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On today's show, Mark and Mike discuss The Walt Disney Company's purchase of Marvel Enterprises.
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On today's show, Mark and Mike discuss The Walt Disney Company's purchase of Marvel Enterprises.
From a brand perspective, Marvel gives Disney instant credibility with the tween boys market, where Disney has historically had problems. There are some concerns about the grittiness of the Marvel characters may not play well within the family-friendly Disney brand. Though the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have stretched the boundaries, Marvel may pose some integration problems with the core brand. If Disney is careful, though, they may be able to pull it off.
Mark mentioned some comments that were made during the announcement conference call regarding allowing Marvel to continue running itself, similar to the way that it worked with the Pixar purchase of a couple of years ago. Mark wondered whether Marvel would end up with John Lasseter overseeing them or if they would remain reporting directly to Disney CEO Bob Iger. Mike noted that Entertainment Weekly had stated that Pixar was already working on a movie based on the Marvel character Ant-Man.
Mike feels that the interactive gaming products will probably largely stay as is with the possibility of The Incredibles possibly being added to one of the Marvel titles.
With films, there are a number of characters tied up in existing deals: Spider-Man with Sony, X-Men titles with News Corp. and Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, Fantastic Four and one additional movie to be named later (likely Iron Man 3) with Paramount. The contracts likely won't be terminated early, but they likely will be monitored as close as possible.
Marvel's existing contract with Universal may prove restrictive. Universal can continue to use the characters that they've already got as long as they don't violate the terms of the agreement. However, they will not be able to modify or update the attraction or other use, which may provide some additional pressure to drop the usage.
Mike noted that Disney may have an issue with how some of the walk-around Marvel characters are portrayed at Universal. Mark noted that non-compliance could trigger clauses in the existing contract that could result in Unveral losing those rights. Mark noted that a great rundown on the details on what rights Universal had and what may be happening is in a series of two articles by Nikki Finke for Deadline Hollywood. Further information on terms of the contract are in an Orlando Sentinel article by Jason Garcia.
Marvel also has a deal to build their own theme park in Dubai, There's no word yet on whether that project may proceed or not.
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To those who can't attend D23: Are you planning anything special to do instead, or just ignoring it?
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