Guardians Of The Galaxy Gamble Paying Off For Marvel

Marvel Studios took a huge gamble with picking Guardians of the Galaxy for a feature film. There [...]

By Scott Johnson

Guardians of the Galaxy concept art

Marvel Studios took a huge gamble with picking Guardians of the Galaxy for a feature film. There are numerous better known characters that Marvel Studios could have selected, which would have been less risk for the studio. For all intents and purposed, Marvel Studios was starting from ground zero with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Unlike a Spider-Man or an Iron Man where there is enough of a built-in fan following to at least insure a good opening weekend, Guardians of the Galaxy carries the risk of being a Battleship-size flop. When Marvel Studios greenlit Guardians of the Galaxy, there wasn't even a comic series being published on the characters. Of course, Marvel Comics quickly got their ducks in a row to launch a new comic series featuring the characters. While not having the expense of a major motion picture, doing a new Guardians of the Galaxy comic series was also a huge risk for Disney/Marvel. If the comic series flopped, then everybody would point their fingers, laugh and ask, "How can you do a movie about these characters if you can't even make a comic book work with them?" Fortunately for Marvel, the Guardians of the Galaxy comic series looks to be successful. Not just successful, but a runaway smash with the first issue finishing as the best-selling comic book for the month of March. Sure it was a first issue, but there are a lot of first issues put out in any given month, and most of them never become the best-selling title of the month. Disney and Marvel have to be feeling pretty good about their decision to do a Guardians of the Galaxy movie after seeing the comic book sales results.

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