Disney buys Marvel

[mrklixx]

Disney to buy comic book powerhouse Marvel for $4B - Yahoo! News

Disney to buy comic book powerhouse Marvel for $4B


By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – 1 hr 28 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – The Walt Disney Co. said Monday it is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters. Many of them, including the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, were co-created by the comic book legend Stan Lee.

Analyst David Joyce of Miller Tabak & Co. said the acquisition will help Disney appeal to young men who have flocked to theaters to see Marvel's superhero fare in recent years. That contrasts with Disney's recent successes among young women with such fare as "Hannah Montana" and the Jonas Brothers.

"It helps Disney add exposure to a young male demographic it had sort of lost some balance with," Joyce said, noting the $4 billion offer was at "full price."

Disney said Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash, plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own. That values each Marvel share at $50 based on Friday's closing stock prices.

Marvel shares jumped $10.17, or 26 percent, to $48.82 shortly after the market opened. Disney shares fell 47 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $26.37.

Disney said the boards of both companies have approved the transaction, but it will require an antitrust review and the approval of Marvel shareholders.

Disney last made a big purchase in 2006 when it acquired Pixar Animation Studios Inc., the creator of the "Toy Story" franchise, for $7.4 billion in stock.

Disney CEO Robert Iger said the latest acquisition combines Marvel's "strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters" with Disney's "unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties" and ability to maximize value across multiple platforms and territories.

Marvel earned a net profit of $206 million last fiscal year, up 47 percent from a year earlier, on revenue of $676 million, as it took movie production in house instead of just cutting licensing deals.

The New face of Marvel?


This seems like a really strange pairing. Especially now that Marvel was just starting to get it's stride at making movies that can actually be taken seriously by adults.

It also makes me wonder what is going to happen to Universal Studios, because Marvel is a major part of their operations.

What do you think?

[LoganSnake]

Weird since just a few years ago they refused to even consider an offer of $3 billion from a private firm and now, after finally making some good movies they accept $4 billion.

[Fremen]

Oh good God almighty!!

Are the Marvel people nuts?! Disney as a company are soul-stealers!

[fresnelly]

Eh, they own Pixar and Pixar's still on track. It's probably more about the T-shirts.

[Charlatan]

My first reaction was to throw up in my mouth a little bit.


My thought is this: Marvel is not a huge company. They have a number of very large film projects they want to make in the next few years (and more after that if they are a success). In order for a company of their size to make a $100 or $200 million dollar film they need help with the financing. The banks and financial institutions are not lending these amounts as easy as they might have done a few years ago (at least not with substantial fees and interest). A company like Marvel would have to cut a deal with one or more studios to finance these pictures. In doing this, the studios will extract as many rights as possible, and by extension, profits.

While this will let them make the films, the profits will not be as great if they had financed it themselves. In the world of media rights, ownership is everything.

For Marvel, being a part of a studio means vertical integration (i.e. creative, production and distribution are all under one aegis) and this means greater profits.

The difficulty here is trading profits for creative control.

[Reese]

Hey, if it leads to a Pixar/Marvel crossover, I'm all for it.

[LoganSnake]

[guy44]

I dunno. This screams buying high to me. We've lived through about a decade of superhero movies being about the highest grossing entertainment on earth. Marvel has reaped huge sums. But past performance is no guarantee of future returns. There's no particular reason why all the future Batmans and Spider-Mans have to make tons of cash. All the popular Marvel characters have gotten movies already. I can easily forsee the public tiring of a confusing Avengers movie with 10 different characters, etc.

I find it hard to believe this will wind up being a good deal for Disney. Marvel is at what is probably its absolute peak in value, or close to it.

[Fremen]

Yeah, but then Disney will own the rights to all of these superheroes and will more than likely run them into the ground like they do their regular cartoons.

[Charlatan]

They are also looking at how they can integrate the characters into their theme parks...

[mrklixx]

Originally Posted by Charlatan

They are also looking at how they can integrate the characters into their theme parks...

I see all kinds of potential @ Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and even possibly Animal Kingdom. Heck, they could completely turn the piece of crap tat is California Adventure into Marvel Land.

Meanwhile......Like I said in the OP, I was wondering what was going to happen to Marvel Super Hero Island @ Universal Studios. Well it looks like things will remain as is.....for now.

Disney vs Universal for Marvel Theme Park

[KellyC]

Please don't tone down the mature content.

[Charlatan]

The line I keep reading is that they will honour all contracts until the end of their current terms. This will be relevant for distribution rights for their filmed properties but will also likely apply to the theme parks.

[yournamehere]

Great - now we'll all have to put up with even more blatant crawl ads on ABC shows

[Gabbyness]

Marvel-related Pixar movies might be amazing.

So what happens to "Spiderman: The Ride" at Universal?

[Daniel_]

[Fremen]

That's gold.

[Gabbyness]

Beast vs. Beast, I gotta give the edge to . . .


The Beast?

[Daniel_]

[Charlatan]

This is the latest from a trade I read. I don't think it will kill the deal but it decrease the value of the deal in the long run if they can't use, or have to pay additional fees to use, the Kirby-created characters.

A new superhero sized wrinkle in Disney's $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment. The family of comic book artist Jack Kirby, he created/co-created numerous characters and stories for Marvel's X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, among many others, filed "45 notices of copyright termination" to both Marvel and Disney, not to mention paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal and other companies that have used his characters, per the NYT. Kirby's heirs plan is to reclaim the copyrights to some of Kirby's work beginning in 2014. The family is using the same law firm that recently won a ruling that returned a portion of the copyright of Superman to Jerome Siegel's family; he helped create the man of steel character. The report quotes a Disney spokesperson saying, "The notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights seven to 10 years from now and involve claims that were fully considered in the acquisition." Kirby worked with writer/editor Stan Lee to develop many of the characters in question. Kirby died in 1994, he was 76.

[Daniel_]

Originally Posted by Charlatan

This is the latest from a trade I read. I don't think it will kill the deal but it decrease the value of the deal in the long run if they can't use, or have to pay additional fees to use, the Kirby-created characters.

Which characters?

[Charlatan]

There are many but some of the bigger ones are:

Xmen
Captain America
Iron Man
Beast
Galactus
Dr. Doom
Fantastic Four
Thor
Nick Fury

[m0rpheus]

Originally Posted by Daniel_

Which characters?

While I don't know for sure these are probably some of the characters involved.

Captain America and The Red Skull
The Fantastic Four (Mr. Fantastic, The Human Torch, The Thing, The Invisible Girl) and their enemies (Doctor Doom, Galactus, The Skrulls)
Silver Surfer
The Hulk
Thor and Loki (or atleast Marvel's take on him)
Nick Fury
Iron Man
The original X-men (Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, Angel, Prof. X) along with Magneto and the original Brotherhood.

Basically about 90% of the big names in the Marvel Universe could be involved. Spider-man, and Wolverine would be two of the big names that wouldn't be affected.

This really bugs me. These characters were created as a work-for-hire.

[Charlatan]

Why does it bug you? The law has recently recognized similar claims for the creators of Superman.

My feeling on this is that Marvel/Disney will retain the right to use these characters but will have to share in a portion of the profits with the Kirby estate. Even Disney is reporting that they saw this coming and have accounted for it in their business model.

[m0rpheus]

I disagree with that ruling too. They were payed to do a job, that job was to create a comic including creating new characters.

[Charlatan]

Regarding Superman... it is not accurate to say that Shuster and Siegel created Superman as a for hire character. They created Superman and then sold him to DC. It's also a little more complicated than that: Superman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

---------- Post added at 11:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:13 AM ----------

FYI---

Under copyright law, creators and co-creators can seek to regain copyrights they previously assigned to a company 56 years after first publication and can give notice of their intentions to do so up to 10 years before that.

Kirby's children would be eligible to claim their father's share of the copyright of the Fantastic Four in 2017, while the Hulk would come up in 2018 and X-Men in 2019. The copyrights would then run for 39 more years before expiring, after which the characters would enter the public domain under current law.

[prosequence]

This will have to be a "wait and see", I hope they don't ruin what Marvel had going on, but it is Disney...

[Charlatan]

Would you guys feel the same way if it was Stan Lee rather than Jack Kirby taking these actions?

[Daniel_]

Originally Posted by Charlatan

Would you guys feel the same way if it was Stan Lee rather than Jack Kirby taking these actions?

I'd have the same reaction - because I think creative types deserve more protection.

Did you know for example that any time an artwork is re-sold within the EU, if the artist is still alive, they are entitled to a defined portion of the proceeds - I forget the exact number, but I believe it's in the region of 5-10%.

If this logic applied to creative work for hire, if you created a superhero "on the clock", and then your employer makes millions by selling reproductions of your drawings, or making a movie of your character, you would automatically be cut into a percentage not of the profit, but of the gross!

[Charlatan]

Daniel_ I think we are looking at this issue the same way while others are suggesting that Kirby and his estate deserve nothing.

I would say that even a work for hire should receive a royalty on their creation. The issue is what was Kirby's original contract and how does the law view the terms of that agreement?

Ultimately, I don't think this is going to do anything other than compensate the Kirby estate. Disney Marvel will still be able to move forward with the properties. They will just have to adjust the payout schemes. In the end? It will be a wash. I know quite well how distribution/production agreements work and they always work in favour of the distributor/producer. Always.