Not long after the story about Samuel L. Jackson signing for a staggering nine films with Marvel Entertainment broke, I got an email from someone well placed in the entertainment industry saying that we should be expecting more. It seems like the nine picture deal is Marvel’s new contractual item.
In fact, this source tells me, it seems like the nine picture deal was a major stumbling block in the Emily Blunt situation. Not only was Blunt completely low-balled, she had to agree to appear in nine films total. For Samuel L. Jackson a nine picture deal makes sense, but not for an up and comer like Emily Blunt.
Now that Jackson has signed the deal, expect to see more people signing on to Marvel movies with similar terms – low paychecks per movie, but with a nine movie option. I wouldn’t expect everybody to be signing such deals, just people whose characters might be called upon to crossover into other Marvel Entertainment films.
Just today I was being interviewed by the bodacious Helen O’Hara from Empire Magazine for an article to run in a future issue, and we were discussing the surprising way that Marvel Entertainment has approached movies. Five years ago I would have laughed at anyone who told me that people would be signing on to appear in up to nine comic book movies, with the deal spreading them out across franchises. But Marvel Entertainment is approaching this in a really fresh, really innovative way. Let’s see if it works for them.