FROM-http://www.mediabistro.com/
Disney Acquires Comic Book Giant Marvel For $4B
Two public media companies who have made big money from cartoons announced a huge deal today.
The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) announced today that it will acquire Marvel Entertainment Inc. (MVL) — including its portfolio of more than 5,000 characters — for $4 billion in stock and cash. Marvel shareholders will receive $30 in cash per share plus about 0.745 in Disney shares, the companies said.
In a conference call about the deal this morning, Disney CEO Robert Iger said the deal would help build shareholder value and strengthen Disney’s position worldwide. Iger said the deal should be completed by the end of 2009.
Under the terms of the deal, Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter will continue to oversee his company’s properties and will work with Disney to integrate the brands into the new company.
Disney to Acquire Marvel Entertainment Worldwide leader in family entertainment agrees to acquire Marvel and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters
BURBANK, Calif. & NEW YORK, Aug 31, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) —
–Acquisition highlights Disney’s strategic focus on quality branded content, technological innovation and international expansion to build long-term shareholder value
–An investor conference call will take place at approximately 10:15 a.m. EDT / 7:15 a.m. PDT August 31, 2009. Details for the call are listed in the release.
Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company (DIS) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (MVL) in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today.
Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on August 28, 2009, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own. At closing, the amount of cash and stock will be adjusted if necessary so that the total value of the Disney stock issued as merger consideration based on its trading value at that time is not less than 40% of the total merger consideration.
Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.
"This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories," said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. "Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney."
"We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation," Iger said.
"Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses," said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. "This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world."
Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Mr. 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 Boards of Directors of Disney and Marvel have each approved the transaction, which is subject to clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, certain non-United States merger control regulations, effectiveness of a registration statement with respect to Disney shares issued in the transaction and other customary closing conditions. The agreement will require the approval of Marvel shareholders. Marvel was advised on the transaction by BofA Merrill Lynch.
NL-Does this mean huge amounts of super hero movies to come, which I love? (Hellboy 1 & 2 are at the top of my list)
This is horrible news. Disney is going to take a manly shit on all Marvel characters and turns them into moronic caricatures just so they appeal to under 12 year old boys and their fucking concerned, ignorant parents who don’t want their children to be influenced by anything other than the Jonas Brothers and McDonald’s happy meal. A short list of changes to expect:
The red color in Spider Man’s suit will change to pink and he will team up with Goofy to save Manhathan from the Evil Queen.
Captain America will get a new sidekick dog named Pluto.
Wolverine will trade his adamantium claws with a pair of forks.
The Punisher will replace his M16 with a splash gun.
And the list goes on.
I doubt the greatest writes in the comic book industry like Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman can ever write mature, serious stories for Marvel under the Disney dictatorship. Let the sunshine days begin.
When I Was a Little Girl I Used to LOVE Disney movies..”The Little Mermaid” and “Dumbo” and Snow White”..All that sweet,Sappy,Girly stuff.
My Tomboy side was a MARVEL Fan thru and thru.Everything from Spiderman(Amazing,Spectacular AND Web of..),Daredevil,The man without Fear,The Huld,Xmen,Tomb of Dracula Even Howard the Fucking DUCK Fer Christsakes..
I’m Not real sure how I Like the Idea of DISNEY Dicking with my Superheroes but then again WB (Warner Bros.) Has done a Pretty bang up job with it’s accquired DC Titles so..I Gotta say..
EXCELSIOR TRUE BELIEVER!!
Til’ Mickey Fuckin’ Mouse Is Riding Silver Surfers Board up the Slight Side Of Pete’s Dragon..
..MAKE MINE MARVEL!!
PS, I Dont read The Huld,I’ve NEVER Read the Huld..
The HULK!
The HULK!
..There..all better.
‘V for Vendetta’, ‘Batman Begins’ and the latest Superman movie are all good movies. Then again, Disney or Marvel had nothing to do with them. Although, the Spider-Man movies are good.
I want to mary Batman, or Spiderman, or the Krispy Kreme man… lol
Actually Colonel, all should be good with Marvel’s properties (well, at least the more popular ones). As under the terms of the deal, explained in several of the trade paper articles, characters currently under control of other studios will stay with those studios for the foreseeable future.
Thusly, Spiderman will stay at Sony, Wolverine/X-Men/Blade/Daredevil at Fox, Iron Man at Paramount, Hulk at Universal, et cetera. In fact just today, Fox announced plans to ‘reboot’ their Fantastic Four franchise (as lets be real, the first two were not all that great). Other characters still being developed such as Thor, Captain America, Avengers are also outside the terms of the new Disney deal.
Now this may seem idiotic for Disney to have purchased Marvel minus the great characters the majority of the public already know and love. Yet the strategy behind the acquisition is basically that everyone hopes there are still 2nd and 3rd tier characters to be exploited in the way that Iron Man (whom a lot of non-comic book geeks were not familiar with) wound up becoming a huge hit.
For instance, Pixar might take one of Marvel’s more obviously kid or cheesy comic book characters (Power Pack, ROM, Dazzler) and turn them into something amazing. Disney’s more ‘adult’ label of Touchstone might take say Luke Cage & Iron Fist or Hawkeye and turn them into the next PG-13 franchise. Disney has deals with a handful of producers who make all sorts of non-Disney adult movies — so again, they would most likely take the lead in developing any one of the thousands of characters they now own for an adult audience.
biatch, you want to marry superheros? i thought you were a carpet-muncher.
Sammy, it’s not the movie franchises based on Marvel characters that concerns me, it’s the publication branch of Marvel and the story and character developement.
In recent years, many great writers worked with Marvel and wrote mature, serious and often violent stories: Frank Miller’s take on Wolverine and Daredevil, Neil Gaiman’s 1602 and Garth Ennis’ Punisher series just to name a few. Under Disney’s management, or should I say dictatorship, I doubt if those and other top notch writers have the ability or will to write such none-family friendly stories. More likely Disney will water down the stories and characters just so they appeal to a younger and broader audience. Disney doesn’t care about the artistic integrity and values, and it’s safe to say Marvel as we knew it is finished.
Wow, I didn’t know I came across as a lezzzbian. I am Bisexual. So carpet munching is okay, but so is dick munching, and so is donut munching, lol.
Biatch, I’d like to offer you to eat Krispy Kreme off my dick. I’m sure you’ll love it.
Biatch, does your adopted Myspace name end in Ford too? Are you Darrah’s “sister” further south?
Just curious. I love cats too.
As far as I know, in these types of deals (as I’m using the current business relationship between Warner Brothers and DC as a guide), is that the studio doesn’t interfere with the publisher (and even more to the point, they probably don’t have any legal authority to under the terms of the deal even if they wanted to).
So just as WB doesn’t tell DC to tone down whatever they’re doing with Superman and Batman or any of their other thousands of characters (and again, you can easily check this by simply seeing how many times Miller, Gaiman, Grant Morrison et cetera have written stories for the iconic publisher…and last I checked, they still are turning out top-notch adult-oriented comics for DC that go far beyond anything the studio might want to actually commit millions of dollars to turning into a movie…so nothing has changed at all with DC despite being owned by the corporate mega-giant Time-Warner) — it’s doubtful, Disney’s acquisition of Marvel is going to change the content and direction of any of their published titles (now or in the future).
Besides, Disney has for a number of years successfully published ‘kiddie’ comics using their trademarked characters (everything from Hannah Montana to Jack Sparrow). So they didn’t need a comic book publisher to exploit any of their preexisting titles in that manner. What they wanted and actually need, is a greater foothold in the ‘fanboy/geek’ market to create future summer blockbuster franchises. Which they now have via being able to use Marvel characters in movies and theme-parks.
You’re right about the fact that Warner Bros. didn’t interfere with DC’s publication branch and didn’t turn DC characters into cash cow, family friendly caricatures. That was Warner Bros. and this is Walt Disney. If there was any other company and/or movie studio behind this deal, it would have been different. But Walt Disney is infamous for going to any extremes and turning anything and everything into family friendly products: in Pocahontas, they turned the historical accounts of the massacre of thousands of Indians into a musical cartoon, in Hercules, they turned centuries old Greek mythology characters into fart jokes and the list goes on. So I don’t see what will stop them from doing the same to Marvel story lines and characters.
I’m not a hardcore comic book fan, I’m a casual reader, whenever my favorite authors write something new, I check it out. But in the past few days, I visited some comic book forums just to see what hardcore comic book fans are saying about this; and I can only tell you the backlash of anger, hatred and frustration among the fans is overwhelming.
Marvel saw an opportunity for a good, fat deal and took it, but they’re going to pay a high price for that by alienating their hardcore fans; and regardless of how they try to maintain their artistic integrity and keep Disney’s filthy hands off their playground, but the damage to their reputation is done, and it’ll take a long time and great efforts to gain back the respect and trust of their devoted, hardcore fans, if they can ever gain it back at all.
biatch, its not that you came across as a lesbo. but i remember a while back colonel refered a time or to about some lesbian shit, plus your penchant for donuts. i personally pictured you as a maybe a little overweight and bull-dykeish, no offense. hell, i’m probably wrong and you’re a “lip stick” lesbo.
As a wise man once said, the devil is in the details (and if judging by the current debate over health care reform, Americans have a frustrating tendency to ignore the fineprint).
I doubt many hardcore fanboys out there in the blogsphere grasp the complexities of Hollywood dealmaking. So they read about a big giant company like Disney (of which they have zero clue makes all sorts of entertainment beyond what Walt envisioned back in the 50s) taking over their beloved Marvel and they go crazy.
Now I wonder if these same fanboys went crazy when Fantastic Four was given to the guy who made ‘Barbershop’ or when Christian Bale was first cast as Batman.
I wonder if these same fanboys endlessly debate the merits of Ang Lee’s Hulk vrs. the ‘reboot’ with Ed Norton. I wonder if these same fanboys were anguished when that ‘wimpy’ actor Toby Maguire was cast as Spiderman.
Or if these same fanboys jerked themselves silly over Watchman (which most film critics and audiences didn’t get why the comic was such a watershed…as the movie didn’t expand much beyond that particular universe, because the director lazily just shot each frame of the graphic novel).
Do these same fanboys realize Marvel was only put on the Hollywood map, after two decades of forgettable movies, with 2002’s Spiderman…at which point, the company still struggled setting up other major characters at studios such as Sony, Fox, Paramount and others?
Heck, the fanboys were livid Iron Man was, after a decade of development, to be directed by Jon ‘Swingers’ Favreau — only to now be salivating over every little piece of news from the sequel.
We’re they just as fearful that those studios, who unlike Disney don’t have much in the way of ‘brand identity’, would mess up their precious characters? As on paper it seems as if Fox couldn’t fuck up Daredevil or Elektra, but they sure did. On paper it looked as if Fox could do no wrong with a Wolverine spinoff (but for me at least, it was pathetic filmmaking that didn’t give a damn about the character’s comicbook origins).
Now on the flipside, I doubt it was these same hardcore fanboys (who you can never fully satisfy until they’ve seen the finished product and then they all jump on the bandwagon as if they were cool with the casting/director et cetera from day one) who managed to make Spiderman one of the biggest franchises in film history, along with Dark Knight one of the biggest openings in history, and Fantastic Four a sort of flop (as the first one was lackluster…yet still was profitable enough for a second helping of crappy FX and hamfisted dialogue that again, made most of us wondering what’s all the fuss about the ‘Silver Surfer’).
For these types of big budget movies, by definition have to expand beyond the hardcore geeks who have devoted ungodly amounts of time to dissecting the finer points of the ‘Dark Phoenix’ saga or who wins in a fight between Dr. Strange and The Scarlet Witch (that is, when they’re not busy collecting every last issue of West Coast Avengers or Alpha Flight).
Now if you’re Marvel, you’re happy to not have to constantly slep around town pitching characters from your back-catalogue to film executives who have no clue who ‘Cloak & Dagger’ or ‘Kang The Conqueror’ are and why they should commit upwards of $50M making a movie about them. If you’re Disney, you now have all sorts of properties to develop summer blockbusters (as they didn’t have any this year beyond Pixar’s Up, The Proposal and G-Force). Out of those three, they can only really turn G-Force into a franchise (as its rare when Pixar decides to do a squeal to their movies).
Likewise, Disney can have producers they have deals with (from Rudin to Bruckheimer) make films based on Marvel characters…and last I checked, they’re not churning out idiotic family crap. Granted, Disney’s animated film division use ancient myths, classic books and real life people for their films; but then, what’s the harm in it (as again, there are plenty of other film versions of the same stories culled from the same sources). Be it a musical version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, Kipling’s Jungle Book, or Tarzan — they are just as free to use as someone in Porn Valley would be to create their unique version.
Furthermore, these same fanboys likely have no idea ‘Disney’ was a part of making films as diverse as The Sixth Sense, High Fidelity, Deuce Bigalow, Cinderella Man, Royal Tenenbaums, Flightplan, Deja Vu, Con Air, Starship Troopers, The Color Of Money, The Ref, and Ed Wood to name a few.
If you listen, you can hear the sound of a thousand comic book nerds weeping.
But seriously, some deals just stink, and this is one of them. I understand that Marvel got greedy over the delicious $4 billion offer and they were looking forward to have a broader audience; but what makes matters look ominous is the fact that Disney will own Marvel and it’s 5000 plus characters, they won’t operate as Marvel’s movie distributer, they will have the ownership over everything Marvel, from monthly comic books to movies, merchandise licensing, etc. What will happen and how things will turn out remains to be seen. I was watching an interview with Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney on CNBC the morning this deal was made public. The news anchor asked Iger: Sir, what exactly are you planning to do with Marvel’s characters that Marvel hasn’t done yet? Iger played with words, but didn’t give a clear answer.
I’m sure in the coming weeks some of the writers and artists who have worked with Marvel will comment on this deal and it’ll be interesting to see what they think about this whole business and how it’s going to effect them and their future projects.