Marvel Comics Launches Television Division

Everything eventually loses steam, and I can’t help but wonder when Marvel will start to see greatly diminishing returns. There have been nearly a dozen feature films in the past ten years, Disney invested $4 billion to ensure we’d get more, and now comes news that the comic book titan will invade your TV.

The Hollywood Reporter says Marvel Television is the company’s latest venture, one no doubt sparked by the recent Disney agreement, so in tune with vertically integrating everything is the House of Mouse. In fact, a few weeks ago, it was announced that Marvel characters would have a permanent home in the Disney theme parks, which shouldn’t come as any great shock.

My initial thought was all the old Marvel cartoons and even the made-for-DVD animation we’ve seen recently, but apparently, live-action series are being discussed. And here’s where Marvel might find it has too much of a good thing.

Jeph Loeb, who used to executive produce Heroes, is running Marvel Television, and that kind of makes sense. He know TV, and even though he’s never written for Marvel and the company likes to elevate writers it’s familiar with, Heroes certainly paid an homage to superheroes, particularly X-Men. However, some early fans of Heroes don’t have many kind words to say about Loeb, so this announcement may not please them very much.

The interesting decision Disney has to make here is what characters go where. Obviously, Fox, Sony, and Paramount are bleeding dry the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Avengers universes. Do we develop shows based on characters that are really under the radar or does Disney kind of pull back on Marvel’s full-scale theatrical assault and save some of the good characters for the small screen?

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