Personaly I think X-men had the potential to make more money then it did if more effort was put into them, I havent watched the 3 movies in a while but from what I remember, the first was decent but slow going and not a lot of action, the second was the best of the 3 I would say, but was still leading up to the 3rd…which I thought was terrible.

Green Lantern is hardly an unknown superhero. You're probably just too young to remember.

I think some of the makers did learn a lesson by looking at the franchises mentioned.
Nolan sure got it and it seems Favreau is putting in the effort as well.

With so many superhero flicks people get more demanding and why not.
And having the right people at the helm that are actually into the subject matter themselves helps as wel I think.
The ones that grew up with it instead of the ones saying in interviews that they've read hundreds of comics SINCE they got involved with the movie.

There is hope for the future tho. The Marvel plans to get individual (and established) superhero's (you must've heard of Captain America) out there and then put them together (Avengers).
But Brad is right, they better put some effort in the story or they're gonna have a multi-franchise failure.

@JD92:
the first one had to be a bit slower to have time to establish the characters, which is needed to be interesting for newcomers. And so 2 then could have more action.
3 had the standard sequell mistake, make it bigger and things will be allright…… not.

Having just finished reading Watchmen I will predict the fanboys and the curious will make the movie a big hit it's opening weekend and then once word of mouth about the novel's horrible and laughably bad ending hits the streets the box office will collapse.

I think Green Lantern has the potential to get the attention of the average viewer, even without the background knowledge of the comic books. I believe they need to take the approach of Iron Man and use recognizable names for a relatively unknown product.

Brad if you do some minor research on the character (without having to read all the comics) just so see the powers, origins and key storylines, I'm sure you'll see that the movie could be something interesting if done right. There's gonna be a lot of CGI to showcase the ring's powers, GL flying and anything that will take place in space, but again, if done properly it could be as successful as Iron Man was.

Going a bit off topic, I have always been more of a DC than Marvel fan when reading comics. I don't believe the whole idea of a Justice League movie and incorporating all the characters into the same universe à la Marvel will work for their movies. The main reason being Batman now being a phenomenon on its own, it will not be easy to incorporate his story that people already know to a world of superheroes that are relatively unknown (except for Superman, but that had a hard time to reboot as well).

I think Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, The Flash etc…should have stand-alone movies and not focus on trying to bring it all together. It will probably be more successful that way.

This is kind of a silly discussion. ANY movie with a bad script, that relies disproportionately on a big opening weekend, is not ultimately going to produce a sustainable franchise. The fact that you're talking about comic book movies that have done it is essentially meaningless, given that I could come up with a dozen similar examples of any random genre.

I think "Iron Man" is a clear demonstration that movies AREN'T like the comics–that without decades of built-in continuity, the barriers to new viewers are fairly surmountable, as long as you do a decent first feature. "Green Lantern" is no harder to penetrate than "Friday the 13th" or any other film whose character/title has a little baggage and history. It's all about storytelling.

There's no doubt that we are going through a Comic Book filmmaking phase. Once the industry saw how much money the Batman franchise could generate it was inevitable. However, it could be argued that this phase has been building for 20 years. Now they have been joined by video game films. I'm resigned that this is clearly what audiences want and the genre will continue to dominate long past the expiration date sometime in the future. As for obscure characters, just wait until comics are being written just to made into films. Oh wait, Seth Green has already done that.

Brad, I highly recommend you check out "Green Lantern: Rebirth" if you want a taste of what the character is like — some epic sci-fi goodness mixed with some good character development. I feel that if done right, GL can be WB's answer to IM and expand the audiences' knowledge that DC just doesn't have Batman, Superman and the JL in their pantheon.

Campbell seems like the right person to do it, now if they can get the right guy to put on Hal's magic ring.

I don't think this trend is going away anytime soon. There have been some bad, bad obscure comic book characters that have been mentioned as a potential movie possibility. Ant-Man? I mean, come on. We can't even get Superman right from a known director. One of the projects that has some heads buzzing though is Deadman. If Guillermo del Toro takes the helm as is rumoured, that could be interesting. We wrote about the topic and all of del Toro's upcoming slate of films here. He is a busy man. In interested, enjoy!

http://thefilmnest.com/2009/02/deadman-hobbit-more-to-keep-guillermo-del-toro-busy-for-years/

The Rake

Your forgetting about worldwide box office!
and studios only keep 55% of the money their movies make!

FROM BRAD: If you read the whole article I am not forgetting anything and on top of that box-office dollars are negotiated on a movie-by-movie basis, there is no set fee.

I think the guy who wrotw this story is just being a D*ck!!!!

While I agree that making a better superhero movie means more box office intake (like Fantastic Four; with more seriousness, less cheesy subplots about quitting fantastic four, or Ghost Rider, with less Nicolas Cage jokes and a little more horror), the numbers here are very misleading.

The numbers, or "Domestic Box Office," is only what the movies make in the United States Of America. This doesn't include the worldwide box office intake, which would actually show "The Incredible Hulk," not making much of a profit at all. Then it would show "Ghost Rider' being quite profitable.

To this article's writer; not liking superhero movies not done with the quality they deserve is one thing, but lying about box office numbers just like the studios do is not why people like to read on this website. It's because they want to hear the truth, whether or not they liked the movie or not.

That also doesn't include DVD sales. For example, Uwe Boll's movies like "Alone In The Dark" and "Bloodrayne" have made tons of money on DVD despite being box office bombs, both were profitable, and spawned sequels each.

This is not meant to be an attack, but using domestic box office numbers simply is not a good example, unless it is known that foreign rights were sold off like "The Golden Compass" movie rights were.

Being a journalist myself, I know it's not easy to get statistics correct; the point of the article is very well understood. It's just misleading.

If you want to complain about movies? complain about the number of Spoof movies or Horror remakes we seem to get a lot of lately????? There is nothing differnt about a movie based on a comic book or a Novel!!!!!!

FROM BRAD: Already made fun of spoof movies, and quite elaborately I may say.

hey! c'mon! it's not our fault that you don't know a thing about comics, there are thousands, who knows? maybe millions like me, we love comics and we want to see more comic movies, and if some are terrible, who cares? there are worst movies outside the comic genre, so don't act like the world don't know nothing about comics, the surely do my friend, excuse me if there are mistakes, i dont speak english that well, im just peruvian and love ropeofsilicon

If you're so concerned about not knowing what's going on with comics and comic book movies, why don't you get off your ass and head to a comic book shop or bookstore? Alan Rickman was right…if there isn't a movie about it, it's not worth knowing…Jesus, just pick up a comic book and start reading if you don't want to be in the dark. It's not the hard.

And despite initially being a lesser known hero, Iron Man was on of the most successful films of 2008…so that whole 'audiences disconnect from lesser known characters' argument is sort of…y'know…wrong.

@CFE: Based on your final comment I see you didn't read the entire article, either that or didn't understand it. No worries, come back after a little bit more schooling and we can have a conversation.

I read and understood the entire article…yet you still felt the need to lump 'Iron Man' in as an example of alienating audiences.

I understand the point you're making…but I don't agree with it. Based on the success of 'Iron Man' and the anticipation of 'Iron Man 2' I think it's very clear that the general audiences you're attempting to speak for would disagree with you.

There are people who are going nuts over how awesome they think 'Watchmen' will be, yet they haven't read the book.

So on the contrary, I think General Audiences are embracing the new wave of comic book films. Thanks in large (in my opinion) to the success of 'The Dark Knight' and anticipations of both 'Watchmen' and 'Wolverine.'

And I realize that by the end of article you sort of eas up on general audiences, but I personally can't help but feel that you underestimate them.

Of course the ante has been upped for the sub-genre as a whole though, and that is something I can fully agree with.

@CFE: The problem with your argument is that I use Iron Man as an example of how lesser known superhero movies would need to be made, not that they couldn't be made. There is also a flaw in using one film as your example, in this case Iron Man is the exception to the rule, not the rule itself.

True, and re-reading your article I realize my mistake. Still, I stand by my statement that the general audience is being underestimated here.

But they're usually always underestimated, so…what're you gonna do.

I am quite excited with Martin Campbell being the front runner on "GL." I've been a fan of his since "No Escape" and he did a tremendous job with "Casino Royale."