Comic Books Inspire Film Makers

Hollywood film makers are looking for inspiration for their box office hits from comic books. It has become a recent trend to recreate the action found on the pages of a comic book onto a theatre screen. We all love the onomatopoeias that bring the action to life as we read through our favorite <a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href="comic/">http://www.mycomicshop.com">comic books</a>. POW, THUMP, AARGH, KA-BOOM! However, the excitement is moved up a notch as you sit in a theatre with surround sound and a huge movie screen watching the bad guy suffer from an explosion and hearing the loud banging from the explosion.

In 2009, there are eight movies to be released that are about characters from comics such as Wolverine, Dragonball, Transformers, and Astro Boy just to name a few. In the past three years or so, some more recognizable movies were made about comic book heroes such as Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and who could forget Heath Ledger’s appearance as a villain in The Dark Knight. Comic book movies are some of the highest grossing films in Hollywood. The Dark Knight is the highest grossing film coming in at over one billion dollars, $1,001,921,825 to be exact. This movie was comparable, profit wise, to Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, and Pirates of the Caribbean. The second biggest gross opening day was when Spiderman 3 was released. Opening day for the film acquired close to $60 million. The total gross profit was $890,871,626. Even looking back as far as twelve years ago, Men in Black was released in 1997 and made $589,390,539.

Not only do comic book movies make a lot of money, they can positively affect, change, or launch an actor’s career into stardom. Heath Ledger was incredible in the Dark Knight as the Joker character. He had what producers call the chill factor, where you get goose bumps from watching him act, and won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild award, and a Bafta. Critics have been known to say that this role was career defining for him. Will Smith was proven to be a force in the film industry after his role in Men in Black. He became a leading man in Hollywood and starred in other box office hits such as Independence Day. He also starred in another comic book movie, Hancock. Robert Downey Jr’s career was brought back to life after he starred as Tony Stark in Ironman.