7 Predictions for the Future of the Comic Book Movie

5. Tie-ins?

This is a no-brainer, we know a second avengers is planned for release on May 1st 2015. But how are Kevin Fiege and co going to tie it all together this time?

Cameos are likely to work as well as they did last time and the planned 'S.H.I.E.L.D.' series could be an absolute hint-fest with bits and pieces appearing on laptop screens and maps in the background etc. I think we can all imagine Marvel's plan for this one and the real question is what is it all going to result in?

This wouldn't be a hard question (they all get together and fight Thanos, probably) if it weren't for 'The Guardians of the Galaxy'. Thanos is supposed to appear in both Guardians AND Avengers 2. If the characters from guardians appear in Avengers 2 that's going to a hell of a big team and possibly too many characters to adequately write for. There's even rumours for Marvel's phase 3 swimming about so the tie-ins are going to go on and on. Any character that is neglected in one movie will surely be fleshed out in another.

DC is a little more interesting because no one seems to have a real clue what's going on with the JLA movie. Marvel forged it's connections slowly but DC wants its own box office destroying team-up now. However the only film ripe to lead up to a JLA movie is the new Superman, 'Man of Steel', none of the others seem ready to go and Batman is in France smiling at Alfred.

Although it's possible, fast tracking movies can be a huge risk and if they just went ahead and directly made the JLA, which could be done, it also risks missing the point as to why 'The Avengers' was so successful with a wide audience.

I'm sure Warner has a team of clever people working on this problem but there doesn't seem to be a fast way forward.

DC have critical acclaim going for them over Marvel and fast tracking titles in order to create a team-up could compromise this.

Sony went from saying 'no' outright to anything spider-man related appearing in 'The Avengers' universe (Louis Leterrier, while directing 'The Incredible Hulk' tried to include a nod to spider-man and was shot down) to having a significantly more flexible outlook on things once the marvel team-up made its mega bucks. There was even plans to have the Oscorp building in 'The Avengers' version of the New York skyline at one point but schedules didn't line up right for it to happen.

It's hard to say what will happen with Fox but tie-ins don't seem to be a priority as most of their movies are pretty jam-packed character-wise already e.g. X-men, the fantastic 4 reboot.