Marvel Comics
In the 21st century, Marvel’s profits were increasingly derived from toys, video games, and other merchandise featuring their most popular characters and from the production of a string of commercially successful movies. Those films differed from prior efforts to translate comics to the big screen in that they were set in a single shared world. That ambitious plan generated huge dividends with The Avengers (2012), a film that featured Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America—three heroes that had scored individual blockbuster successes—and grossed more than $1.5 billion worldwide. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as it came to be known, grew into one of the most lucrative franchises in film history. Its success spawned a wave of television programs, beginning with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–20) on ABC and continuing with Daredevil (2015–18), Jessica Jones (2015–19), and Luke Cage (2016–18), a string of critically lauded series that appeared on Netflix, as well as other series on Disney+. In 2015 an agreement between Disney and Sony brought Spider-Man (who had previously appeared only in Sony-produced films) into the shared universe; the character would subsequently be available for use by both studios. Marvel Studios, the company’s film and television division, continued to set records with its flagship Avengers, but it also packed theatres with relatively unknown heroes such as the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Ant-Man (2015), and Doctor Strange (2016). In addition, Black Panther (2018) became the first Marvel movie to win an Academy Award; it received Oscars for costume design, original score, and production design. By 2020, more than 20 films had been released under the banner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the franchise’s cumulative global box office receipts had topped $22 billion.