This video by MovieBob is pretty fascinating.
It basically says that when movie studios hold the rights to certain properties, they can lose the rights if they don’t use them. What studios end up doing is pumping out bad films quickly to keep their licenses intact.
This is the complete opposite of what is good for movie viewers. Instead of someone taking a property and doing something awesome with it, we are instead treated to half assed shovel entertainment that is primarily a business move and not meant to be good. This means we get to see beloved comic book characters repeatedly raped just to make sure no one else can use them.
Ang Lee’s Hulk film did so poorly that they ended up selling the rights back to Marvel and we can all see how much better The Avengers is for it. Not being able to get Spiderman interacting with those guys because of a crappy teen reboot, however, is heartbreaking.
You know, in the video game industry we often comment about how we should look to Hollywood for superior business models but this is a case where I’d rather stay away. Video game licenses are often done on a per game basis, or for a predetermined number of games, rather than some muddled system where the rights holder can essentially besiege a property for as long as they want. I bet you all can’t wait for Ghostrider 3.