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Bankruptcy
On December 27th, 1996, Marvel Comics had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to get a bailout worth $525 million. This had come after years of doing everything they could to avoid such a situation. The company had been struggling due to a drop-off in comic-book interest in the late 1990s and was forced to sell many assets to avoid shutting down completely. -
Bankruptcy Cont.
Because of this, the company had to sell its rights to many properties including Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and even Iron Man in order to stay afloat. This was a beginning of a new era for Marvel Comics and it would essentially take a miracle to pull them out of this. -
Marvel calls on Iron Man
At the 2006 Comic-Con Marvel announced that they were going to be moving forward with movies about The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man, and everybody’s favorite Iron Man. Looking back, this was the beginning of it all, as they were showing off the next generation of Marvel movies. Jon Favreau, the director of Iron Man, said at the Marvel panel, “I’m looking at this as more than just a movie, but a group of films,” unknowingly foreshadowing the next ten years of Marvel movies. -
Marvel Calls on Iron Man cont.
Unfortunately, no one could see what was to come. The story about this announcement claimed that Marvel Studios was sending out their “second-string superheroes” as opposed to the real fan favorites like Spider-man and the X-men. People were not really excited about Iron Man being the guy to lead these movies, and it wasn’t until 2008 when the first movie finally came out that people finally got excited about Iron Man. -
Avengers Assembled
In the Summer of 2010, Marvel had released just 3 of their movies thus far, with 2 more movies slated for release in the next year. However, at the 2010 Comic-Con, Marvel grabbed everybody’s attention and announced cast the first Avengers movie. At the very end of their panel, they brought every main cast member onto the stage to show to the world for the very first time all together. They had put together, “the most ambitious movie ever,” according to Robert Downey Jr. Himself. -
Avengers Assembled video
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Addition of Spider-Man
In 2014, the MCU was right in the midst of their infinity saga and fans had fallen in love. They were 10 films in and everyone had completely bought into everything Marvel was doing. But there was still one question lingering on everyone’s mind. Where is Spider-Man? You can’t this entire Marvel Cinematic Universe and not include the most popular Marvel character of all-time. This question would be answered after a very unique and strange series of events. -
Addition of Spider-Man cont.
There was a hacker group that targeted Sony, who owns the rights to Spider-Man, and released numerous emails and documents relating to their future plans. Included in these emails was Sony’s future plans for Spider-Man, which included conversations with Marvel President, Kevin Feige. It was discovered that Marvel and Sony were coming to an agreement to allow Spider-Man to officially in future MCU movies. -
The End of the Beginning
https://youtu.be/WM2nQ0mXOYE
At the 2017 Comic-Con, Marvel showed the first trailer for Avengers: Infinity War, the first part of the finale of the "Infinity Saga." Fans were able to get a taste of what was in store for this epic finale. This movie would be a culmination of 18 movies, connecting dozens of characters from across the universe, and would come out almost exactly 10 years after the first Iron Man movie. Nobody, including Marvel every thought they would end up here. -
Expanding the Universe
With the finale of the MCU's Infinity saga set to release in the summer of 2019, many wondered what Marvel was going to do moving forward. They had wrapped up their main storyline and all of their main characters had completed their arc. Then Disney bought Fox Studios and opened up a new universe of opportunity. Marvel now had the rights to all of its original characters and with Disney+ on the way, their potential future projects seem endless.