There will be no Spider-Man 4 -- not in 2011, and not for perhaps another year after that. Director Sam Raimi and the all-star cast are off the case, as Sony (NYSE:SNE) and Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) subsidiary Marvel start the Spidey franchise over from square one in 2012.
Spider-Man 4 was expected to make a boatload of money for stakeholders like Marvel, Sony's Columbia Pictures, and popcorn-wielding cinema chains worldwide. Each of the first three installments pulled in an average of $830 million in worldwide box office, not counting the inevitable merchandising and licensing of toys, T-shirts, and DVD discs.
With the ascendance of 3-D technology that doesn't give you a headache, both the movie theater and home entertainment divisions of Marvel and Sony were salivating over even higher sales this time -- 3-D movies fetch higher ticket prices. IMAX (NASDAQ:IMAX) provides the perfect canvas on which to paint a piece of high-action eye candy like the next Spidey movie, and those tickets are even more expensive.
Not to worry, though. Unless it’s directed by the ghost of Ed Wood and starring Pee-Wee Herman as the eponymous hero, the "rebooted" Spider-Man saga will probably crush box offices everywhere, just like its predecessors did. The payoff will just come a year later. Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) (assuming it's still in business by autumn 2012) will get their delayed rental revenues, and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) will sell a ton of DVD and Blu-ray treatments. The show must go on.
The Spider-Man incident illustrates why the movie industry looks like a prime investment field right now. Digital filmmaking and distribution technologies are pushing down the industry's costs, while premium packaging like 3-D showings and fancier home-format discs make us pay more for the experience. Meanwhile, the piracy bugbear raises its head less often as legal online streaming and those pepped-up retail packages each do their part to make the illegal sources less desirable.
If that's not a win-win-win for the likes of Disney, Sony, and Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), I don't know what is. Of these, I happily own Disney stock myself and am casting bedroom eyes at ultra-cheap Time Warner shares. How would you invest to ride the rise of blockbusters and premium movie products? Share your ideas in the comments below.
