USA Today article w/Avi Arad...Warner please hire this guy!...

[DR.MID-NITE]

I was just reading today's (6/6) USA Today article with Avi Arad who is head of Marvel Entertainment. Now, here is a guy who is a fan and in charge. Here are some excerpts of what was said:

"Arad seems to love all of the 4,700 characters who populate Marvel's comic book world. And he is protective of the few he lets venture onto the big screen. When an early script version of Spider-Man had the hero slashing someone's throat, Arad stepped in. "That would be the end of everything," he told the writers. "Spider-Man kills nobody."

"Arad serves as producer or executive producer for all of Marvel's movies. Marvel has creative control over its properties, to maintain the integrity of the characters, but contracts with other studios to physically produce the films."

This is the most important quote:

"When you talk with him, it's like talking with any other comic book fan," says Ben Affleck, who played the title role in this year's Daredevil.
"He's a savvy business guy, but he's also a fan," says Affleck. "That's the key to doing comic book movies well. You have to respect the material or the diehard fans won't buy it. Avi respects the material and the fans."

I really hope someone from DC and Warner are reading and learning.

[The Penguin]

I think part of the problem is the more passionate DC folks don't have the kind of control that Marvel does. The people at DC Comics are also employees of AOL Time Warner and since they own the comic company and the character they can totally bypass DC if that is what they want to do.

Since Marvel is an independant company, they can negotiate the deals with the studios directly and Avi can step in and tell the writer, "hey you can't do that." At DC, if someone tried to that the exec would probably laugh at them and asked what they knew about making a movie since they just write comic books. :rolleyes:

If only Marvel owned Batman...

[czyznyck99]

DC just doesn't have anybody big in the front office who is as favored as Arad. The only people that would have a shot right now at that kind of role would be someone like Brian Robbins, and he's not very high up. And as long as WB has decent counteragents to Marvel movies (like The Matrix), they won't consider it necessary to make a comic book movie.

Later.