sorry, none of you know what their relationship is with Disney, Marvel, DC, WB, etc.
No, but we know what Disney's relationship is with other businesses in general and their general modus operandi over the years. It's not a secret - it's a matter of historical record. Disney is about as dirty as it gets.
When the cookie jar is empty and Little Johnny McCookies has a long-standing history of constantly stealing cookies from the cookie jar....well, then it's not at all absurd to suggest that maybe Little Johnny is the reason the jar is currently empty.
Your just speculating and spreading rumors.
Yeah, I am speculating, but if the shoe fits...
Howard has said it over and over for years. If you don't believe him, then thats your issue I guess.
What has Howard said? When? Where?
If you can't provide a source and a quote, then you can't say "Howard said it." You're just making facts up.
To be fair, no businessman including Howard is going to admit to collusion or being strong armed. Disney has the two biggest and most important properties to his business by far, so of course Hot Toys will generally prioritize them first, second, and third. The rest of the pleb licenses they hold are left to hope and pray they get tossed a bone every now and then, which is what happened here with Two Face. DC is far from the only franchise that suffers from this. There are many egregious examples of figures that haven't been made...Doc Brown part 1, Sarah Connor, etc, etc, etc.
Exactly. DC isn't the only one getting screwed by the Mouse - it's just the one that most of us here probably care the most about (given that this is a DC sub-forum). But anyone who wanted non-DC figures is suffering as well.
You'll see more non-Disney figures when another IP has a rapidly growing, annualized series with dozens of marketable characters and actors that completely dominates the film market and is the biggest franchise in film history. .
Even if Hot Toys milked every drop of product out of the last thirty years of Batman films, they would still be producing more Marvel figures than Batman, because there is simply more to make, and demand to meet it. More films, more characters, in more unique looks... Marvel's franchise is tailor made to sell toys. Even when Batman dominated the toy market, Kenner had to make up dozens of variant Batman figures because there was simply not enough characters to make figures of that consumers actually cared about. There was demand for Batman, as there is always demand for Batman, but there wasn't enough actual CONTENT to turn into toys to meet that demand--hence Arctic Attack Batman and so on.
For a company like Hot Toys, having a constant stream of new characters with new looks in new films is basically their lifeblood, and no film franchise is delivering that at the speed and volume that Marvel currently does. You'd have to look at decades of Bond films for the closest comparison to what Marvel has done in ten years.
DC tried to produce a competing product and came up short. That breaks my heart, honestly, but it is what it is. Until DC's film product can compete with Marvel, Marvel will continue to dominate HT production.
I don't think you really understand what the issue is.
People aren't complaining that "Hot Toys is making more characters for Marvel movies than for DC movies."
The issue is that "Hot Toys is making
ALL the characters for Marvel and not even the main characters for DC movies."
Yeah, Marvel makes more movies. It makes sense that, if every property was given a fair shake, that there would be more Marvel figures - and no one would complain. But when you get
every Marvel character, variant outfit, and cameo produced, but can't even be bothered to release the
main villains of Batman '66 or Batman Returns or Batman Begins...then yeah, it becomes something bigger than just "Marvel has more movies so they get more figures."
And don't get me started on "more unique looks." The variation in costumes between Keaton Batman, Pfeiffer Catwoman, and Devito Penguin is much greater than between Iron Man Suit Mark 53 and Iron Man Suit Mark 54.