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Nat Gertler on My Assertion That Incredible Hulk is a Box Office Disappointment
posted July 7, 2008
 

Tom, you're right on the level that the Incredible Hulk movie is not a bigger financial nor critical hit than Ang Lee's Hulk. It's taking in just about the same amount of money (not adjusted for inflation) and apparently cost more to make. But it's certainly not some major flop. I don't know enough of proper Hollywood accounting to attest how profitable it will be when you add in foreign and DVD and TV deals and all the rest of the mishugas.)

But look at what Marvel has actually achieved in their rookie season. They've released two of the ten highest grossing films of the first half of this year. That's more than most of the long-established studios (Paramount has three as a distributor, but as I understand things they are really non-producing distributors for all three; only Disney ties Marvel, with two)... and they did that by releasing two films. They didn't do that by throwing a lot of Speed Racers and Love Gurus and whatever else at the walls and seeing what sticks. I haven't heard anything that suggests that they have unreleased, unreleasable films cluttering up their vaults. It's a pretty astounding average. Will they be able to keep it up? Danged if I know (some of the stuff that they have coming up seems less intended to be tentpole blockbusters and more intended to be the sort of profitable mid-sized flick that can do more for the bottom line than for the public face of the company.) But it would take a pretty unreasonable set of expectations for this not to be living up to them.