Disney buy Marvel Comics

[ajp]

I heard with interest this news on Sunrise this morning, and have attached a link to an article in the SMH.
http://business.smh.com.au/business/dis ... -f5fq.html

My take on this is that Disney have had trouble being able to appeal to the young boy/teen boys market trying things like Pirates etc. The princesses are too successful for their own good. The article does mention things like being able to tap into Disney's global product line etc, so I am sure that they will flood the market with cartoon characters and also produce some movies as well.

What this deal does though is throw into question the merchandising and Theme Park presence of the current characters from various movies in other movie houses (ie Warner Bros and Universal). Will they be allowed to continue with Spiderman etc theming as they owned it prior to the deal, or will Disney own it now and demand a fee or will they not be allowed to use it at all. So many questions, but it will interesting to watch how this plays out in Disney's hands over the next few years.

[mushu mama]

Whoa!

That could be a tangled web, Huh? Interesting that they would take on characters that are so well established in other movie houses.

I wonder would the characters be worth more to them 'as is' or gathered into the Disney stable and branded as such? This will be interesting to watch.

Lisa. -/

[BrizMarc]

I would assume Disney will keep getting the licensing fees on Universals attractions until contracts run out. This is big news though

[sandie]

No universal has licensing agreement to keep its rides and characters without paying royalties to Disney for as long as it keeps those rides open in theme parks. I would guess though that they can not open new ones. What annoys me is that Disney paid this for the comic book characters but couldn't shell out for Harry Potter
Sandie

[KeithS]

This is really interesting. It could be a great move by Bob Iger, or it could end up being the disaster that his career at Disney is measured by

I think that Bob is too smart to stuff this up however. I'm assuming he'll let the marvel arm run itself, similar to how Pixar still maintains creative independence.

The Marvel products will be great for parks like Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris and Disney's Hollywood Studios in WDW - I just hope they don't try and shoe-horn Marvel villains into the Magic Kingdom-type parks.

For me personally, I dislike most superhero content. I didn't mind the Spiderman and X-men movies, but the whole mythology that goes with the superhero genre is a bit beyond me. Still, I can see how this reaches out to a major demographic that Disney has failed to capture - they have got the market of young girls with Fairies and Princesses, tween girls with Miley, Jonas, and HSM, and young boys with Cars, but content for the tween and above boys (apart from maybe Pirates) was severely lacking. This gap is now filled.