Disney Buys Marvel
August 31, 2009
Disney Buys Marvel:The Walt Disney empire is to buy the superheroes stable Marvel Entertainment for $4bn in a star-studded Hollywood deal that unites family names such as Mickey Mouse with lucrative characters including Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men.
Disney hopes to put Marvel’s 5,000 characters to work on its television channels and in video games, theme parks and movies. The agreed takeover is for a mixture of cash and stock, with Disney shares accounting for roughly 40% of the buyout price.
The tie-up unites two companies with similar business models – they both take characters which capture the popular imagination and promote them vigorously around the world on every possible media platform and through third-party licensing deals.
While Disney has traditionally been known for its wholesome family creations ranging from the Little Mermaid to Lion King, Hannah Montana and Pocahontas, the purchase of Marvel adds an edgier, more violent element – it recently scored a box office success with Iron Man, a movie starring Robert Downey Jr as a billionaire inventor who creates a hi-tech suit of armour to battle evil.
Marvel’s characters, which include superhero Captain America, pictured right, tend to chime particularly well with teenage boys and young men, while Disney has been stronger in appealing to a female audience.
Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger, said Marvel has a “treasure trove” of intellectual property that “transcends gender, age, culture and geographical barriers”.
“There are so many opportunities to mine both characters that are known and characters that are not widely known,” Iger said.
The tie-up is one of the largest US corporate transactions of the summer and marks a remarkable turnaround for Marvel, originally a comic book company, which filed for bankruptcy in 1996 under heavy debts as it faced a slump in comic book sales.
The two companies hope to complete the deal by the end of the year. Marvel’s chief executive, Ike Perlmutter, will be the largest personal winner, scooping $1.4bn in cash and Disney shares in return for his 37% stake in the business.
Perlmutter has been involved in running Marvel since helping to buy the business out of bankruptcy in 1998.
more info: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/31/disney-marvel-buy-out
