Disney Consumes Marvel!

Woke up this morning to the shocking, thrilling and perplexing news that Walt Disney Co. had acquired Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion dollars! Wow, way to shake up the industry. Twitter went nuts for a good two hours with thousands of tweets of both negative and positive reaction. As I marinated over the idea, I began to grow only more and excited at all of the prospects that could happen. For all the details on what this means for both Disney and Marvel scroll down...


First and foremost it is important to understand that Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment because they like where the company is and is heading. Disney's goal is to maximize Marvel's brand. In the deal, Disney has acquired over 5,000 characters within the Marvel Entertainment brand. Disney's idea is to allow Marvel Entertainment to keep up what their doing and only have the benefit of a Conglomerate like Disney backing them. Ike Perlmutter, Marvel's Chief Executive Officer was quoted during a conference call this morning saying, "Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses." Disney's President and CEO said, "This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories."

Some clarification, as far as the Marvel movies out there at various studios, those for now will stay the same. Meaning Fox will continue to have rights to X-Men, Daredevil and the Fantastic Four, Sony will keep rights for Spider-Man and Paramount the likes of Iron Man, Thor and Captain America. That doesn't mean as property rights begin to lapse or come to the end of their terms with said studios, that Disney will not push to acquire those film rights as well. Disney definitely wants to over time become the sole distributor of Marvel films.

What Disney will be doing now is looking over the library of 5,000 characters and finding some gems that they can "exploit" in the same ways Marvel and Paramount has done with Iron Man. That is just the film side of things. When you begin to look at the branding that Disney can now begin with the Marvel properties the imaginations just begins to wander. We could begin to see Marvel heroes in some of the Disney Parks? Remember Disney is planning a renovation of California Adventure and throwing some Marvel characters into the Park would be an instant success. There is definitely talk about a Marvel/Pixar team up, which is certain to make Marvel fans mouth water as well as Pixar fans. Especially the possibilities for the long-talked of The Incredibles sequel. There's a lot to talk and think about on this one. More news for sure as this whopping story develops...

Head over to Disney or Marvel where you can read the full press release or listen to the conference call from this morning.

What say you? Is Disney acquiring Marvel a good or bad thing? Strikeback...