The Rise of Marvel Studios and Franchise Filmmaking in Hollywood

This paper examines the rise of Marvel Studios, the home of hugely popular superhero franchises that include Iron Man and The Avengers, since the late 2000s and how this has affected contemporary filmmaking in Hollywood. In the past decade, Marvel was transformed from a publisher of comic books into a media powerhouse that now boasts the most profitable franchises by achieving unprecedented successes. The rise of Marvel is one of the most defining developments in Hollywood, one that is not only dramatic in and of itself, but also indicative of the kind of forces that have driven and shaped Hollywood over the last decade. Accordingly, this paper examines Marvel’s spectacular success and its innovative scheme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how this came to reshape the film industry by intensifying Hollywood’s fixation with franchises. By examining this, the paper shows the state of filmmaking in Hollywood and why certain types of movies came to be produced more than ever before, which, in turn, affects what people see on the big screens not just in the U.S., but also around the world.