UPDATE #1: In a conference call, the companies said that the deals for movies for characters at other studios (Spider-Man, X-Men, etc.) will stay in place under the terms set by Marvel and the other studios.
UPDATE #2: John Lasseter met with Marvel last week about a possible team-up between Marvel and Pixar and got "pretty excited, pretty fast." They say there's definitely an opportunity there.
UPDATE #3: The deal with Paramount Pictures to distribute "Iron Man 2," "Thor," "Captain America" and "The Avengers" stays in place as well, but Disney would like to self-distribute down the line. "When the time comes we'll take a closer look at it." It was actually stated that the deal still included five films, so that is one more film after "The Avengers."
BuckyO'harre wrote:Scared and excited at the same time.
Fievel wrote:BuckyO'harre wrote:Scared and excited at the same time.
...and that just about sums it up for me!!
Lord Voldemoo wrote:Fievel wrote:BuckyO'harre wrote:Scared and excited at the same time.
...and that just about sums it up for me!!
me too.
And I agree 100% with Lecko about the excitement about the cross-platform possibilities.
But this is such an amazingly huge shift...I can't help but have some trepidation.
I WANT AN IRON MAN RIDE AT DISNEY WORLD!!!!!!!!
RogueScribner wrote:Retardo, you don't know what you're missing. The Spider-man ride at Universal Orlando is one of the best, if not THE best, theme park rides I've ever been on.
Retardo_Montalban wrote:RogueScribner wrote:Retardo, you don't know what you're missing. The Spider-man ride at Universal Orlando is one of the best, if not THE best, theme park rides I've ever been on.
I don't even know what the spider-man ride is. Is there any nudity?
The Vicar wrote:Retardo_Montalban wrote:RogueScribner wrote:Retardo, you don't know what you're missing. The Spider-man ride at Universal Orlando is one of the best, if not THE best, theme park rides I've ever been on.
I don't even know what the spider-man ride is. Is there any nudity?
Yeah. J Jonah Jameson.
Feel better?
There are still existing deals in which other studios hold the big screen rights to certain characters.
But after those deals expire, Disney “want[s] to be sole distributor of these films.”
On the possibility of Pixar developing a future Marvel films? “We’ve talked about this internally. Pixar boss John Lasseter talked to the Marvel guys about this and they all got excited about it. We think there’s ultimately some exciting product that come of that. Sparks will fly!” Sounds like Lasseter is very interested at the possibility.
Walt Disney Company said Monday it had agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment, the company that owns the rights to such popular characters as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, in a cash and stock deal it valued at $4 billion. The deal, which boards of directors at both companies have approved, comes more than 10 years after Marvel was at the center of a bitter takeover battle between two feisty financiers.
“We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said in a statement announcing the deal.
“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s chief executive officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”
Under the terms of the deal, Disney will pay $30 a share in cash and 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share, with Disney stock accounting for no less than 40 percent of the deal value. Disney valued the deal at $50 per Marvel share, based on the companies’ closing share prices on Friday.
Shareholders at Marvel will need to approve the transaction.
Marvel Entertainment began in 1939 as a comic book company called Timely Publications. It has since become one of the largest character-based franchises in the world, with a proprietary library of over 5,000 characters including The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, The Avengers and the X-Men.
Ronald O. Perelman acquired Marvel in 1989, but the company filed for bankruptcy protection seven years later, setting off a drawn-out takeover feud between him and a group of bondholders led by Carl C. Icahn. In the end, Mr. Perlmutter gained control of Marvel through his company, Toy Biz, and Mr. Perlmutter owns about 37 percent of Marvel’s stock, according to Marvel’s latest annual filing with regulators.
Mr. Perlmutter will continue to oversee the Marvel properties after the acquisition, Disney said.
Marvel now has three main divisions: a licensing arm, which sells the right for other companies to use their proprietary characters in movies and promotions; a publishing arm, which makes the comics and books based on their characters; and a film production unit, which makes movies for some of their characters.
The film production unit is a relatively new venture for Marvel. The company originally licensed its characters to the big movie studios, but beginning in 2005, Marvel entered the movie-making business with the construction of a $525 million film facility.
The first two movies Marvel produced were “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk” in the summer of 2008. The company is currently developing four films for release in 2010 and 2011: “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” “The First Avenger: Captain America” and “The Avengers.”
Marvel was advised by Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Monday’s transaction.
The acquisition comes as Disney, with its vast theme park operations and television advertising business, has been struggling because soft advertising sales at ABC and ESPN and drooping consumer spending at Disney World. Disney’s profit in the third quarter dropped 26 percent.
Over all, Disney’s net income fell to $954 million, or 51 cents a share, from $1.28 billion, or 66 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue fell 7 percent, to $8.6 billion. Earnings per share for the current quarter included a one-cent restructuring charge related to an accounting gain. Excluding that charge, Disney narrowly beat Wall Street’s expectations.
King Psyz wrote: Kingdom Hearts 3 with a Marvel Universe world!
TonyWilson wrote:So yeh, Pixar Avengers movie directed by Brad Bird.
Make it so.
Leckomaniac wrote:I want Brad Bird to handle Captain America in some capacity.
Retardo_Montalban wrote:The Vicar wrote:Retardo_Montalban wrote:RogueScribner wrote:Retardo, you don't know what you're missing. The Spider-man ride at Universal Orlando is one of the best, if not THE best, theme park rides I've ever been on.
I don't even know what the spider-man ride is. Is there any nudity?
Yeah. J Jonah Jameson.
Feel better?
J Jonah can do a lot with that cigar, so yes.
Leckomaniac wrote:I want Brad Bird to handle Captain America in some capacity.
Fievel wrote:Oddest thread merge ever.
RogueScribner wrote:By all accounts, Fox has a perpetual hold on the rights to X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil as long as they keep making movies. Sony, from what I've read, has a similar deal with Spider-man. I wouldn't expect to see the Disney banner in front of those titles anytime soon.
MARC GRASER wrote:Lasseter's toon team is said to be especially excited over the Marvel buy, with its animators already scouring the company's library, identifying characters it can turn into movies, TV shows and direct-to-DVD releases.
RogueScribner wrote:By all accounts, Fox has a perpetual hold on the rights to X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil as long as they keep making movies. Sony, from what I've read, has a similar deal with Spider-man. I wouldn't expect to see the Disney banner in front of those titles anytime soon.
Marc Graser wrote:Although Disney won't be able to make movies around Marvel's higher-profile characters or even integrate them into its theme parks -- they're set up at other studios and at Universal's parks for many years to come -- the Mouse House will still be able to capitalize on their success. Marvel collects a percentage of all revenues generated from films featuring the characters, which will now go into Disney's coffers. Marvel expects to post profits of around $100 million this year.Marvel may only have made $110 million from the $2.9 billion generated by the first three "Spider-Man" films, but Marvel has a sweeter deal for its next five pics -- the next two "Iron Man" films, "Thor," "The First Avenger: Captain America" and "The Avengers. Those films will be released through Paramount, but the studio only collects a distribution fee of around 8%.
Honor Hunter wrote:The television rights to those characters aren't included. So you think the company won't be planning on television series based on Peter Parker, Matt Murdock, Reed Richards and Wolvie? I bet ABC has some form of a show on within two years. Maybe it'll be something to dampen Fox's "X-Men: First Class." Perhaps a "New Mutants" television show following a new class of Professor Xavier's students. Maybe a show following Daredevil? That right there might dilute the competitions desire for a sequel if characters they're planning on investing millions of dollars in are seen weekly on television. Who knows? I'm sure over the next year or so, the Suits at Disney and Marvel will go over all these characters to determine what will be the first property to get a television show or movie.
RogueScribner wrote:By all accounts, Fox has a perpetual hold on the rights to X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil as long as they keep making movies. Sony, from what I've read, has a similar deal with Spider-man. I wouldn't expect to see the Disney banner in front of those titles anytime soon.
TheButcher wrote:From COLLIDER:
Disney CEO Bob Iger: No ‘Disneyfication’ of Marvel
ScarletScribe wrote:Blah blah blah, Disney buys Marvel. Blah blah blah Dick Cook, chariman of Disney Studios, resigns after nearly 40 years with the company. Blah blah blah, Kevin Feige of Marvel pegged as possible successor to Cook.
Wait, what?
Yes, it's true. In what could amount to a crazy coup d'etat that no one saw coming, Feige, the current president of Marvel Studios is rumored to be the next potential chairman of Disney Studios. According to Nikki Finke from Deadline Hollywood, "There's been a lot of talk that Marvel Studios [p]resident Kevin Feige spent a lot of time with Disney CEO Bob Iger during the dealmaking to buy the company, and Feige impressed the hell out of Iger."
Associated Press wrote:Moviegoers have shown a willingness to be entangled by Spider-Man's web over and over again. Now, as Disney prepares to buy the comic-book powerhouse Marvel, it faces the question of whether fans will also get attached to characters as obscure as Ant-Man and Iron Fist.
The Walt Disney Co. is making a $4.2 billion bet that they will as it nears completion of its acquisition of Marvel Entertainment this week. The cash-and-stock deal brings those characters and thousands of others to an entertainment empire that already includes Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog and Hannah Montana.
Disney's biggest challenge will be to get enough people enthused about second-string superheroes to justify the price -- about $1.2 billion, or 40%, more than what Marvel's stock was worth when the deal was announced Aug. 31.
The high price means Disney will have to find new ways to earn revenue from Marvel -- perhaps by bringing Marvel-licensed toys to more store shelves around the world, and by digging deep into its comic vault for potential new blockbusters.
Although Disney is constrained by the fact that big-name Marvel superheroes such as Spider-Man are already locked up in long-term deals with rival movie studios, Disney has had a history of successfully turning unknown talent such as Miley Cyrus, the actress behind "Hannah Montana," into multibillion-dollar enterprises.
"With Marvel, it's not just about 'Iron Man' and 'Hulk,' " Caris & Co. analyst David Miller said. "It's all about the other 5,000 characters that you and I don't even know about yet."
Disney shares are already being helped, having risen more than 20% since the deal was announced, partly on the hope for new character development and better use of Marvel heroes in movies, stores and theme parks.
Marvel shareholders are expected to give final approval to the offer on Thursday, with the closing of the deal to follow immediately.
The deal has already spawned a bout of speculation in the comic book world about who will be the next big Thing.
Possibilities include classics such as Ant-Man, the alter-ego of mad scientist Dr. Henry Pym, and Dr. Strange, the mystical go-to guy whenever there's an extradimensional threat. Both are connected to the Avengers line of characters that Marvel had started developing for the big screen long before Disney made the deal; Iron Man and the Hulk are among the Avengers that Marvel already has tapped.
There are about 5,000 more characters, including obscure ones such as martial arts master Iron Fist from the 1970s and up-and-coming ones such as the Runaways, a street-savvy pack of teenagers that have become a recent Marvel comic-book hit.
Whoever is the next comic book movie star, Marvel has a track record of success: its "Iron Man" movie took in $572 million at boxoffices worldwide despite the character once being a B-lister in the pantheon of superheroes.
"They picked the right one and they did it the right way," said Gareb Shamus, whose company Wizard Entertainment Group runs several of the Comic-Con fan conventions around the nation. "When you do that you've got a franchise that could last forever."
Through the deal, Marvel gains the ability to quickly reach more markets worldwide. Disney is by far the world's top licenser of its character brands, with $30 billion in retail sales in fiscal 2008, compared with fourth-place Marvel at $5.7 billion, according to License! Global magazine.
"It gives Marvel the opportunity to expand internationally and leverage the Disney retail relationships as well as their licensee relationships," said Tony Lisanti, the magazine's global editorial director.
Associated Press wrote:Marvel CEO Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter, who owns 37% of Marvel stock, also secured himself the top job overseeing the Marvel business after the acquisition. That includes decisions on which characters are developed into movie stars.
Disney, which is based in Burbank and plans to keep Marvel's operations in New York, hasn't tipped its hand on what lesser-known characters it believes have the potential to leap off the printed page.
And there are some characters Disney says it is happy to let other movie studios keep developing, including Spider-Man at Sony Pictures and the X-Men and Fantastic Four at 20th Century Fox. Marvel earns royalties and a piece of the merchandising sales from those movies, and Disney soon will, too.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company may initially develop new characters on television rather than in movies. Its boy-focused cable channel, Disney XD, already airs 25 hours of Marvel cartoons every week and recently launched in Japan, as well as in several European and Latin American countries.
Television is where Disney incubated such hits as "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical." Since their debut on cable TV's Disney Channel, the franchises have spawned movies, concerts and a cascade of related merchandise.
"Instead of making a $200 million movie and kind of betting the farm on one character, you can develop a television pilot, a television series," Iger told analysts this month.
Disney would benefit the most from new characters that Disney and Marvel develop together because the company would own the franchises outright instead of simply receiving licensing fees from the movies that Sony Corp. and News Corp.'s Fox produce on their own. Those deals last until Sony and Fox stop making the movies.
New characters could also be a boon for fans who are tiring of sequels.
Analysts note that when Disney does land a hit, it is quick to spread the success around to its other businesses.
That's why "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical" have combined to sell billions of dollars in merchandise, and why "Cars" -- a product of Disney's purchase of Pixar -- is getting its own section at Disney's California Adventure theme park. Conversely, Pirates of the Caribbean was a theme park ride decades before it became a huge movie franchise.
"What Disney does better than anyone else is they leverage content across multiple platforms," Miller said. "When Disney has a hit film property, it uplifts and enhances all the other businesses."
Jamie Williams wrote:So what's the big news? Apparently, there is nothing short of a tug of war going on between Disney and Paramount over the properties Par had already lined up and contractually committed to distribute with Marvel. Sadly, it appears that the Mouse may have found a loophole.
How certain are we of this? Certain Disney publicists have already been telling members of the press that Iron Man 3 will definitely be distributed and branded with the Walt Disney logo. Ask the lawyers for details.
TheButcher wrote:Oh yeah! I hope this happens!
From Newsarama:
What will the first Disney/Marvel comics project be? Stephen Wacker has a suggestion.
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