Disney Acquires Marvel Entertainment Thread (aka the Who Could Have Known How Right I'd Be By Using This Avatar Thread)

So just so you can get a little bit of info on what this means, I'm going to put links to all the different sides of this, including all the subdivisions of Marvel. Here are my twitter thoughts on it:

Quote :

Wow, Disney just bought Marvel Entertainment rights to everything!

Quote :

RT @loumongello WOW!! Disney just bought Marvel Comics!?! http://bit.ly/cRhEe Wait, wait... Spider-Man is now a Disney character!?!

Quote :

@JoeQuesada congrats on the deal! Can't wait to see what comes out of this!

Lou asked what we're most excited most about the deal:

Quote :

@loumongello honestly Disney's ability to market the Marvel characters, maybe expanding comics.

Quote :

@StephenWacker lol nice pic =)

Quote :

RT @JoeQuesada Some of your questions answered http://bit.ly/xSq7g - okay wow, the idea of a Pixar made Marvel film. Where does this leave..

Disney's deal with Boom and those comics? Gotta imagine those properties would be brought under the Marvel label at some point.

Quote :

So excited about this deal though. The potential marketing power Disney has for these characters, you know they'll work to get the film

rights back to the all the characters (which Marvel was trying to do) under one roof. Uh wow, 2D animated Marvel/Disney movies possibly?

Links

For the comics side

From WDW News Today

From the film side (speculation)

From the game side

Just to provide some context for what I'm about to post, Mary Jane wasn't originally in the Spider-Man comics. She was the niece of Aunt May's next door neighbor Anna Watson. Aunt May and Anna, knowing Peter was single, always kept talking about hooking Peter up with Anna's niece, Peter automatically assuming that she was fugly (and had it been Kirsten Dunst, he'd be right), had no interest. So finally, after missing one another here and there, Peter and Mary Jane finally meet:



So with the recent acquisition:

The Night Gwen Stacy Died is one of, if not my favorite Spidey story.

Also, can we get some Marvel emoticons added?

As for whether or not Iger respects the comic side

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/

Quote :

Behind-The-Scenes Of Disney-Marvel Deal

EXCLUSIVE: The first thing you should know is that Bob Iger has comic books in his blood. And the second thing you should know is that his ties to Marvel go back two generations. His late great-uncle (his grandfather's brother) was illustrator/cartoonist Jerry Iger, who partnered with illustrator/cartoonist Will Eisner back in the 1930s to create -- you guessed it -- the comic book packager Eisner & Iger Studios. I couldn't make up this stuff if I tried... (Blackthorne Publishing has released three compilations of Iger-related comics: The Iger Comics Kingdom, Jerry Iger's Classic Jumbo Comics, Jerry Iger's Classic National Comics, and Jerry Iger's Golden Features.) And their first hire was Jack Kirby, who as you know later became the co-creator of many of Marvel's best known characters with Stan Lee.



So Bob Iger had an unusually rich appreciation for the comic book biz dating back to his childhood when his great-uncle would draw for him. Fast forward to Monday's Disney-Marvel deal, which I've learned was 10 years in conception, and three months in negotiation between Iger and Ike Perlmutter for the 7,000 Marvel characters -- that's right, 7,000, not the 5,000 number every media outlet keeps reporting including me.

I'm told that, back in the 1990s, when Michael Eisner ran Disney and Bob Iger was his No. 2 (a teaming I liked to call FrankenEisner and Igor back then), the moguls had on-again, off-again coversations about acquiring Marvel. But there was never any attempt at a negotiation because "the brand didn't seem Disney," as a source tells me.


Once Iger took over Disney as CEO, and recently embarked on its stock buyback, the Big Media company found itself sitting on excess cash even after investing in Pixar and everything else. That's when the troika of Iger, Tom Staggs, Sr EVP/CFO, and Kevin Mayer, EVP of Corporate Strategy, Business Development and Technology Group, stepped up their look for growth opportunities. And Marvel came up again, this time much more seriously. Iger even discussed this directly with his division heads. It's a testament to Disney's limitless penchant for secrecy that even though about a dozen people knew Disney had decided to go after Marvel, there was no leak.

In June, Iger flew to New York to meet with CEO Ike Perlmutter in his Marvel office. In a show of transparency, Iger had already let the wily but no-nonsense Israeli (who'd beaten back two billionaires, Ron Perelman and Carl Icahn, for control of Marvel) know that Disney was interested in buying Marvel and wanted to start negotiating. ("It would have been manipulative if I'd approached it any other way," Iger told a pal. "You know how that goes. Someone invites you for dinner. And, after a glass of wine, he tells you he wants to buy you. And the wine never tastes quite as good after that.")

But Perlmutter expressed little interest in a deal, even though he liked Disney and all that the name, company, branding, implied. "I've heard good things about Disney. But I don't need to sell. I don't want to sell," Perlmutter told Iger, according to my insiders. But, eventually, Iger got to the heart of Perlmutter's objection: Ike didn't want to retire. He wanted to continue to work because Marvel was what he loved.

As due diligence went on, Disney saw nothing in Marvel's books that indicated Marvel was under financial pressure or Perlmutter had any need to sell. So the price had to be right. From June to Sunday night, both sides eventually became "more comfortable" with the $4 billion valuation, according to my insiders.


A little math shows that Perlmutter, who owns 37% of his public company, stands to reap $1.5 billion in cash and stock. Sources tell me that this sell-out has been Perlmutter's strategy all along. "This was always an acquisition play for Ike," one insider explains to me. "This deal with Disney just ups his game and creates shareholder value and lets him walk away a billionaire."

Content-wise, the two moguls agreed that Marvel would continue to operate independently of the notoriously micro-managing Disney in the same way that Miramax did under the Weinstein Brothers. Though that probably won't make even hardcore fanboys feel better about the deal they're pissing on all over the Internet yesterday and today. (Given what Iger likes to refer to as the "combustion of digital word of mouth" that operates these days, Iger and Perlmutter have their work cut out for them trying to get skeptical fanboys to believe that Disney has no intention of altering the creative approach which Marvel takes to its comic books and movies.

Of course, it helps the corporate confluence between the two companies that Marvel's movie fare has been and will be "PG-13".)

Every subsequent meeting between Iger and Perlmutter took place in NY. Finally, it was late Sunday night, very late, that the deal was done. There was no celebration. Both moguls went back to their respective homes to get ready for Monday's early morning announcement.

One more thing you should know: I've learned that, for the past 2 months, Iger has been reading the new Marvel Encyclopedia to soak up the backstories of all the Marvel characters and comics.

okay, i've thought about it a lot. at first when i found out about disney buying marvel, i thought to myself.. spiderman..disney world...winnie the pooh...x-men...disneyworld.. the little mermaid...

but now i'm thinking more along the lines of spiderman...disney's hollywood studios...the tower of terror, x-men...hollywood studios...indiana jones epic stunt spectacular. adventure, adventure, adventure!

the studios will be the perfect home for these new adventures. =)

...so please tell me, this *is* where spidey's going, right?

btw, thinking about it. if it were the tower of terror coming to disney i'd of thought the very same way. "gee, what does the twilight zone have to do with a place that has lion king shows and a finding nemo aquarium?" but now i see that it all totally fits.

Yeah, that's a good way to look at it, this is also a good way to look at it. For girls, Disney has: princess, animal related stuff, Tink, ect.,

For boys, not a whole lot and the best they can do is like: Cars & Pirates.

Some boys are into that, some not. Most are into super heroes.

very true! and i can already see all the little spideys running around during mnsshp, haha.

Little!?! I already have my Spidey costume ready!!!!

New Cup O' Joe is out. This is a column Joe Quesada, the Editor in Chief of Marvel Comics, does every week. This week he's talking as much as he can about the merger.

mmm, can i be the naughty villain and make you shoot white stuff at me?

i bookmarked it. =)

You can be Black Cat, she's a kinda villain. You can make my Spider sense tingle.