The superhero genre of movie is not a new idea as it may seem with the number of blockbuster movies made in the millennium
and those reaching the U.S.A. and Worldwide Top 20 movies of all time. Although devoted fans and critics may protest that Hollywood is milking this genre dry it all began not long after the emergence of the first popular superheroes made there appearences in the early 1940's.
Max and Dave Fleischer created 17 ten minutes episodes of 'Superman' between 1941-43 with advanced realsitic designs and animation for their time similar to what the Disney Studios were using in their popular animated movies. The Fleischer's were reluctant to take on the project at the time and tried to discourage Paramount Studios by charging a budget of $100,000 per short, but to their surprise the Paramount executives agreed to the budget and this Superman series became the biggest-budgeted animation series in film history.
The first live action superhero to hit the big screen was Captain Marvel in 'The Adventures of Captain Marvel' (1941). This was adapted into 12 Saturday morning movie serials aimed at children and shown at weekly intervals, so popular that other heroes followed as The Phantom, Batman and Captain America.
As you can see the recent millennium period of superhero movie shows a similar trend to that of its early genre origins. Decades that followed after the 1940's saw the decline of Saturday morning serials and turmoil in the comic book industry put an end to superhero motion pictures. Television took over in the 1950's with 'The Adventures of Superman' and the camp and comedic 1960's very popular 'Batman' TV series which had its own big screen movie in 1966. Richard Donner's 'Superman: The Movie' was the first epic superhero film to be made as a feature film in 1978, and was remained the first and only blockbuster of the genre of this decade. Three sequels emerged in the 80's and at the end of the decade appeared Tim Burton's 'Batman' which also had three sequels in its franchise, the last two which had no connections with Tim Burton.
A new Golden Era appeared in the late 1990's to the present day and has brought with it some of the most profitable superhero franchises in history, including, Blade (1998), X-Men (2000), Spider-Man (2002) and the reboot of the Batman movie franchise, Batman Begins (2005). Spider-Man was a record breaking blockbuster of all time taking in $403,706,375 at the U.S.A. Box Office but only recently in 2008 has Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' not only been the highest grossing superhero film of all time, taking in $529,143,070 at the U.S.A. Box Office but also the highest grossing film domestically of any genre of the first decade of the 21st Century as James Cameron did with 'Titanic' in the 1990's.
Many superhero films are currently in development. December this year sees the release of a new film about the Punisher titled 'Punisher: War Zone'. The Spirit, based on the newspaper comic strip by Will Eisner, will be directed by Frank Miller for a 2009 release, as does a film adaptation of the classic graphic novel, 'Watchmen', after decades of abortive development, directed by Zack Snyder. Marvel Studios plan to release Thor in May 2010 and The First Avenger: Captain America in May 2011 leading up to the July 2011 release of superhero team movie 'The Avengers' which is rumoured to possibly be the most popular superhero movie of all time ever with expectations being high and the merging of previous singular superhero movie heroes Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor and Captain America.
So for the future in this blog I wish to discuss, review and break news of superheroes making it to the big and small screen and add a little nostalgia and reminiscence along the way to projects that may have been forgotten about.
I hope you enjoy it.
In the words of Stan Lee "Excelsior !"
Frank Halligan
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