Disney & The Marvel Buyout – What Can We Expect?
My initial reaction to this little piece of news was quite simply… Why? Disney are pretty solid right now, do they need to spend four billion American dollars on Marvel?
Then after thinking about it this is actually one of the smartest things Disney has ever done. It’s right up there with the $7.5 billion Pixar acquisition a few years back. With the buyout comes 5,000 Marvel characters that Disney can exploit and integrate in thousands of ways.
Word on the grapevine is that John Lasseter, the mastermind behind Pixar has met with Marvel himself to discuss future productions – I can’t help but be excited at the prospect of a Pixar/Marvel collaboration!
To be able to include Marvel characters within the Disney theme parks will be a huge bonus not to mention rides based on Iron Man, Spider-Man or Fantastic Four.
Disney stores all over the world would be able to generate more money by selling Marvel products and with the computer game industry booming from games based on superheroes and comic books it can’t fail. How about Mickey Mouse meets Iron Man?
The ever-popular Kingdom Hearts games for Sony have been a huge success. The games are essentially Disney meets Final Fantasy and a similar title including the major Disney characters and Marvel characters would make for very interesting gaming indeed.
The Marvel deal also seems tailor made to work hand in hand with the new Disney channel ‘Disney XD’. The channel is aimed at boys so a brand new Spider-Man cartoon animated with the usual Disney flare can only be a good thing! It’s a smart move and even though it may take some time to generate profit, in the long run I believe it will prove to be very fruitful indeed.
However all this talk doesn’t answer one very important question.
Why would a well-respected comic book giant such as Marvel feel the need to sell up? Apart from the fact that pairing with Disney will enable them to reach an entirely new audience the simple fact could be down to money problems.
As with most deals of this nature it always seems to come down to money or lack of money as it were.
Recently Marvel have experienced losses, which it has blamed on lower licence revenue. It stated that less films associated with Marvel characters contributed to shares dropping drastically.
I’m not sure how true this statement is because with Iron Man 2 expected to rake in the cash when it’s released next May this would have surely generated huge profits!
Marvel has had some very public issues regarding contract negotiations with the Iron Man sequel. Don Cheadle has famously replaced Terrence Howard as Col. James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes and it’s commonly known that Howard’s contract broke down after financial considerations; I guess Don Cheadle is prepared to work for less!
Even director Jon Favreau almost didn’t make the team as his contract took ages to finalise, and it was only after a very public outcry from film and fan sites alike that Favreau finally signed on the dotted line! Turns out that the producers were not originally prepared to pay him more for the sequel than they did for the original.
All these things essentially confirm that Marvel have had more than their fair share of cash flow problems recently and because of this we can only conclude that maybe they needed this deal with Disney more than Disney actually needed it themselves!
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