At Wizard World Chicago representatives from Marvel and Lion's Gate Family Entertainment discussed The Ultimate Avengers, the first feature length, direct-to-DVD animated film release produced by Lion's Gate featuring Marvel characters.  The Ultimate Avengers animated feature will be approximately 75 minutes long, carry a 'PG' rating and is based on the first six issues of The Ultimates comic book series, which was written by Mark Millar and drawn by Bryan Hitch.  Hitch's rendering of the characters served as the basis for the way the characters will appear in the film -- and these animated features will adhere much more closely in both look and plot to the actual comic books than the live action adaptations of Marvel properties such as Spider-Man or X-Men films.

The Ultimate Avengers, which is the first of eight Lion's Gate/Marvel animated features (see 'Marvel Posts Strong Q4 Results'), will be released on DVD in February of 2006.  A second Ultimate Avengers, which will be based on The Ultimates #6-#12 is slated for release in the second quarter of 2006.  But not all of the Lion's Gate/Marvel animated films will be based on the Ultimate universe -- in the third quarter Lion's Gate will release an Iron Man feature written by Greg Johnson and based on the classic Marvel Iron Man comics.

Pricing for the Lion's Gate/Marvel releases has not been determined at this time. Given the animated features' close relationship to the original comic book material and the film's 'PG' ratings it appears that these will not be the typical Saturday morning superhero fodder and that Marvel and Lion's Gate are targeting the core comic book-reading audience.