Marvel Enterprises today held their inaugural Analyst Day Webcast during which Marvel Studios CEO Avi Arad delivered his previously promised updates on Marvel's upcoming slate of movie and television projects.

Arad began his segment of the proceedings by crediting Marvel's recent movie successes to a new generation of filmmakers who grew up reading Marvel Comics.

"There is a whole generation of people that grew up on sci-fi {and} comic books, specifically Marvel," he said. "These people earned their stripes over the years, professionally, to get to the point that they can take their favorite characters and bring them to life. And we've been very blessed to reach this community and bring these people to the table, and prove to the industry, to the world, that our material not only makes great entertainment, but it's there to support {the} core businesses that Marvel is in."

"One thing we bring to the table is what I call 'natural sequels'. There are sequels out there - Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2. These are not natural. These are take a shot if you have a little bit of awareness. With us, there is great awareness."

"We have a powerful brand, and supply the studios with a significant product on the box office, on DVD, international distribution, and more importantly supply us with a significant product to support our core businesses. All these movies generate video games, all the PG-13's generate toys, and obviously licensing varies from license to license by it's story, by it's art, by it's target audience."

"{That's} the basics of the secret of our success," Arad revealed. "It's a very simple formula. When a studio that is basically a banker and a distributor, they have a product that virtually guarantees a semblance of success. The studio executive sits there and says I'm making a Marvel movie, I'm going to get the right talent, I'm going to get the right actors. The star is the movie. The star is the brand. {You} have all these lunatics running around the world that cannot wait to see this movie four times on opening weekend. That's how you generate these numbers. The good news for us is that it used to be called a male core audience. These days are over. We get male, female. We are today in a business that appeals to everybody - kids, adults."

Arad then went on to discuss individual movies in turn, beginning with Blade: Trinity.

"We are now in the middle of principal photography on Blade III," Arad announced. "Now Blade III is an interesting story, because we say we have 4700 characters, {and} some of you that are comic book followers will know that Blade was number 4697 when we first started. He was actually part of the Tomb of Dracula, not a book on his own. And for our friends in New Line, Blade today is a billion dollar franchise. {There was} an increase with Blade II, {and} Blade III has a bigger budget. It's a very good movie."

"Hulk had an incredible story for us," Arad said. "What we're very proud of {is that} we made an Ang Lee drama. If we made it probably sillier or happier, maybe it would have done better. The point is that for our brand, Hulk was extremely successful in taking our franchise and lifting it out of sort-of-known to an incredibly important franchise that performed beautifully for us. And the DVD is performing very, very well for us and Universal, and obviously there will be a sequel. We'll call it Hulk-Lite to make it easier for people to deal with the psychological depth," Arad joked.

"The Punisher has been around for a long time. The icon of the skull, the whole idea of the death-wish vigilante. You'll see this movie is coming in April. We put class in the upper class. This movie is an amazing story, and I think what Wesley {Snipes} did for Blade, Thomas Jane will do for the Punisher. We are already developing the next one. We have a lot of confidence in it. We took a story that people knew, a smaller story, and we brought in a writer/director {Johnathan Hensleigh}, we brought in John Travolta, we brought in Rebecca {Romijn-}Stamos, and all of a sudden we had a very important movie our of something that, in the past, was considered rather small."

"Gargoyle is a great example of taking something that, unless you are in the deep trenches of the Marvel Universe, you probably never heard of it, or it would have sounded like a public domain name. We found a writer and we got him interested in Gargoyle. Jonathan Hales, who is a fantastic English writer, fell in love with our enthusiasm for our story of what we feel we can tell about the Gargoyle... in a fine, family movie."

"Our first horror movie, Man-Thing, we just wrapped in Australia. What we did {is} we found Brett Leonard, who {directed} Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity, a very, very good director, and I think he had a girlfriend in Australia so he said I'll go to Australia and make this whole movie. It has huge production values. We just finished selling it internationally in mid-February in Milan with great success."

In the subsequent Q&A session, Arad clarified the situation surrounding Marvel's previous deal multi-license with Artisan in light of the recent purchase of the company by Lion's Gate.

"We have a single deal {with Artisan}," Arad confirmed, referring to The Punisher movie. "There was a lot of misconception in the past. At one time we had multi-picture deals with Artisan, {but} it was on a basis of 'use it or lose it'. A couple of years ago, they lost it. Basically, the deal that we have with Artisan is inherited by Lion's Gate."

Toy Biz President & CEO Alan Fine confirmed that all of Marvel's movie deals have the aforementioned "use it or lose it" clause, and in the case of Artisan they did not meet the time frames required of the deal. Marvel Enterprises President & CEO Allen Lipson added that whilst Artisan have the rights to produce the first Punisher movie, there are very specific milestones that will need to be reached in order to retain the sequel rights.

Other topics discussed by Arad were as follows:


A Director's Cut version of Daredevil will be out on DVD in April.

Nick Fury and Tales of The Zombie are on the slate for big screen treatment as action/adventure and horror films, respectively.

The Punisher will be rated R, and will be distributed internationally by Sony. A full trailer for the film will be released at the end of this year.

Werewolf By Night, to be directed by John Fasano, was described as "sufferance" with "less Verdi... done in a very unique way." Classified as a fantasy/romance, the film will be somewhere inbetween a family movie and an R-rated film.

Mort The Dead Teenager will be Marvel's first comedy film.

Man-Thing director Brett Leonard will be helming other Marvel movie adaptations.

20th Century Fox's Fantastic Four has been pushed back until summer 2005. Marvel and Fox had previously targetted a December 24, 2004 release, but it was ultimately decided that was too late in the year. The movie will be billed as a major tentpole release, and will be supported with many licenses including video games, toys, apparel, and more.

2005 will also see the release of Iron Man and Ghost Rider. Arad said that Elektra would "probably" be ready for the 2005 slate, but that "time will tell".

Iron Man was described as being "Howard Hughes meets superheroes", and is being penned by Smallville and Spider-Man 2 writers Miles Millar and Alfred Gough. The script for the "expensive" movie will be ready by the end of this year, and Arad said the writers would also be working on more Marvel movies and television series' "because they're very, very good".

Activision are actively developing both Fantastic Four and Iron Man video games.

Ghost Rider, starring Nicolas Cage as John Blaze with Mark Steven Johnson directing, will be a PG-13 movie. Arad hopes production will begin after January 1st.

Elektra will delve more into the character's back story based on feedback received from the first Daredevil film. The two characters will then be reunited in Daredevil 2.

Both X-Men 3 and Hulk 2 are set for release in 2006, alongside new properties Namor, Captain America, Nick Fury, and Iron Fist.

Screenwriter David Self has almost completed his script for Namor, which Arad described as "fresh", "unique", and joked that it boasts "a lot more fish" than Finding Nemo.

Captain America is in development with "a race between some of the world's greatest writers" to see who will pen the script.

Nick Fury, which is in fast development, was described as "James Bond made in the U.S." A "terrific star who always wanted to be Nick Fury" has committed to the project.

A writer for Hulk 2 has just been hired.

Brother Voodoo is in active development for a live-action television show on the Sci-Fi Channel, as is the Strikeforce Mortituri adaptation 1000 Days.

A live-action Night Thrasher series is set up at UPN.

Two new animated series' are in development - Blade on MTV and Hulk.

The Spider-Man animated series is being moved from MTV to "where kids expect to see it", whilst X-Men: Evolution remains on Kids' WB! Both series were described as continuing.

All of Marvel's upcoming tentpole movies, such as Fantastic Four and Iron Man, are being considered for television development as animated series'.

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If nothing else I'm curious to see how the DD director's cut turns out...since the guy was originally shooting for an R/18 rating and had to cut a bunch of stuff out...