Comic Book Movie Revenue, as a percentage of total domestic box office gross (click the picture to see in much better detail)

In 2008 you had to live under a rock to miss noticing that the world seems to love comic book movies like a fat kid loves cake.  As 2009 ramps up, all the major studios have major comic book adaptations in the works.  It seems that they’re going to keep making these films, especially those of the superhero variety, until literally every director who has the slightest comic book fetish is either dead or runs out of source material.

When we look back at the data it’s clear that this superhero thing ain’t new. Comics have been a source of story material for blockbusters for over 30 years, with plenty of notable dynasties (not to mention attempts at dynasty) emerging over that time. Never before, however, have we seen major studios bank so heavily on superhero comic book films as their major tentpoles, in such large numbers. In the 80’s we had the iconic Superman series, and the 90’s saw Batman’s first incarnation. Those films’ translations wouldn’t have been possible without great direction (Richard Donner for Superman and Tim Burton for Batman). X-Men and later Spiderman (directed by Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi, respectively) solidified the director-as-bringer-of-life model that made the early successes.

To get a better picture of the comic book’s role in the film industry over the last 30 years, we plotted comic book movie contribution to gross domestic box office take.  The trend clearly shows the recent explosion within the genre and hints at a possible decline in 2009.  We’ll leave as homework making an actual prediction for 2009, but might recommend you check out hsx.com to try to build out that forecast.

What do you think, will the comic book genre survive?