We all know he can leap tall buildings in a single bound and bend steel with his bare hands. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that during a time of crisis even the porn industry is turning to Superman.
In same week last month that Warner Bros released the Superman blockbuster Man of Steel, Vivid Entertainment Group put out its own superhero flick, Man of Steel XXX: A Porn Parody.
Although it’s safe to assume Steel XXX didn’t quite match the $116.6-million (about R1.1-billion) opening weekend of the Warner Bros hit, if it performs anything like 2010’s Batman XXX: A Porn Parody, it will become the most-rented and highest-selling porn video of the year. At a cost of more than $100 000, it will also be one of the most expensive porn movies made.
Parodies, once a cheaply filmed niche segment of the adult movie market, are big business these days – filled with expensive special effects, real storylines, actors who can (sometimes) act and costumes that even comic-book geeks find authentic.
The movies may also help to save an industry looking to rebound from years of internet piracy, illegal downloads and amateur videos that have caused a serious financial hit, said Mark Kernes, the senior editor at Adult Video News. The business has gone from annual revenues of as much as $12bn a few years ago to about $7bn.
“We certainly do have a problem with piracy… and sadly no one seems to be able to do anything about it,” said Kernes.
But now Superman is coming to the rescue, with Batman, Iron Man and Spider-Man. All four have taken star turns in full-length, slickly produced films that include hard-core crime fighting and, well, other hard-core scenes – although milder versions were made of some of the same films.
Neither the makers of the mainstream films nor comic book writer and Iron Man creator, Stan Lee, wanted to comment.
Marvel Comics also did not respond to requests for comment. Warner Bros’ DC Entertainment Division, which makes the Superman and Batman films, had no comment, said spokeswoman Courtney Simmons.
Since the trend toward superhero parodies began three years ago, no porn company making them has been sued. For years the courts have ruled that parodies, like other forms of speech, are protected by the first amendment of the US constitution.
“Mainstream porn, from a copyright protection, from a first amendment protection, is essentially the same as any other form of written expression,” said entertainment lawyer David Ginsburg, who is the executive director of the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) School of Law’s entertainment, media and intellectual property law programme.
“The rules of parody apply as equally to porn as they do to any other form of parody, like Saturday Night Live or Mad Magazine,” Ginsburg said.
The porn parody superhero revolution seems to have begun in earnest in about 2010, when veteran adult film director Axel Braun brought his Batman XXX film to the Vivid Entertainment Group.
The company’s chief executive, Steven Hirsch, initially wasn’t impressed. But when the film became the biggest-selling and most rented video of the year, Hirsch said, he quickly realised there was a core demographic his business was overlooking: comic-book geeks.
Soon Vivid was cranking out four to six of the movies a year, timing their release with when the mainstream films hit theatres.
Other companies soon followed with their own releases, including: The Justice League Of Porn Star Heroes and a parody of the vampire TV series True Blood.
Production costs can be more than 10 times as high as making a traditional pornographic movie, but the parodies sell for three times as much, Braun said.
They are, Hirsch confirmed, the best-selling movies on Vivid TV, “after our celebrity sex tapes”. – Sapa-AP
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