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National and local television stations staged show after show and segment after segment this weekend on the upcoming summer box office offerings from Hollywood.
To start things off, the X-Men series continued with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and the result was an $87M opening weekend according to studio estimates yesterday.
That put the movie right in the pack with the three previous "X-Men" movies in which Hugh Jackman played mutant superhero Wolverine. The trilogy's final chapter, "X-Men: The Last Stand," had the franchise's best opening with $102.8M. But "Wolverine" came in ahead of the first two movies; "X-Men" did $54.5M in its first weekend and "X2: X-Men United" took in $85.6M.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a production of 20th Century Fox Movies, a subsidiary of News Corporation (NWS) trading around $10 a share on the Nasdaq.
But this story isn't about Rupert Murdoch (the leader of News Corp.), it's about the origins of Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men or more succinctly, about former Marvel Comic publisher Stan Lee who brought all these characters to life.
In a nutshell, after decades Stan Lee left his stable of Super-Hero's (with strings attached of course for a share of future profits) and started his own media company. He was literally 'picked clean' by two of the Company's leading officers (both of whom were later convicted) and in 2001 Stan Lee Media filed for bankruptcy protection.
That same year, Gill Champion, Arthur Lieberman and Lee formed POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment (POWN) http://www.powentertainment.com/ and began trading on the National Quotation Board or NQB (better known as the Pink Sheets). POWN was founded with assets taken from the estate of Stan Lee Media Inc, while it was in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection.
POWN has been active: producing the 2006 Sci Fi Channel's TV-movie Stan Lee's Lightspeed and that network's reality television series Who Wants to Be a Superhero? Other productions have included direct-to-DVD animated features, Stan Lee's Mosaic and Stan Lee Presents: The Condor.
POWN also specializes in franchises for the entertainment industry, including animation and live-action feature films, plus television, DVDs, video games, merchandising, and related ancillary markets, all of which aid in the establishment of global franchises.
But the trouble wasn't over for Stan Lee, one his former partners (one of the convicted partners) drug Lee into a Colorado court pursuing control of POWN.
On February 13, 2009, a Special Master appointed by a Colorado court issued a report that signaled a very clear victory for Stan Lee and POWN.
In another nutshell, and as a consequence of the report, the challenger to Lee and POWN cannot pursue the cases which it instituted. This victory is a sign that with patience to follow the correct legal channels of the cases, they will ultimately be dismissed. At last, Stan Lee can get on with creating entertainment. At long last.
POWN is a non-SEC reporting company and thus there's not a lot of information to pass along to you. The stock trades in the $0.08 range and a short-sell of April 15, suggests an average daily volume of approximately six thousand.
The NQB site has Signature Stock Transfer, Inc. 2632 Coachlight Ct., Plano, TX 75093 listed as the Transfer Agent (which should have better liquidity numbers and there is a company phone number at the POWN web site that might be of help. They also have a very well respected P.R. firm headed by Dawn Miller who might be able to direct a possible investor to a shareholder services representative.
These numbers were on the NQB (but I don't know how accurate they are): Estimated Market Cap $9,183,003 as of May 1, 2009, Outstanding Shares; 105,551,761 as of Dec 14, 2005 and Authorized Shares; 250,000,000 as of Dec 14, 2005.
Also mentioned in the long list of summer movies soon to be upon us were "Up," the latest from Disney (DIS) and Pixar Animation (makers of "WALL-E," "Ratatouille" and the "Toy Story" movies).
And this coming Friday Viacom (VIA) brings Paramount's relaunch of "Star Trek," with a new cast playing James Kirk, Spock and other characters from the 1960s TV series.
