Marvel Sends Heroes To Artisan

files/pictures/picture-35.jpgMarvel Enterprises and Artisan Entertainment have entered into a joint venture that will send 15 Marvel superhero characters to Artisan for feature, TV, direct-to-video and Internet programming. Both companies will share in the money made from the properties and tied-in merchandising. Each company will own the programming library. The characters set for feature projects include Captain America, a super soldier given heightened senses to battle Nazis during World War II; Black Panther, a black Indiana Jones-like adventurer; Deadpool, a dying hitman that doesn’t care about his own fate; Iron Fist, an orphan who learns a mystical marital arts form; Mobius, a Noble-winning scientist turned vampire who hunts down evil-doers; Longshot, a genetically-engineered slave who escapes his own dimension; Power Pack, a family of four kids who are given superpowers by a dying alien; Mort the Dead Teenager, a teenager killed in a car accident who comes back to life; and Antman, a scientist who can grow to be a giant or shrink to an insect. Currently, other Marvel titles like SPIDER-MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, FANTASTIC FOUR, DAREDEVIL, DOCTOR STRANGE, IRON MAN, SILVER SURFER and BLADE are in various stages of production at several studios. Recently, Michael Tolkin (THE PLAYER, DEEP IMPACT) was brought on to scribe HULK. Amir Malin, co-CEO of Artisan, told Variety that, "Artisan is not in the business of creating US$80 million to $120 million action event films and certain Marvel characters lend themselves to that and nothing but that. We don’t want to develop characters that, at the end of the day, we know we won’t finance. But there are so many franchises that as we develop our first group of projects, we’ll have our eyes on other titles from the library."