Stan's contract was with MARVEL, not the movie studio. The shady accounting practices that movie studio's are known for has nothing to do with this law suit. Stan Lee is entitled to "10 percent of any profits from his characters used in films and television shows" from Marvel, and his suit is against Marvel. So get off the backs of the studios on this one. The movie studios do enough crooked things that we should be able to confine our ire to those things for which they are actually responsible.
If there is a problem with a contract somewhere, it is with Stan's contract with Marvel.
"Marvel has reported millions of dollars in earnings from the film but has told Lee the company has seen no "profits" as defined by their contract."
So the movie studio's are obviously paying out to Marvel, since Marvel aknowledges that they are receiving revenue from the film ($4Million in Q3 2002 according to marvel.com). The problem is that Marvel claims they are not making any profit from the licensing.
Now, I personally find this hard to believe, since I can't imagine that Marvel would have had many expenses associated with the film (aside from a lot of lawyers to make sure it wasn't Marvel getting screwed on the deal). Not to mention, if they aren't making any "profits" on this deal, why are they so eager to make half a dozen other movie deals with various studios over the next couple of years? (Dare Devil, The Hulk, Spiderman 2, and X-Men 2 are all mentioned in the article).
As far as I can tell, all this story is really saying is that two parties have a different interpretation of a contract they entered into, and they are going to go to court and let a judge decide how the contract should be read. Last I checked, this is actually one of the things the courts are intended to do.
How this degenerated into a flame war about multi-billion dollar corporations screwing the little guy I'm not sure. Especially since Marvel is not THAT big a company (Estimated EBITDA for 2002 $75million according to marvel.com), and Stan Lee is hardly a "little guy".
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Stan's contract was with MARVEL, not the movie studio. The shady accounting practices that movie studio's are known for has nothing to do with this law suit. Stan Lee is entitled to "10 percent of any profits from his characters used in films and television shows" from Marvel, and his suit is against Marvel. So get off the backs of the studios on this one. The movie studios do enough crooked things that we should be able to confine our ire to those things for which they are actually responsible. If there is a problem with a contract somewhere, it is with Stan's contract with Marvel. "Marvel has reported millions of dollars in earnings from the film but has told Lee the company has seen no "profits" as defined by their contract." So the movie studio's are obviously paying out to Marvel, since Marvel aknowledges that they are receiving revenue from the film ($4Million in Q3 2002 according to marvel.com). The problem is that Marvel claims they are not making any profit from the licensing. Now, I personally find this hard to believe, since I can't imagine that Marvel would have had many expenses associated with the film (aside from a lot of lawyers to make sure it wasn't Marvel getting screwed on the deal). Not to mention, if they aren't making any "profits" on this deal, why are they so eager to make half a dozen other movie deals with various studios over the next couple of years? (Dare Devil, The Hulk, Spiderman 2, and X-Men 2 are all mentioned in the article). As far as I can tell, all this story is really saying is that two parties have a different interpretation of a contract they entered into, and they are going to go to court and let a judge decide how the contract should be read. Last I checked, this is actually one of the things the courts are intended to do. How this degenerated into a flame war about multi-billion dollar corporations screwing the little guy I'm not sure. Especially since Marvel is not THAT big a company (Estimated EBITDA for 2002 $75million according to marvel.com), and Stan Lee is hardly a "little guy".