Dueling Fools: Marvel Bear Rebuttal

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My dueling counterpart Anders Bylund wants you to believe that Marvel (NYSE: MVL) can continue to leverage its famous superhero characters into a perpetual money-printing machine. Nice theory, but let's look at the real value of one of the most successful movie franchises in history, Star Wars:

Release Year	Movie	Worldwide Gross
1977	A New Hope	$797,900,000
1980	The Empire Strikes Back	$534,200,000
1983	Return of the Jedi	$572,700,000
16-year Gap
1999	The Phantom Menace	$924,288,297
2002	Attack of the Clones	$656,695,615
2005	Revenge of the Sith	$848,470,577

Source: AOL.

If you take a look at those numbers, what should pop out immediately is that the original film of each "trilogy" performed the best overall. The key lesson from Star Wars is that a producer can only push a successful franchise so far before it exhausts its fan base. And yes, the revival numbers are great, but the 16-year gap can be quite painful for any investor waiting for that potential.

Even Disney (NYSE: DIS) realizes this problem. How often do you see commercials indicating that one or another of its classics is available only "for a limited time," after which it will be put back in its vault for several years? Disney's a smart company. It knows the risks of overexposing its characters -- namely, losing a once-strong franchise.

Looking at Marvel, I already see X-Men done with its third iteration, Spider-Man finished its third, and Hulk in the process of its second. Those are some pretty big names, and they probably won't have anywhere near the near-term future earning power as they had in the recent past. Throw in some heavy leverage to support the moviemaking business, and Marvel's risk/reward tradeoff no longer looks so sweet, once you peel back the covers.