Title/Link: Packing a Punch in Hollywood
Publication: Wired
Date: December 21, 2004
Quotes:
On Marvel’s rise to power as a Hollywood player:
“I never envisioned Marvel becoming the entertainment powerhouse it has become in the last four or five years,” said Rob Worley, who created Comics2Film, a clearinghouse of articles and information, in 1997.
“Back then, comic-book movies were such a ghetto topic,” he said. “There weren’t many movies, and most were terrible.”
Worley said the release of Blade in 1998 and X-Men in 2000 helped turn people’s heads (other films from the late ’90s — Batman and Robin, Steel, Spawn — failed to varying degrees). The enormous success of 2002’s Spider-Man — the sixth-highest-grossing film in history — made superheroes as hip as they’ve ever been.