Marvel's Movie Announcement Blew Warner Bros. Out Of The Water
DisneyRobert Downey, Jr., Chadwick Boseman, and Chris Evans appear at Marvel's press event Tuesday, Oct. 28.Marvel pulled out all the stops to unveil a lineup of nine new movies Tuesday in Hollywood.
Friday, the studio caused a stir when press invitations were sent out for a mysterious, secret announcement. Marvel then invited fans in Los Angeles to nab tickets for the event as well.
If you weren't able to make it, you weren't left out. Marvel ran a live blog of the event for fans to follow. Those at the event were encouraged to use the hashtag #MarvelEvent when sharing photos and tweeting.
A Marvel team live-tweeted and blogged during the event so when "Avengers" director Joss Whedon showed up, fans knew. When Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Captain America (Chris Evans) took the stage with Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman the public saw it as well.
As soon as a movie was announced images that appeared on screen in Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre simultaneously hit the web both on Twitter and on Marvel.com as the site released individual stories about each film.
No sooner than the event was over did Marvel introduce Twitter accounts for new individual superheroes, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Inhumans.
In short, Marvel crushed it.
In stark contrast, when Warner Bros. announced a lineup of 11 superhero movies, plus standalone Batman and Superman movies, earlier this month, they did it at an investors' conference.
No fanboys were in attendance. No big actors came out to surprise anyone.
Instead, Warner Bros. bunched up its superhero movie releases with all of the studio releases ranging from "The Lego Movie" to three "Harry Potter" spinoff movies.
Soon after a press release hit the wire.
Here's how it read:
You wouldn't know new movies were announced unless you knew what to look for and scrolled down to the bottom for a quick list.
The only photo that made its way online was a small shot from David Lieberman at Deadline that shows the entire upcoming film schedule.
Unlike Marvel, there were no logos on display for any of the other movies. It was just standard text on blank, colored backgrounds. That's a slightly worrisome sign that gives a hint that Warner Bros. may be rushing to roll out these superhero movies as fast as possible to compete with Disney's Marvel superhero films.
Every single one of Marvel's upcoming movie title reveals was well-polished. Concept art for "Black Panther," a film that won't be out in theaters until Nov. 2017 was readily available for fans.
While Warner Bros. has an impressive, packed film schedule through 2020, the studios' nonchalant reveal shows they still don't quite grasp how to correctly unveil these films for maximum attention.
They had an incredible wealth of news to break and they decided to deliver it all in one short news dump. Are audiences and investors even familiar with all of these characters? I may know who makes up the "Suicide Squad" but a majority of people probably don't. Marvel went through each film briefly Tuesday telling a little background on the new characters before moving on.
DC Comics had various celebrations of the Caped Crusader at the Con unveiling new postage stamps and showing off an upcoming video game, "Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham." One of the original Batman actors, Adam West, was even there. It seems like a huge miss.
Marvel's announcement Tuesday came across as a mini Comic Con event. It was Disney and Marvel's answer to DC and Warner Bros. unveiling a huge film schedule. In the months and years to come, I'm sure we'll see a lot more of this back and forth between the movie studios as they continue to compete for fans' attention with comic book adaptations.
Bottomline, there are more than 30 superhero movies heading to theaters between now and 2020. Audiences are not going to want to, nor do they have the means or time to head out to every single one. Right now, Marvel comes across as the place where the party's at. Warner Bros. can roll off as many movie titles as they want, but at the end of the day, the studio may want to step up its game.