I figure I pirate enough music that I don't need to start downloading movies (Battle Royal being a notable exception). So I haven't seen the copy of Wolverine that's been making the rounds the last couple weeks. From everything I hear the movie kinda sucks, and more important to the nerd community, Fox has really taken a hatchet to some of the supporting characters that appear in the movie. If Wolverine tanks at the cash register and is universally panned, where does that leave the X-Men franchise? You don't suspect they would just keep rolling out "origin" movies do you? The X-Men sell way to many comics, and attract way to many fan-boys to be an "also ran" at the box office.
Fox has had the movie rights to the X-Men films for years now, and I have no idea when the rights might revert back to Marvel so this is all speculation. Fox was smart when they handed the first two movies over to Bryan Singer, but then they rushed out a poorly written and directed sequel in X-3. It's not just the X-Men franchise that Fox has driven into the ground. They've been rolling out some really crap-tastic movies the last couple of years. Here was last years big summer line up for Fox; X-Files 2, Meet Dave, The Happening, Space Chimps, Babylon AD. Their lone "hit" last summer was What Happens in Vegas, 'nuff said.
Marvel showed last summer that they could produce hits on their own. The Incredible Hulk did really well for a reboot that was only a few years removed from the original. And I don't know anyone that didn't like Iron Man. Maybe it's time for Marvel to wrestle away control of what might be it's most popular intellectual property. It might be a shame to have to recast Wolverine and Professor Xavier, but anything is better than Halle Berry as Storm, right?
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