10 Simple Ways To Build A Cinematic Universe

It has followed in the footsteps of the found footage horror movie, the young adult literary adaptation and the famous dark and gritty reboot as Hollywood's latest trend. The incredible success of the MCU has seen rival studios rushing to play catch-up, with shared universes being announced left and right in order to capitalize on Marvel's unprecedented financial gain.

While Kevin Feige and company have often made it look easy, launching an ambitious series of interconnected stories taking place over several movies and many years is a mammoth undertaking, and the movie business is hardly known for its patience. There have already been several failed attempts at replicating the Marvel formula, and there will no doubt be several more.

The MCU has already set a template, so why is the competition finding it so hard to follow? The last decade of origin stories, sequels and blockbuster team-ups have shown the pretenders how its done, yet no real challenge has been made to their dominance.

On paper, it doesn't seem too difficult to construct a genuine contender to the cinematic universe throne, the real concern is if anyone else has the dedication, drive, talent and patience to actually pull it off.

Sony and Universal have already attempted to launch a shared universe once before and failed spectacularly, but that hasn't stopped them from trying again.

Remember Dracula Untold? That was only three years ago, and was publicly stated to be the beginning of the studio's expansion plans. While it earned a decent $217.1m at the box office, poor critical reactions saw Universal pretend it never existed and forge ahead on the Dark Universe with The Mummy as the new launchpad, which ironically turned out to be even worse.

At roughly the same time, Sony were making ambitious plans of their own. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4, Sinister Six, Venom, Black Cat and even Spider-Man 2099 were in various stages of development, and would reportedly culminate in a 'payoff-level event'. Obviously it never happened, and they struck a deal with Marvel Studios instead.

Regardless, Sony have capitalized on Spidey's renewed popularity to put Venom and the re-titled Silver & Black back into development, even though the terms of the Marvel agreement don't specify whether they can actually use Peter Parker or not. But they're still calling it their 'Spider-Man Universe'. Confused? You should be.

The fact that both studios continue to try and get a shared universe up and running despite having fallen at the first hurdle once before makes it painfully obvious that no real thought is being put into the creative process whatsoever, and the whole enterprise is nothing but a knee-jerk reaction to tap into Marvel and DC's multi-billion dollar success.