All Marvel, All The Time: Your Favorite Superheroes, Taking Over A Channel Near You
Quick, who’s your favorite Marvel superhero of all time? Spiderman, Thor, Captain America? Maybe you’ve always loved the Hulk. Whichever is your favorite, you’ve probably watched all the movies a dozen times (or we’ll call it a dozen, because maybe the real number is big enough to be embarrassing.) Soon, you could catch your favorite Marvel heroes and villains on their own channel, all day, every day, any time you like.
As you may know, Disney bought Marvel in 2009. As you surely know, Disney loves growth and expansion — and Disney loves channels. Now, Disney is in talks to bring you two new channels — one devoted to Star Wars and one to Marvel.
The Marvel channel (and the Star Wars channel) might entail a bit of a wait. According to IGN, the idea was first floated by a top Disney CEO just last week.
CEO Robert Iger reportedly pointed out that channels devoted to Marvel and Star Wars, both relatively recent Disney acquisitions, were one of several options open to the company, and hinted that this might be in the works sometime in the future.
Disney does face certain limitations with the Marvel line — according to Theme Park University, there are limitations on the rights to add Marvel attractions to any theme parks, for instance, unless and until Islands of Adventure closes its gates — that park has exclusive rights “east of the Mississippi” with no (known) end date.
However, in his comments, Iger affirmed that Disney absolutely does have the rights to create an entire television network, and to create content for such a channel.
“[W]e do have an ability as a company to take product, specifically filmed entertainment, television, movies, directly to consumers.”
Disney is definitely working to take Marvel in new directions — for an example, see the teaser trailer below for Marvel’s first “graphic audiobook.”
Could channels devoted to Star Wars and Marvel characters thrive, and would there be sufficient content available to film them?
There’s no doubt.
What kind of content could we see? Well, ScreenRant theorized back when the Disney/Marvel deal first went through that this could lead not only to new cartoons based on Marvel heroes, but to new origin movies — movies that wouldn’t have to take the theater route, but could be straight-to-television, even as a miniseries.
We’re currently seeing some great origin series based on DC superheros — Gotham, for instance, is one of the hottest dramas on television. Disney could definitely release several new series based on the origins of various heroes — picture more in-depth looks into the backgrounds of various Spiderman villains, or a mini-series in which each episode focuses on one of the Women of Marvel.
Would you subscribe to an all-Marvel or an all-Star Wars channel?
[Image via screengrab]
