Disney’s ‘Black Panther’ reaches $1 billion globally

Did I read that there are 163 shooting scenes is this movie?

Just wondering if anyone here has seen this movie & what they think of it...

New flash: If you make movies that don’t suck, people might actually pay to go see them.

I saw it, it was a great popcorn-action flick. Don’t believe all the hype about its deep SJW message, it’s just a very entertaining and well written Superhero movie.

Wonder how many used their welfare cards? Wonder how many got tickets from the DNC.

When will they start complaining that the money is going in the pockets of White People ?

The studio said Saturday that the milestone is based on Disney’s estimate of ticket sales.

Odd; DIS has considerably under performed the SP500.

Hollyweird is the lobbying equivalent of the NRA for illegal guns and gun violins.

It made that much money without my contribution.

Wasn’t too deep at all at spitting out the SJW garbage lie - the bad dude played by Michael Jordan plainly said he was going to kill everyone NOT black in all the countries and start things over, with ‘their race’ running things.
I was happy that the level-headed/good-hearted king won out with the right principle of ‘Equal Opportunity’ benevolence. NOT ‘Equal outcome’ - or even the wicked ‘Our turn to rule.’

Reminded me the other day when I saw it the recent South Africa ruling to take all the land from Whites, no matter if they rightfully owned it.

But yes, it was a very entertaining and well done movie.

Friend got me a torrent copy. Is it worth the watch?

Ditto.

The price of admission to this crap will buy a box of ammo.

Much more fun to shoot and a practical use of my money...as opposed to engaging in fantastical bullshit watching.

Breitbart praised this movie as pro-Trump’s America.

That’s simply a disingenuous comment.

Breitbart’s review:

The good guy = TRUMP.

The bad guy = BLM

Good guy

.

Bad guy

It’s better the second time?

All of the Marvel Universe movies are interconnected. It's the same formula they've used to boost sales of “smaller” titles.

In the 1990s Bill Clinton's pal (who almost bankrupted the entire comic book industry) laughed about the “Marvel zombies” who'd blindly buy all of the product.

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg37.html>

When he took over ownership of Marvel comics in 1989, Marvel was coming off of a series of record years of both sales and earnings. Part of that growth in earnings had been based on the popularity of the Marvel line of characters, but even more derived from the fact that New World Pictures (Marvel's previous owner) had raised prices by 50% (from 65 cents to $1) during its 3-year ownership of the company. While these price increases help generate significant short-term profits, they also ate away at the core of Marvel's business, those fans who were purchasing the entire line of comics published by the company each month.

Sadly, Perelman severely aggravated this problem by raising prices by another 100% over the next seven years, and by increasing the total line of Marvel titles from approximately 60 when he took over, to nearly 140 different monthly issues at the peak. Calculating the math in this scenario is fairly easy. In 1985, comics were 60 cents. With 40 regular Marvel titles being printed, it cost a typical fan $24.00 to purchase every Marvel comic book being printed. That left plenty of disposable income left over for trade paperbacks, toys, and other related Marvel goods. Even for collectors of modest means, it was possible to be a "Marvel Zombie" for only $6 per week.

By 1988, the number of Marvel titles had increased to 50, and the base cover price was $1. At a $50 total cost, that was a 110% increase in the cost it took to buy the complete Marvel line in just 36 months. On the retail end of the business, we saw a few collectors dropping out of the business due to these new higher costs, but most stayed. In fact, that was the period when we saw the greatest growth in the number of Independent comics titles, as publishers such as First, Dark Horse, Comico, and Eclipse nibbled at the edges of Marvel's market share...

While we also heard many complaints about the quality of comics being produced in 1993, it was evident that the problem was greater than that one simple element. A survey of the books from that period does show a large number of mediocre titles being published, but there were also some very good ones. So why did so many long time fans quit? The answer seems to be a combination of time and money. Fans who had been purchasing every Marvel title were frustrated that they could no longer afford to purchase the whole line, and were even more frustrated that they didn't have the time to read them all. Rather than cut back to what they could afford, this substantial portion of the comics collecting community simply chose to quite collecting altogether.

By early 1993, Marvel prices were a minimum of $1.25 per copy, with several enhanced issues each month. With well over 100 titles being printed each month, the monthly cost for a dedicated fan to purchase the entire Marvel line was approximately $150.00. It was at this point that the comics market started falling apart at the seams. We noticed it first in our retail stores, as the number of monthly subscribers we were servicing started to fall precipitously. Simultaneously, impulse sales from our new comics racks plummeted, and long-time subscribers began dropping titles from their subscriptions in large numbers. The worst-hit publisher in this decline was Image, with Valiant/Acclaim a close second. Those publishers dropped so quickly that we saw declines as high as 35% per month on certain titles! Given the non-returnable rules of comics retailing, and the fact that our orders were being placed two months in advance, this resulted in a cash flow nightmare. We simply couldn't cut our orders as fast as demand was dropping! We "ate" unsold issues by the thousands...

While we also heard many complaints about the quality of comics being produced in 1993, it was evident that the problem was greater than that one simple element. A survey of the books from that period does show a large number of mediocre titles being published, but there were also some very good ones. So why did so many long time fans quit? The answer seems to be a combination of time and money. Fans who had been purchasing every Marvel title were frustrated that they could no longer afford to purchase the whole line, and were even more frustrated that they didn't have the time to read them all. Rather than cut back to what they could afford, this substantial portion of the comics collecting community simply chose to quite collecting altogether. By early 1993, Marvel prices were a minimum of $1.25 per copy, with several enhanced issues each month. With well over 100 titles being printed each month, the monthly cost for a dedicated fan to purchase the entire Marvel line was approximately $150.00. It was at this point that the comics market started falling apart at the seams. We noticed it first in our retail stores, as the number of monthly subscribers we were servicing started to fall precipitously. Simultaneously, impulse sales from our new comics racks plummeted, and long-time subscribers began dropping titles from their subscriptions in large numbers. The worst-hit publisher in this decline was Image, with Valiant/Acclaim a close second. Those publishers dropped so quickly that we saw declines as high as 35% per month on certain titles! Given the non-returnable rules of comics retailing, and the fact that our orders were being placed two months in advance, this resulted in a cash flow nightmare. We simply couldn't cut our orders as fast as demand was dropping! We "ate" unsold issues by the thousands...

While we also heard many complaints about the quality of comics being produced in 1993, it was evident that the problem was greater than that one simple element. A survey of the books from that period does show a large number of mediocre titles being published, but there were also some very good ones. So why did so many long time fans quit? The answer seems to be a combination of time and money. Fans who had been purchasing every Marvel title were frustrated that they could no longer afford to purchase the whole line, and were even more frustrated that they didn't have the time to read them all. Rather than cut back to what they could afford, this substantial portion of the comics collecting community simply chose to quite collecting altogether.

By early 1993, Marvel prices were a minimum of $1.25 per copy, with several enhanced issues each month. With well over 100 titles being printed each month, the monthly cost for a dedicated fan to purchase the entire Marvel line was approximately $150.00. It was at this point that the comics market started falling apart at the seams. We noticed it first in our retail stores, as the number of monthly subscribers we were servicing started to fall precipitously. Simultaneously, impulse sales from our new comics racks plummeted, and long-time subscribers began dropping titles from their subscriptions in large numbers. The worst-hit publisher in this decline was Image, with Valiant/Acclaim a close second. Those publishers dropped so quickly that we saw declines as high as 35% per month on certain titles! Given the non-returnable rules of comics retailing, and the fact that our orders were being placed two months in advance, this resulted in a cash flow nightmare. We simply couldn't cut our orders as fast as demand was dropping! We "ate" unsold issues by the thousands...

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg38.html

Last week, I laid out a very bare bones timeline of how the price increases of comic books during the late-1980's led to the massive decline in comics sales during the decade of the 1990's. My belief is that these price increases were mostly unnecessary, and were initiated by the management team at Marvel Comics in an attempt to appease majority stockholder Ronald O. Perelman's seemingly insatiable appetite for earnings. I also believe that in their desperate efforts to wring the last drop of cash out of what had previously been a relatively small company, the Perelman team ultimately nearly destroyed not only Marvel, but the entire world of comics.

To get an idea of what happened to Marvel between 1989-1999 from a financial perspective, I highly recommend reading COMIC WARS by Dan Raviv. That book is tough reading, as it is filled with chapter after chapter of details of what happened both before, and during, Marvel's 1996 bankruptcy. It is well worth the effort to get through it, however, as it is packed with details about those epic battles that have previously never been revealed. The one failing I see in the book is that the writer is primarily concerned only with the testosterone tinged financial battles between Ronald O. Perelman, Carl Icahn, and Ike Perlmutter. His empathy for those in the comics world who were negatively impacted is minimal.

Having been someone who nearly saw his life's efforts wiped out by the battles waged for control of Marvel, I viewed that period from a different perspective. By the time Marvel declared bankruptcy on December 27th, 1996, I had already watched an estimated 4,000 of my fellow comics retailers go broke. A decade that began with the highest of hopes began imploding in late 1992, and by the end of 1993 had turned into a bloodbath. Before it was over, this wave of destruction would wipe out all the Direct Market distributors except Diamond, and would decimate the working capital positions of nearly every comics retailer. Publisher sales dropped by over 70% during this period, and fans left our world in droves.

The reason that I place the onus for all this destruction on Ronald O. Perelman is because he was the puppeteer who set into motion the policies that ultimately nearly ended our world. From the beginning, his agenda was purely financial. He saw Marvel as an undervalued asset when he purchased the company for the bargain price of $82.5 million in January of 1989. He reasoned, quite correctly, that if he raised prices and output, that hard-core Marvel fans would devote a larger and larger portion of their disposable income toward buying comics. Once he had enough sales numbers in place to prove this hypothesis, he then took Marvel public, selling 40% of its stock for vastly more than he paid for the entire company. The flaw in his plan, however, was that he promised investors in Marvel even further brand extensions, and more price increases. That this plan was clearly impossible became evident to most comics retailers early in 1993, as more and more fans simply quit collecting due to the high cost, and amida widespread perception of declining quality in Marvel comics.

Had Perelman been willing to back off at this point, the day might still have been saved. Comics had been steadily increasing in cost since 1961, and many fans were somewhat accepting of this trend. If Perelman's team had simply acknowledged that they had pushed the envelope too far in their haste to go public, they then could have concentrated on restoring quality to the books, and all might have been all right. Instead, however, Perelman's team denied that their actions were any part of the problem, and blamed the Direct Market distributors for somehow sabotaging Marvel's sales. This led to their disastrous decision to purchase Heroes World Distributing, and begin a program of self-distributing Marvel comics.

As I related in my column a couple of weeks ago, Diamond and Capital, the two main distributors to the comics world in 1994, had already substantially weakened the Direct Market by allowing too many undercapitalized and inexperienced retailers to open their doors during the epic battles they waged for market share during the 1980's and early 1990's. When these neophyte retailers were faced with having to order from Heroes World in addition to their primary distributor, they began folding in droves. This led to even further declines in the sales in Marvel Comics.

While all this operating idiocy was going on, Ronald O. Perelman continued trying to build Marvel into a mini entertainment conglomerate. In a flurry of acquisitions during the early 1990's, Marvel purchased Fleer Trading Cards, SkyBox Trading Cards, Panini Stickers, Welsh Magazines, and Malibu Publishing. The total cost of these acquisitions (plus an ill-advised repurchase of half of the stock held by the public) ultimately pushed Marvel's bank debt to over $700 million dollars. That's more than eight times what Perelman paid for the company in 1989! At the same time as Marvel was going deeply into debt internally, Perelman convinced an army of gullible investors to purchase $900 million in zero coupon bonds, with the only collateral backing the bonds being his ownership of 60% of Marvel's stock. Because the paper trails are hard to follow, there is some debate as to how much all this financial magic ultimately netted Perelman, but Raviv speculates that he (through his holding companies) benefited to the tune of somewhere between $200-$400 million dollars.

To put those huge numbers into perspective, I believe that Perelman's gains in Marvel stock and bonds exceeded the profits that had been earned by all the comics publishers put together during at least the previous three decades. Perhaps in the entire history of comics... In doing so, however, his policies led to the near-collapse of the largest publisher in the industry, and massive distress for everyone else associated with comics. That's why I believe that Perelman caused more harm to the comics world than Fredric Wertham. Wertham did cause enormous damage, but at least his efforts were initiated because of heart-felt convictions that comics were causing harm to children. Perelman simply wanted to make a buck, and seemingly cared not in the least if there was a world of comics left when he was through. Just how close he came to destroying our entire world becomes chillingly evident in Raviv's book. At times we were but one judicial decision away from a complete shutdown of Marvel, which would have led to a massive collapse of the entire Direct Market system. I doubt if any but the smallest publishers would have survived such a catastrophe. Let us all hope and pray that nothing of this magnitude every happens again.

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg39.html

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg40.html

...The first licensing agreement that I wanted to see was the deal between Marvel and Toy Biz. In a deal crafted years before the bankruptcy, Ron Perelman and Isaac Perlmutter agreed to transfer 46% ownership of Toy Biz to Marvel, in exchange for Toy Biz receiving a perpetual royalty free (!) license to produce any and all toys based on Marvel characters. This first thing that struck me about the agreement was how well it was crafted by Perlmutter's attorneys. They managed to not only nail down not only the rights to produce action figures based on Marvel characters, but also any other kind of toy! This meant that Marvel's staff had to terminate a slew of pre-existing agreements with small companies that previously had the rights to produce items as far afield from toys as kites. Toy Biz never replaced any of the lost products from these terminated deals, choosing instead to focus almost exclusively on action figures. In terms of operating income, this was a total loss of revenue for Marvel.

Once I got past the sad waste of opportunity reflected in the canceled toy deals, I then read a number of licensing deals related to films and other entertainment-related activities. Two trends showed clearly in the contracts. The first is that they were written by folks who had no idea about the characters, and the interactions between the characters. How, for example, could you license Captain America to one entity in a field, and The Avengers to a competing entity? Who then controls the rights to Captain America? Those conflicts created nasty legal battles, some of which go on to this day.

The second trend that I observed was that the licensing contracts written in 1995/1996 showed a definite trend toward front-loading. Front-loading is a technique by which you offer a much better deal in the future, in exchange for a big cash payment today. This technique is typically employed by companies seeking to raise cash quickly, even if it requires cannibalizing their earnings stream for years to come.

By the time I was done reading the licensing contracts, I came to realize that there was nothing of value left to buy in that area. Ronald O. Perelman's staff, either through ignorance, or by design, had completely ruined the prospects for Marvel to earn any substantial licensing revenues. The Toy Biz deal totally screwed up the toy rights, the lawyers had created a tangle of conflicting rights in other areas, and whatever remained had been sold cheaply in exchange for upfront cash payments. With no prospect of any substantial licensing revenues, how could we possibly make a bid for Marvel?

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg41.html

My previous two columns have focused on the story of my short-lived involvement with a group of investors seeking to purchase Marvel Comics in January, 1998. As I related last time, my role in examining the Marvel documents was to analyze the licensing division with an eye as to how much potential revenue we could anticipate from this area. In the end, I had to tell my fellow investors that there really wasn't a whole lot of licensing potential left. Either the rights were hopelessly entangled due to bungling on the part of Marvel's legal staff, or that most of the decent licensing properties had already been sold for many years forward, in exchange for upfront cash payments in previous years.

The one area that held some potential was the possibility of somehow breaking the ToyBiz royalty-free licensing agreement. That license not only gave ToyBiz the rights to produce any and all Marvel toys in perpetuity, but also granted them a zero royalties rate! It seemed quite plausible to me that the bankruptcy court had the discretion to void such an encumbering agreement. That, in fact, was exactly what investor/raider Carl Icahn was seeking in his reorganization plan for Marvel. He was so sure he could have the toy contract terminated that he bet upwards of $200 million of his money, and that of closely allied investors, by purchasing Marvel bonds at distress prices.

It was exactly the prospect of losing their sweetheart agreement which made ToyBiz owners Isaac Perlmutter and Avi Arad passionately committed to purchasing Marvel. ToyBiz was almost completely dependent on its Marvel license for its survival, so there was no way they could give up on this deal. That is why Perlmutter arranged his own financing group, and ultimately bid over $400 million for Marvel.

Returning to our investment group, while I was reading the licensing agreements, the bankers whom I accompanied to the Marvel bankruptcy trustee's office went over the financials. We were originally going to work through the night to establish a criteria under which we could craft a bid for the company, or some part of the company. We stopped for lunch at 1 PM, however, and it quickly became apparent from our conversations that no one in our group thought Marvel was worth anything near what Icahn and Perlmutter were bidding. There was some very strong potential in the company, but with all the current financial and legal messes, it would take years before the income streams could be restored to cover even the $20 million per year in interest that a $200 million bid would entail. For Icahn and Perlmutter to be talking numbers over $400 million, was simply irrational except within the context of their own fears. Icahn was terrified he would lose the $200 million he invested, and Perlmutter feared losing ToyBiz.

In the end, they both lost. Perlmutter won the basic battle, gaining control of Marvel, and leaving Icahn with chump change, and some worthless warrants. Perlmutter's victory was short-lived, however, as the drawn-out legal wrangling over Marvel in the bankruptcy court left Marvel's brand image so tarnished that the toys that had seemed so important, suddenly stopped selling. ToyBiz, in fact, has been a debilitating drain on Marvel's resources during the past couple of years. Perlmutter ended up with Marvel, but with a huge amount of debt, and very weak income streams.

To return to my original contention in this entire matter, all this damage to the premiere comics company in America came about because of Ronald O. Perelman. His takeover of Marvel first destroyed the consumer base through relentless price increases and excessive expansion in titles, and then loaded the company up with so much debt that it will be many years before Marvel recovers its financial health. The losers in this affair turned out to be everyone in the entire process, except Ronald O. Perelman. Fans lost, creators lost, retailers lost, distributors lost, even competing publishers lost. We will be paying for Ronald O. Perelman's sins for decades to come...

http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg42.html http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg43.html

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/perelman020698.htm

Ronald O. Perelman, the richest man in New York City -- and therefore one of the richest men on Earth -- doesn't ask a lot of questions when the Washington money guys call. Republican, Democrat, their pitches sound alike...

It's a blur and, frankly, a bit of a bore for him, say his friends. But this is business.

...this bald, 5-foot-7, cigar-smoking walking conglomerate from New York, who apparently cares barely a whit for ideology, has become a player in a distinctly Washington crisis. In two instances recently, Perelman, who runs Revlon and a couple of dozen other companies, has offered employment to acquaintances of the president.

Twice in the last two months, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a close friend of Clinton's and longtime Revlon board member, telephoned Perelman directly to cadge a $40,000-a-year job for Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern. One of those calls, sources say, came 24 hours after Lewinsky swore out an affidavit in which she denied having sex with the president. (Jordan's wife, Ann, is a board member at another Perelman company.)

Lewinsky's Revlon career didn't last long. The day that word of the job offer became public, Revlon dropped her.

Clinton friend Webster Hubbell lasted a bit longer. In April 1994, Perelman's parent company, MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., signed a $100,000 consulting contract with Hubbell, just weeks after he had been indicted and resigned from the Justice Department. When word of that "public relations" contract became known last summer, a spokesman for Perelman declined to say who arranged for Hubbell's hiring or what Hubbell did for his money...