Eric Rollman

President, Marvel Animation

What is the strategy for bringing well-known characters into today’s multiplatform world?

We are rooted in more than 70 years of comic books, and our characters have been redesigned, rewritten and reinvigorated by thousands of different artists and writers over the years. Because those are our roots we’ve created a very flexible approach to our characters. As long as we respect their core integrity and the worlds we create for them, we are able to successfully translate them across an infinite amount of platforms.

We’re always trying to create interesting ways to bring our characters to life, and spin them across video games, where we have been extremely successful, or television animation or direct-to-DVD animated features, or live-action features, or even fun short-form webisodes. We do several fun things on marvel.com and marvelkids.com. If we are having fun doing it, then the fans are having fun watching it. It’s very important for us to respect our fan base, because they can make or break anything out there.

Would you tell us about a recent multiplatform property?

We have a new series called The Super Hero Squad. We are taking the entire Marvel Universe and making it available in one show. We decided we would make the show target a little bit of a younger audience, make it more appealing to 5- to 8-year-olds, but equally as fun and engaging for older kids 6 to 11 as well. But most importantly, it was going to be a show that was Mom-friendly. So it’s cute and comedic, but it’s full of our traditional and expected action adventure with great storytelling that has always been part of the Marvel Universe. We’ve rolled that out on every platform, including television, mobile, online, home video, as well as hundreds of licensed products across stores everywhere.

What benefits will Marvel Animation derive from being part of The Walt Disney Company?

It’s a great opportunity for us. Disney is the world’s greatest animation company, and we are very lucky to have them bring us under their umbrella. There are a lot of benefits for us, and distribution is one of the greatest ones. Disney has channels all around the world, and Marvel has already been a part of the Disney content catalogue for many years. They got a big influx of Marvel content when they bought Fox Family Worldwide back in 2001 from Saban Entertainment and News Corporation. Disney has expertise in everything from production to distribution. And there are a lot of fans of Marvel at Disney, so all in all it’s a great opportunity for all of us to really embrace something that was already set in motion many years ago.

What new projects are in the works?

We have more than 300 episodes of television animation in production right now. In the U.S. alone we have more than 40 hours of Marvel animation on the air every week across Disney XD, Cartoon Network and Nicktoons. We also have great partnerships internationally, everywhere from Canada to France to Mexico, and beyond. We’re continuing to work on those relationships and solidify homes for our projects, and certainly our relationship with Disney gives us the ability to do that and to commit to more production because we know we should have a home for the shows. The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is coming in fall 2010.

We also have a prime-time initiative called Marvel Knights, where we are taking our greatest comic books and bringing them to life using a proprietary animation technique. We are already previewing it on iTunes. More Marvel Animated Features are coming later in 2010, and a new season of Iron Man: Armored Adventures… is in production.

We are localizing our programming in some markets. The first of these initiatives is a partnership with Madhouse Studios in Japan, and that’s the Marvel Anime project. We have another with a company called KEN Creative in India where we are doing a project that is directed first and foremost at the Indian market. We have another initiative we’re doing in Turkey—it continues to grow.