Tidbits From The Licensing Expo: Marvel Movies And Ghostbusters 3

The Brand Licensing Europe event is currently underway in London's Olympia, hawking big name franchises to potential licensees. Amongst the /Film-friendly exhibitors are Marvel Entertainment International and Sony Pictures Consumer Products. What that means is an on the floor presence for Iron Man 2, Thor, The Avengers and Ghostbusters 3.

Bleeding Cool notes that each of the Marvel movies are being presented with an Avengers Assemble tagline. It looks like the crossover twist will be being sold up front from here on out, not only on the films themselves but the assorted cash-in lunchboxes, duvet covers, colouring books et cetera.

Will we even be seeing the Avengers Assemble strapline on the Iron Man 2 trailers? I certainly wouldn't be surprised. The public at large might be rather confused at first, but if the whole scheme is going to work at all it will need selling to the man in the street. We've got a few years of hard sell coming our way, Avengers Assemble stamped all over it.

Rich at Bleeding Cool also tells us that Marvel had "had a massive Stark Industries booth with the five Iron Man suits from San Diego and a bunch of Stark Industries security guards". He doesn't have pictures of the Marvel promotional artwork, but did describe it. Of the Thor logo, for example, he says "[It] is chunky, and stone-like, very different from the image... seen previously"

As for Ghostbusters 3, it seems that Sony were keeping their promo materials away from snoops. To further suggest it was there, however, here's a quote from the event's official brochure:

A selection of properties for which it seeks licensees and/or retail partners includes Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, The Green Hornet and Spider-Man 4.

Okay, it says Ghostbusters, no 3... but it also says Karate Kid and not Kung Fu Kid. I'm thinking that Sony are likely trying to get their commercial ducks in a row regarding the next 'Busters picture, which is possibly a more solid indication of progress on the project than what we were last being told about a script in the works and a cast interested 'in principle'.

For the record, neither of the images featured at the head of this post comes from the licensing show.