Luis Nova | Webmaster
This has been the absolute worst week of my life. “Black Panther” has been a massive success for Marvel this week, bringing in $192 million in its first three days. Disney is saying it will have made $218 million over the course of the weekend, and it’s already drawn sales of $361 million around the world.
Do you know what that means for me? It means every smart-ass in the office feels they have the personal right to humiliate and degrade me for a deal I made 20 years ago! Yes, I’m the guy who said no to the movie rights to Black Panther. I also said no to Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man and a lot of other really freaking profitable characters. Go ahead, laugh it up. Flood my email with uninventive and low insults about how I’m the biggest moron in the world because I didn’t know that a bunch of random B-list superheroes would become the biggest cash cows in movie history.
It’s not like you’d be alone in making fun of me. At Sony, they call me “Marvel Boy.” Every holiday season, my boss sends me a link to show times for the latest Marvel blockbuster in lieu of a bonus. The IT guys even change my wallpaper from a sweet picture of my kids to different Avenger emblems.
How the hell was I supposed to know these movies would be so huge? When they tried to sell the characters to me they were just making them to sell fucking toys!
It’s all so unfair. We wanted Spider-Man. We just wanted the really famous one and now every time I see a picture of that stupid web-slinger I can feel my blood pressure rising and hear my dad’s voice calling me a dumb little failure. This happens with every single one of these stinking Marvel films and now it’s worse than ever.
Yes, buddy, I know “Black Panther” was a tremendous hit and the biggest ever for an African-American director. Yes, boss, I do remember that Marvel offered us all those characters for $25 million and now they’ve made over $13.5 billion off of them. I understand the math, you don’t need to show me how much bigger 13.5 billion is than 25 million with a drawing of eggs in baskets. And yes Mom, I did hear that Lupita Nyong’o was in “Black Panther” and that she was fabulous, as always! Believe it or not, I too was thinking about how great it would be if she were acting in Sony’s “Black Panther” instead of Marvel’s goddamn empire of success!
Please, everybody. I’m begging you. Don’t go see the movie. Yes, it’s true that Michael B. Jordan got absolutely shredded to play the villain but still managed to tell a more heartfelt story for a Marvel villain than ever before, and yes, it’s a beautiful step forward for black culture in movies. But just remember: Every time you rave about that movie, a little executive in Sony gets a “Kick Me” Post-It note slapped on his back and a spot in the back corner of the room for every meeting.
