According to ICV2, Marvel has struck a deal where co-financers give them money to make movies. Then if any of those movies make less than $100 million, those financers own 100% the movie rights to the characters in those films. This is a crazy gamble and Marvel is insane.

If just ONE of their films bomb then they lose rights to all the characters involved. The characters that are part of the deal include Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant Man, Nick Fury, Captain America and the Avengers.

The two things Marvel gains from this is that they don?t take any finical risk and they get creative control over the films.