list of other industries that are part of how governments protect and exploit their native businesses, and so it is included in the current trade wars that are around the planet. Depending upon who you read, you can predict it will have a calamitous effect on printing-based businesses (newspaper, books, comic books) or that in the long run it benefits the American business world because it forces changes in "unfair" trade practices currently happening country-to-country. Either way, it's real and its going to change more than just the price tag in the corner of the cover of a comic book.
Impact of printing tariffs – Printing World
More than 90.0% of the participants in the PRINTING United Alliance Effects of Tariffs on the Printing Industry Survey expect the recent increases in tariffs to affect their business..."
Pres Trump versus Comic Books – Comicsbeat
I spoke with publishers and artists about how the tariffs are impacting them. Publishers say it’s already affecting their profit/loss reports..."
Val Kilmer has died – MSN Hollywood Reporter
Auction has copies of X-Men #1, Tales of Suspense #39, Incredible Hulk #181 together – D Journal – i.e., first X-Men, first Iron Man, first Wolverine.
Auction prediction is for a sale at £13,000 (approx $16,000) - Ewbanks auctioneers in Merre Englande - happening April 9, 2025, 10:00am.
Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson
Mary Jane Watson and Venom – Marvel Inc
Hollywood Box Office isn't performing the way the industry predicts for itself
Case in point, the assuredness that Deadline Hollywood (which has changed a lot since Nikki Finke, the founder, left it) is able to say that Snow White would stay number #1 at box office in the second weekend as five competing films (including the Statham A Working Man) was about to hit: "...none of them ... will be able to put Disney’s embattled Snow White to sleep, that live action take of the Disney 1937 toon [to] do around $20M hopefully in weekend 2." Instead, weekend #2 was $14,331,715 and Statham's movie, based on a Chuck Dixon story, was number one.
"2025 box office is off to a terrible start" – Los Angeles Times – Mar 25, 2025
A goodly portion of movie and entertainment reporting in general is "wish casting," but if June and July are lousy, there will be a torrent of "is Hollywood dead?" articles, and then the question will remain, does Hollywood really know what's going on with itself?
From about a year ago:
2025 box office will be "roaring hot" – The Wrap - April 9, 2024
"Hollywood Contraction Hits Entertainment Executive Jobs: This Is A Full-Scale Depression" – (Deadline Hollywood) – March 18, 2024
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Original page April 15, 2025