Disney Buys Marvel for $4 Billion and the Internet Erupts

The money's big, but don't expect the changes to be

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Monday, August 31st 2009 at 11:48 AM

So I wake up and see a bunch of emails in my Inbox with "breaking news" slathered all over them followed by an official press release telling me Disney has acquired Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. I begin to think, "Wow, that's a lot of money, but not as much as the $7.4 billion it cost to buy Pixar three years ago…" Then, my thinking on the subject ends because, really, who cares? Companies buy companies all the time and while people will say Mickey Mouse now owns Spider-Man, all I can think about is the fact Spider-Man will most likely be distributed by Touchstone, a Disney label that distributes their more edgy products.

The only real news here is the fact a lot of big numbers changed hands and a new company will be shelling out movies featuring men in spandex.

The current deal in place with Paramount to distribute Iron Man 2, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and The Avengers remains intact. That deal, which was made back in September of 2008 saying Paramount would distribute Marvel's next five self-produced feature films on a worldwide basis. With the four films already listed, it leaves one more, which would most likely be Iron Man 3 in my estimation.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney's global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel's properties.

In more interesting news, Newsarama listened in on the investor conference and quoted a response when someone asked about the possibility of a Marvel/Pixar team-up. "We actually have had some conversations internally, and [Pixar's] John Lasseter met with some of the key Marvel creative executives fairly recently and the group got very excited pretty fast," Disney's President and CEO, Bob Iger said. "We had to say, 'slow down guys, we haven't done this deal yet.'" Still, Iger said, "You can put a lot of creative, enthusiastic people in a room that can appreciate the value of great characters and interesting worlds, a lot can happen… sparks can fly, is the expression that comes to mind."

So, while I assume the majority of the more mainstream Marvel features will most likely find their way to Touchstone and seemingly remain no different than they were in the past, this does afford Marvel far more creative outlets than they had when they were operating on a solo basis. Of course, that seemed to be the way Marvel was heading and they were sitting pretty after the success of Iron Man and its $585 million worldwide take, but this move seems just as good as any.

I guess what I am most curious about is where do deals with characters such as the X-Men franchise lie? How about that Wolverine sequel or Magneto, both at Fox? Are the Fantastic Four still held by Fox? What about The Incredible Hulk and Universal? Sony seems to want to make Spider-Man movies forever with Spider-Man 4, Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6 already in the works. Disney said in the investor call they would like to self-distribute down-the-line, but I guess the full meaning of that is yet to be known. There are a few loose-ends and I am sure enough licensing agreements out there to keep everyone busy for quite some time, but I really don't expect this to be a deal movie fansites should get too worked up over.