Great news for theme parks! But what about comics?
In a move which astonished many, Walt Disney Company is planning to buy Marvel Entertainment. The deal, valued at $4 billion in cash and stock, would be the next major move by the American entertainment giant since its 2006 acquisition of Pixar Animation and gives the Mouse House an entire portfolio of Marvel characters.
Marvel’s characters are already involved in a string of complex licensing agreements (Sony Pictures with Spider-Man 4 web-crawling deal for 2011, while 20th Century Fox holds rights to more X-Men projects), but Disney is prepared to participate in a lengthy game. In the short term the company wants to use the likes of Iron Man and Hulk for its theme parks. Disney CEO Bob Iger explains that creative officials from Marvel and Pixar have already met. ‘The groups got excited pretty fast. The sparks will fly.’
Ironically, X-Men and Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee’s company Pow! Entertainment has a first look agreement with Disney. ‘I couldn’t be happier with this agreement,’ he says. ‘From every possible point of view, the merger of Disney and Marvel is a match made in heaven.’
Disney has convinced analysts that it plans to let Marvel have artistic control for its properties. Although Marvel’s top characters are valuable to Disney’s movie, theme park and home entertainment businesses, the future will tell if the family-oriented media giant will lend a supportive hand to Marvel’s comic book undertakings in the long term. Could this agreement signify the end of Marvel as a comic book player?