I will admit right off the bat that I have so far been a big time fan of the various components of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) - even the Agents of SHIELD television series which has admittedly had some shaky segments. It just seems that Marvel 'gets' that to have real success with its movies and television series it needs to treat them as something not to be rushed too fast; that they should come about organically as something that the fans are interested in seeing before they are announced. When Marvel hit it out of the park with the first Iron Man movie the positive fan reaction included an interest in seeing Marvel produce more quality movies in the future. Marvel carefully nursed this interest, fanning the flames until interest became demand and demand resulted in anticipation of upcoming movie releases which arguably was a contributing component to the success of the Marvel movies up to this point. Marvel did not come out and announce a slate of four or five movies in the future until it knew it had an audience interest in them.
This is (unfortunately) unlike the way DC has chosen to approach its potential comicbook movie franchises. DC had huge success with its recent trio of Nolan Batman movies but has moved on from this with a disappointing (to the fans) Superman movie, The Man of Steel, followed by what looks to be a Batman/Superman team up movie with few roots setting it up except for the previously mentioned Superman flick. Dc is apparently anticipating great fan reaction the the film however, announcing that it will serve as the springboard to a future Justice League movie and also announced at least four or five other future movies, including a Shazam movie and a Suicide Squad film are in the works. Ironically, it is possible that the future Shazam movie will not be in-continuity with the other future projects...
Looking back to Marvel, it seems like they are even getting the smaller things right. They gave the supporting SHIELD character of Phillip Coulson the chance to become interesting enough with good casting and writing to the point where he ended up effectively headlining his own series (Agents of SHIELD), and now Marvel (through Netflix) looks set to repeat this same formula by casting solid actors in some apparently minor roles; Marvel announced that Rosario Dawson's role in the upcoming Daredevil series will not be as Elektra, but instead as a hybrid of two very minor supporting characters: Claire Temple and apparently also the Night Nurse. While this might not sound like much on the surface it gives Marvel's Daredevil a natural link to the Luke Cage: Hero for Hire series as well as a potentially useful recurring character that could be plugged into any of their other properties without much difficulty. This has potential breakout character written all over it.
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