2023-06-11 16:00:00
« Lhe spider, the spider, is a very singular being… “: the boomers, kids in the 1970s, still remember the swinging credits in French version cartoon Spider-Man, broadcast in 1977, on TF1, ten years behind the United States. Megatube of schoolyards, the ritornello and the animated series helped transform the Marvel superhero into a national star, already carried by a solid base of fans who read his exploits in the legendary monthly Strange and the weekly Junior TV.
In this distant era of total absence of blockbusters on vigilantes in tights, except Superman (released in France in January 1979), the early impact of Spider-Man in France even justified the theatrical release, in March 1978, of the pilot episode of a poor American TV series devoted to the character under the title Spider-Man. Despite its appalling quality, the “film”, distributed by Columbia, still attracted nearly 700,000 spectators, according to Comscore France, mainly children addicted to the exploits of the web weaver on TF1.
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Almost fifty years later, the love story between France and the spider continues to spin the best cotton: released in theaters on May 31 on 659 screens, the animated film Spider-Man : across the Spider-VerseFollowing Spider-Man : New Generationcrossed the 550,000 admissions mark in one week.
“It’s an extremely strong score. Across the Spider-Verse gathered for its first weekend two and a half times more spectators than New Generation in 2018, sums up Éric Marti, Managing Director of Comscore France. It is on track to reach 2 million admissions, well beyond the 794,000 spectators of the previous installment. »
“The favorite superhero of the French”
Quick look abroad: With $120 million for its first weekend in the United States, the film from Sony studios simply had the second best start of 2023 – behind Super Mario Bros, the movies – as well as the third-biggest debut weekend for a feature film Spider-Man since 2002. ” Across the Spider-Verse is also doing well in China, which accounts for a quarter of its global revenue outside the United States. With good word-of-mouth, the billion dollars in worldwide revenue cannot be completely ruled out,” adds Éric Marti.
In December 2021, Spider-Man : No Way Home had created the event with a box office bursting the ceiling: 1.9 billion in receipts around the globe – he was the first to achieve this feat in the midst of a pandemic – and, in France, a spectacular career at more than 7 million spectators in the hall. Brief : Spider-Man is still a solid gold license, capable of capturing in its canvas a large audience from 7 to 77 years old at the cinema.
“He’s the favorite superhero of the French, he has a real heritage dimension,” says Stéphane Huard, president of Sony Pictures Entertainment France. And with France, which renamed him Spider-Man in the 1970s, he has a relationship spanning generations. Furthermore, we have positioned Across the Spider-Verse as a film that adults could also come to see and our partnerships with Burger King, Nissan and PSG went in this direction. »
READ ALSOSpider-Man at-il tué Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro? The influence of the icon, invented in 1962 in the pages of Marvel comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, goes well beyond multiplexes. Consultant for Junior City, a study institute specializing in youth, Delphine Quelin confirms that “thanks to constant news in cinema, television, video games and comics, Spider-Man regularly remains in the Top 5 of the favorite fictional heroes of 4-14 year olds. The success of the recent animated series Spidey and his amazing friends (shown on Disney Junior and Gulli) has broadened its popularity among younger audiences. In our surveys last April, it comes in first place among primary school boys and number 4 among girls. Among boys aged 4 to 6, he is even number one and has dethroned the Paw Patrol. In college, he arrives in 2e position in boys behind Super Mario and 4the rank among girls.
For Delphine Quelin, “Spider-Man/Peter Parker shares many points in common with the heroes of Shonen manga, which target teenagers: he is an orphan, mistreated at school, rather bad about himself, he encounters obstacles but he remains persevering and faithful in friendship…” True: since its creation, already sixty-one years ago, the teenager with problems Peter Parker, who became Spider-Man after the bite of a radioactive spider, has always attracted the sympathy of the teenagers, seduced as much by the founding tragedy of the character (his uncle Ben died through his fault) and his unease as by the aesthetics of his costume.
In the top 5 of toy sales in France
As for the little ones, Coralie Boitrelle-Laigle, director of youth programs for the M6 group (of which Gulli is a subsidiary), confirms that the series Spidey and his amazing friendsbroadcast on Saturday and Sunday mornings, has opened new floodgates of popularity in France for Peter Parker.
“Since its launch on Gulli on September 3, 2022, the program has been seen by more than 10 million viewers aged 4 and over. It’s a success that took off right away, and we’ve even peaked at 50% audience share among 4-10 year olds. It’s a well-written series, with quality 3D, and has become the first access to this pop culture hero for children from kindergarten onwards,” she explains.
The second season of Spidey and his amazing friends will be broadcast at the start of the next school year on Gulli and, in fact, this new series, already cult, contributes to making the Spider-Man brand the fifth largest sale of licensed toys in France, behind Harry Potter, Pokémon, Star Wars and Super Mario, according to research firm Circana.
Worldwide, according to the firm License Global, the market for all derivative products linked to the spidery superhero largely exceeds one billion dollars a year, while in France sales of toys (figurines, board games, disguises, radio-controlled vehicles, etc. branded Spider-Man amount to 32 million euros in 2022, out of a total of nearly 100 million all sectors combined, according to Circana.
Owner of the rights to the mythical vigilante in the cinema since 1999 (when a Marvel still convalescing from a quasi-bankruptcy yielded the precious license), the studio Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), Hollywood subsidiary of the Japanese group Sony, has kicked the spider’s nest in 2002, with a blockbuster debut from Sam Raimi and, top billing, Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker.
Huge success at the box office, this founding film (with X-Men in 2000) of the « superhero mania in Hollywood renewed for an indefinite period the lease of love between Peter Parker and the new generations of fans. Between 2002 and 2023, no less than ten feature films devoted to New York’s most famous super-protector were released in theaters for a total box office receipts of nearly $10 billion.
“A real ecosystem”
Since the launch of its own productions with Iron Man in 2008, followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain Americaof the Avengers, then a whole string of other heroes in its catalog, Marvel Studios could hardly longer do without Spider-Man in its famous Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as the stakes around the weaver of webs amount to billions of dollars .
In the wake of a first agreement in 2015, Marvel Studios and Sony therefore agreed so that Peter Parker could finally evolve in a common universe with Iron Man and the Avengers from Captain America : Civil War (2016) then in his own trilogy with Spider-Man : Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man : Far from Home (2019) et Spider-Man : No Way Home (2021).
The systematic triumph of these films co-piloted by Marvel and Sony led, in 2019, to the signing of a new contract granting the Disney-Marvel entity 25% of the revenue from each opus. Spider-Man but also all income related to merchandising. Judicious manoeuvre: between the slaughter of feature films and series, the brand has more than ever the wind in its sails in stores and is not about to lower the sails: “Within Disney, in turnover , Marvel licenses are the second biggest brand of derivative products behind Mickey-Minnie. And within the Marvel licenses, Spider-Man is number 1 just ahead of the Avengers, ”explains Julien Peigneau, director in charge of licenses at Disney France.
“The advantage of Marvel and Spider-Man in particular is that these brands are not limited to film releases but aggregate around them a real ecosystem all year round – in cinema are added animated series on Disney+ and terrestrial, anniversaries such as Spider-Man’s 60th birthday in 2022 or Marvel’s 85th birthday in September 2023, back to school, the Marvel Avengers Campus at Disneyland… There is a continuous stream of news and a constant appetite for Spider-Man! analyzes our interlocutor.READ ALSO Spiderman pulls off his stunt act on PlayStation 4
In fact, several dozen licensees share the hexagonal cake with an impressive array of products: Hasbro figurines (which sell between 250,000 and 300,000 copies each year), Air Jordan Nike shoes, Rubie’s costumes, Pandora charms, T-shirts Under Armour… Without forgetting video games: in 2022, more than 120,000 physical copies of the various Spider-Man titles sold in France for a turnover of 6 million euros. This is 20,000 less than in 2021, when the license was torn off at 140,000 units, but the current success ofAcross the Spider-Verse is expected to pick up steam again in 2023.
Finally, all formats combined, more than 500 Spider-Man references were marketed in 2022 in the publishing sector (comics, coloring books, game books, reading methods, etc.) and sold 706,000 copies ( i.e. nearly 6 million euros in turnover, according to GFK). Main publisher of the Marvel license in France, Panini Comics, out of 384 publications in 2022, devoted 70 to the spider-man, between new adventures and reissues (including the Marvel Classic collection, which for more than twenty years has taken up the The Complete Adventures of Spider-Man One 54e volume is expected this fall). “Thanks to Disney’s work on targeting children, the readership of Spider-Man in France has expanded and it is also much more mixed than five or ten years ago”, specifies Sébastien Dallain, director of publishing.
Managing Director of the French Federation of Toy and Childcare Industries, Christophe Drevet sums up the brand’s inextinguishable strength on the web: “This license is one of those timeless products that have been established in France for decades, just like Batman and Star Wars. . The generational transition has taken place: I personally discovered Spider-Man by reading his adventures in Strange and I passed on my love of superheroes to my sons, who in turn discovered Spider-Man with Sam Raimi’s trilogy as early as 2002. And in 2023, a new generation of children reconnects with the character through the animated films from Sony as well as Spidey and his amazing friends. It’s a license that’s here to last forever. The whole toy market benefits from this. »
As Uncle Ben said to his nephew Peter Parker in Sam Raimi’s cult first installment: “Great powers come with great responsibilities…” “and also reinforced concrete merchandising,” we might add. .
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