Marvel Comics got itself caught up in the web of Spiderman and has been ordered by a court to cought up Big Bux to Spiderman’s creator Stan Lee:
E-online reports this on Lee’s triump in court:
A court in New York has ruled that the 82-year-old creator of Spider-Man is due millions of dollars in unpaid profits from Marvel Enterprises for the success of the Spider Man franchise and other Marvel Comics-based films over the past seven years.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet found in favor of the comic-book legend on Monday and ruled that Lee is entitled to a 10 percent share of profits earned by Marvel since November 1998.
No official number has yet been released, but considering Marvel has banked $50 million alone for the first Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and starring Spidey flick, Lee is up for some major cash.
"It could be tens of millions of dollars," Lee’s lawyer Howard Graff told the Associated Press. "That’s no exaggeration."
As for Lee, who oversaw such unforgettable characters as Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and the Fantastic Four, he says he is thrilled with the settlement but unhappy that he had to resort to legal wrangling to get paid.
"I am very gratified by the judge’s decision, although, since I am deeply fond of Marvel and the people there, I sincerely regret that this situation had to come to this," he told the Hollywood Reporter. (The combined worldwide box-office grosses for Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2, Hulk and Daredevil exceed $2.7 billion, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, of which Marvel gets a small percentage. Spider-Man 3 and X3 are in the pipeline and the long-awaited movie adaptation of the Fantasic Four is due out this summer. A big-screen version of another Marvel favorite, Iron Man, is also in the works.)
Marvel reps say they plan to appeal the decision, and attorney John Turitzen was quick to point out that Lee won’t be receiving cash from some of the merchandise from Spider-Man and The Hulk films, which didn’t fall under this ruling.
The ruling is a long time coming. Lee began with Marvel in 1939, and served as writer, editor, art director, head writer and publisher for the company before effectively retiring from active duty and becoming chairman emeritus. He filed the lawsuit in November 2002, pointing out a clause in his contract that entitled him to 10 percent of TV, movie and merchandising deals, an amount he thought was significantly higher than the $1 million-per-year salary he currently receives. Marvel tried to find a loophole in the wording.
But it seems that Lee has prevailed. "In short, the first sentence of [the contract] is not ambiguous," Sweet said in his ruling "It provides that Lee is entitled to share in the results of Marvel’s arrangements for movie and television productions involving Marvel characters."
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.