Preferential Attachment to Marvel Movies
This article delineates how a big movie franchise such as Marvel gets richer by being high competition in the movie marketplace. Independent films in the 1970s and 1980s seemed to have done well back then but recently, people seem to be interested in only films from franchises that they have heard of. It also goes on to mention other examples to illustrate that the rich get richer; television shows seem to succeed if people are familiar with the producers or have heard of it through its popularity. In the last presidential election, a big factor that may have led to President Obama’s win is that he was already well known.
This relates to the rich-get-richer phenomena we discussed in class. Marvel has been around for decades and people are familiar with their work, whether it would be through comics or movies. Marvel is thus already well known and its steady stream of movie releases seems to increase in popularity. Since Marvel is already popular, its popularity grows at a rate that is faster than any independent film, which is an indication that it experiences increasing popularity proportional to its current population. Marvel also exhibits copying model behavior; since Marvel is so popular, a lot of buzz is generated through social media, advertisements, and word of mouth, furthering its popularity.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhomonoff/2014/10/31/marvel-mega-movies-and-medias-missing-middle/