Calling all superheroes

(Fortune Magazine) -- Spider-Man, as any comic book fan knows, isn't the most powerful superhero. He can't push planets around like DC Comics' Superman (owned by Time Warner (Charts, Fortune 500), parent of Fortune and CNNMoney.com). He's just an insecure teenager who, after his encounter with a radioactive spider, can climb walls and swing around on a web. But Marvel's wisecracking web-slinger is Hollywood's most bankable superhero. Sony's "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" have made $3 billion from ticket sales, DVDs, and TV revenue globally. And "Spider-Man 3" had a record $151.1 million U.S. opening weekend.

You'd think David Maisel, recently named chairman of Marvel Studios, the publisher's Hollywood division, would be eager to talk about Spider-Man's success, but he's not. Why? Marvel (Charts) won't disclose its profits from the first two Spider-Man films, but according to a Lehman Brothers analysis, Marvel's combined take was only $62 million.

Box-office champs Spider-Man and Wolverine of the X-men (front) hold a casting call of would-be successors. From left, the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Dr. Strange, and the Black Panther.

Six degrees of Spider-Man
Can the likes of Iron Man and Thor hope to make the kind of money their buddy Spider-Man has?

Spider-Man isn't the only Marvel star to make lots of money for somebody else. Fox's "Fantastic Four," released in 2005, has grossed $624 million. Marvel only made $13 million. (A sequel, "Rise of the Silver Surfer," opens on June 15.) The three X-Men movies, also produced by News Corp.'s (Charts, Fortune 500) Fox, grossed a combined $2 billion. But Marvel's total share was $26 million.

Since launching its characters in the early 1960s, Marvel has been through lots of corporate ups and downs, including bankruptcy in 1996. Different owners and executives made a series of ill-timed or just plain bad deals to bring the company's A-list superheroes to the screen. Now it's up to Maisel, 44, a Harvard MBA who started his career at Boston Consulting Group, to make Marvel's second string as lucrative for his company as the first team has been for Sony (Charts) and Fox.

To do that Marvel has begun making its own movies. Merrill Lynch put together a group of banks and hedge funds willing to provide the company with a $525 million revolving credit facility. Marvel plans ten films, starting with "Iron Man," now in production and starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, the millionaire industrialist turned armored superhero, and Gwyneth Paltrow as his secretary Virginia "Pepper" Potts. A follow-up to Universal's ill-fated "Hulk," starring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler, is also planned for next year.

Marvel, which expects to spend between $100 million and $165 million each to produce the films, is taking a big gamble here. In fact, it is betting its characters. It has a deal with insurer Ambac (Charts) to cover the interest payments to its senior creditors should the movies bomb. If they do, Ambac gets the movie rights to Iron Man and his mighty brethren.

Can Marvel prevail with a slate of characters - Thor, the recently deceased (but sure to be resurrected) Captain America, Ant-Man - that, beloved as they are to longtime comics fans, are mostly unknown to today's kids? And can a comic book publisher and licenser turn itself into a profitable Hollywood studio? Wall Street thinks yes. As of early May, Marvel's shares were trading at $29, up from $20 a year earlier. That's partially because of the new strategy but also because Spider-Man's third screen appearance should enable Marvel to move plenty of Spidey merchandise.

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