Marvel Entertainment - Owners of Spider-Man, X-Men and Incredible Hulk

Beautifully engraved Certificate from the Marvel Entertainment Company . This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman holding a harp. This item has the printed signatures of the company's officers.




Certificate Vignette

With a library of over 4,700 proprietary characters, Marvel Enterprises, Inc. is one of the world's most prominent character-based entertainment companies. Marvel's operations are focused in five divisions: entertainment (Marvel Studios), licensing, toys (Toy Biz), comic book publishing and Internet/New Media. Marvel facilitates the creation of entertainment projects, including feature films, television, home video and the Internet, based on its characters and also licenses its characters for use in a wide range of consumer products and services including video and computer games, apparel, collectibles, snack foods and promotions. Marvel's characters and plot lines are created by its comic book division which continues to maintain a leadership position in the U.S. and worldwide while also serving as an invaluable source of intellectual property.






Marvel Studios has announced that the company will feature five major motion pictures over the next 18 months culminating with a May 2, 2003 release for X-Men 2 and a June 20, 2003 release for The Incredible Hulk.

These two live-action feature films will join three high-profile releases in 2002 that will be kicked off by Blade 2 on March 29 and followed by Spider-Man on May 3 and Daredevil during the holiday season. This action-packed, star-studded lineup helps ensure that Marvel Studios -- which brought the superhero movie back in vogue with the breakout success of X-Men in 2001 -- will dominate the Hollywood landscape throughout 2002 and 2003. Now that this schedule is firmly in place, Marvel and all its divisions, are busy exploiting these properties in publishing, licensing, interactive and toys.

In order to extend the life of each franchise. Marvel will continue its policy of following each movie with an animated show and video games. Animated shows are currently in development for all five properties.

"When we began Marvel Studios our vision was to be one of the dominant players in the sci-fi fantasy business and we have achieved our goals and then some. I wanted us to be a dominant player in the Hollywood landscape and have a lineup of movies based on our characters in production at the same time. Now that dream has finally become a reality," said Avi Arad, CEO of Marvel Studios. "We proved with Blade and X-Men there is a massive audience for superhero movies and the studios have come to accept that the Marvel Universe provides a rich library of event movies."