BIG NEWS! Are you a writer? Do you spend hours at your desk, dreaming longingly of other worlds, powerful heroes and dastardly villains? If so, Marvel WANTS YOU! Yes, Marvel is rebuilding the classic Bullpen! But this new team of imaginative powerhouses won’t be toiling away for the four-color presses. Oh, no! The all-new greater gang will assemble just like the Avengers to help script mighty Marvel’s upcoming motion pictures!
ITEM! Trade rag Variety compares the new bullpen to Disney’s trade fellowship, which began way back in 1990! That program retains up to a dozen writers to work in tandem with execs to create new entertainment properties. Like Disney fellows, which receive up to $50k per year for their commitment, Marvel’s writers will draw a yearly salary. But the generous geniuses at the House That Stan Built could pay up to twice as much as the Mouse offers!
ITEM! Marvel will invite up to five pencils into the ‘pen. The team will then be assigned pulsating pitches by the sagacious staff of Marvel Studios. These might include working on specific plot points to fill out existing scripts and projects in development, or spit-balling ideas to bring lesser-known characters to the screen.
ITEM! The obsequious trades don’t have the secret details on the new contracts, but Nikki Finke must have gone straight to the Beyonder to source her story, because she claims to have the salacious deal down pat. According to Finke, writers sign a 70-page non-negotiable contract before even meeting with Marvel. Furthermore, not only does the studio, in standard work-for-hire, Jack “King” Kirby fashion, own all the scribes’ work produced during the year, it has first-look and last-refusal rights to anything the writers have previously written or will write for twenty-four months into the future. Yow! Did Mephisto write this deal, or what?