Former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter did a panel at Megacon in Orlando, Florida (via
Geekosity), where he shared an interesting bit of recent business he's had with Marvel. Apparently, Marvel approached Shooter to do a novel based on
Secret Wars, as he was the writer of the original 1984-1985
Secret Wars storyline that helped define the Marvel crossover event concept.
However, when Shooter ended up looking over his contract for the
Secret Wars novel he found it was actually a contract for something much more complicated, with the book merely being a two-page rider. When Shooter turned the contract down, Senior Vice President of Operations & Procurement of Publishing at Marvel Entertainment David Bogart personally reached out to him. Bogart allegedly apologized for the contractual hijinks and apparently offered him a new retroactive work-for-hire contract with a $10,000 payout.
Having been a longtime veteran of the comics industry, Shooter could read the apparent writing on the wall, and to him, it spelled out that Disney and Marvel were covering their legal bases for getting a
Secret Wars project in development for the MCU. According to Shooter, he straight-out asked Bogart,
"This means you're making a movie right?"
When the Marvel executive allegedly responded
"What? I'm not allowed to tell you that." Bogart said his response was,
"I think you just did."
idk who this dude is actually.
