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Actually, it should be 24 as The Incredibles 2 should also release within the next four years. Of course, for obvious reasons it'll be a bit different than the others and, being Pixar, much likelier to have a solid story and characterization.

Good point, Jerry. If the question were, "Is 24 Pixar Super Hero Movies Over The Next 4 Years Too Much," I might answer differently!

I think it's a tad unfair to judge all superhero movies as if they fit into the exact same categories. As if they tell the exact same stories and have the exact same developments. Iron Man isn't like Thor, Thor isn't like Captain America, Captain America isn't like The Sandman (can The Sandman even be considered a "superhero" franchise? It's more "dark fantasy"), The Sandman isn't like Superman, etc. It's kind of disheartening that people still see these films, not as their own entities, but as "just another superhero movie".

Rogue, in one respect, you're absolutely right. To fans of this story category who know its ins and outs up and down, it must be absurd to see how the larger general population can lump together superhero characters or movies. OTOH, let's consider what these movies share: * Big budgets * Franchise / Tentpole / Sequels * Larger than life Nemesis characters * A malevolent plan with the potential to harm vast numbers of people * Lots and lots of explosions, fighting, destruction and general bombast These may not be true to all superhero movies, but for non-uber fans, such as myself, I think that's a fair assessment of our take on these type of movies. So if we don't know the lore, the deep background on character backstories, what's to make us think this superhero movie is going to be that much different than that superhero movie? Granted we're not the target audience. The problem becomes when a movie's budget is so big, the studio needs to widen box office results beyond the core fan group. For me, it all boils down to character and tone. I loved The Dark Knight. I really enjoyed Iron Man. I like what Whedon did with The Avengers. Each of those movies had a distinctive tone and some great character dynamics at work. But no matter the yammering of old farts like me. Hollywood is committed to this path for at least the next decade, if you throw in the Star Wars dynasty. Crazy to think, however, that for every $150M superhero movie, we could have major studios producing 7 movies like The Fault in Our Stars, Moonrise Kindgom, Zero Dark Thirty, The Town, The Way Way Back, The Heat, Bridesmaids, and so forth.

Now I was under the impression that the Spider-Man plans were stalled... so if that's true, we cut the 24 down to 20. But Sony/Columbia will want something to replace that, so they'll either reboot Spider-Man AGAIN or try to jump-sitart their own new IP to make up the gap. If that's the case, they might get two movies made in the four-year span. So let's say 22. WB owns DC, and it might be possible that Batman/Superman will bomb (as Man Of Steel wasn't particularly popular), and there's enough revulsion to the new flick, it might compromise their future plans. So if that's the case, we could knock down another six. So from 22 to 16. And then the rest are Marvel movies, and we're only getting so many of those because Marvel sold so many rights for pennies way back when. And they're in this position where the movies are competing with themselves, and it looks like Marvel Comics might put their Fantastic Four comics on hiatus to avoid promoting the FF movie, since they don't own it. And the Fantastic Four movies thus far were all... unenjoyable (the best FF movie was The Incredibles). It's an uphill battle for acceptance, if the first doesn't do well, we might not see another. So maybe cut 16 down to 15. So if what could go wrong does go wrong, we'd have about 4 superhero movies a year for four years. Still a lot. Then let's consider the other comic book properties that haven't been discussed. "Superior" got bought (it might be the untitled Fox project), and I wouldn't be surprised if "Nemesis" got picked up as well, so that's an up from 15 to 17. "Nemesis" could easily launch a sequel, it's got this horror movie element to it, so maybe we go up to 18. Let's also throw in the possibility that we'll get two low-budget superhero flicks from the indie market, like "Super," "Chronicle," something like that. 18 to 20. That's five a year. And that's MOVIES. We already know Marvel Studios is doing four TV shows on Netflix. And now the video game consoles all want their own "must-see" event programming, so you'll bet if they don't do superhero, they'll do something similar enough. So let's say 4 plus 1 (x-Box) plus 1 (Playstation) plus 1 (Amazon) and that's six series of 13 episodes each... that's 78 hours of episodic heroes if they all just get one season. So 40 hours of superhero movies (worst case) plus 78 hours (possible) is 118 hours (let's round that up to 120) of superheroes. What's funny is that comic books used to be all different genres, from romances to westerns to comedy to funny books to crime thrillers, and while they might not have been the best stuff in the world, imagine if that had remained and now instead of "superhero" movies, the Marvel movie dominance (note that they're represented by three studios while DC is only repped by one) is a sign of quality across all genres, more like Pixar.