Disney Acquires Marvel for $4 Billion

Published by Jeff Leins on August 31, 2009

In a shocking industry development, the Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment in a deal worth approximately $4 billion in cash and stock.  Both boards approved of the transaction, but it requires an antitrust review and approval by Marvel’s shareholders to officially complete.

Under the agreement, Disney would gather ownership over Marvels 5,000 characters.  Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will “work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.”

The massive, secret deal stunned the entertainment industry early this morning, so journalists and analysts have been scrambling all day to make sense of the implications.  It seems to be a mutually beneficial agreement with Marvel picking up the marketing and distribution of the Mouse House and Disney grabbing some much needed brands for their various outlets.

How this will impact overlaps like Disney theme parks is still uncertain.  Universal has a longstanding deal with Marvel for things like the Spider-Man rides and other attractions.

Meanwhile, Sony still retains the motion picture rights to the Spider-Man franchise, including the fifth and sixth installments they’re already working on.  Paramount also retains the rights to Marvel’s next five films, which include Iron Man 2, Thor, The Avengers and more.  The Fantastic Four and all the X-Men will stay at Fox for now.

More importantly what does this mean for you, the movie goer?

Not much really, though we won’t know the full impact for several years.  You’ll still get superhero movies, but maybe with the budget they deserve.

Disney picked up Pixar in 2006 (for $7.4B) and the film quality remained the same, maybe even improved.  I imagine the partnership with the new Marvel folks will be similar.  Mickey hasn’t made a habit of meddling with his minis, and I don’t expect that to change.  At least NewsCorp. didn’t buy Marvel…

Marvel has a solid business strategy and a winning track record recently, why would Disney fix what isn’t broken?  Disney has a reputation of being more family-friendly, but we’re not likely to see Wolverine singing show tunes any time soon.  Luckily Hugh Jackman will save the songs for his numerous musical projects.

On the shareholder conference call this morning, the executives indicated Disney/Pixar’s John Lasseter had already met with Marvel’s people and the “group got pretty excited pretty fast.”  A Pixar/Marvel crossover seems unlikely any time soon, as cool as the possibility sounds.

What do you think of the deal?