Sorta OT: What I Think About Disney Buying Marvel

[lazypadawan]

My immediate thought was, "I guess this means the Marvel-themed rides and restaurants at Universal are going to move to Disneyland/Walt Disney World." All of those Marvel-produced films will be distributed by Disney as well.

This is the result of a decade-long run of superhero mania. Disney wants to cash in and figures it can use Marvel's properties in many different ways, from park attractions to merchandise to animated and live action film/t.v. to home entertainment. I do not believe, as some fear, that Disney will somehow turn The Punisher into Tinkerbell. Come on, Disney hasn't cared about being entirely family-friendly since the 1980s. They just want a stable of comic book characters to print money. Though I think we will certainly see Spider-Mickey and Mary Jane Minnie figurines in the near future ;).

Comments

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I've seen some faintly cynical comments that Disney will leave Marvel's comics alone, because hardly anyone reads comics any more... although I also noticed a piece discussing the "Universal issue."

Bringing this somewhat closer to "on topic," though, in contemplating how Disney "bought the Muppets" as well some years back, I started to wonder if, at some distant date in the future, somebody would buy Lucasfilm... I'm sure even the possibility wouldn't be for a long time yet, of course.

[darth-pipes.livejournal.com]

I was a little worried at first but I think Disney will leave the comic line alone. They do own Miramax and if I recall, Miramax still releases Tarantino movies...

[jawajames.livejournal.com]

from some other article i saw about how Universal Studios is impacted.... right now it seems that each Universal Studios park had separate contracts on using Marvel properties for attractions, rides, and costumed people. The Hollywood park hasn't had them in a few years, while the Orlando park still has quite a few attractions, and i think the Dubai park was slated to have some (including a whole Marvel SuperHeroes land), and those contracts will remain. so likely, the Disney Anaheim park could easily add some Marvel features with no competition from Universal Hollywood, while WDW would probably wait until the US-Orlando parks reach the end of their contracts...

the same with the movies currently in the queue - Disney won't be taking over distribution of the Marvel-based films that are currently in the works, and had existing distributors. so it will be 2 or 3 years before all of those get released. it is in disney's best interest to make sure those movies do fairly well, to keep that marvel cash cow flowing as it transitions over to their side.

as someone had pointed out, even before the deal, almost 20% of the programming on Disney's channel for boys (Disney DX or something like that) was already Marvel based entertainment.

but as you mention in the end, the cross-over potential is crazy. Donald as the Hulk.

i'm surprised that this sort of deal didn't happen sooner. Marvel was really down in the dumps financially in the late 90s - early 2000s (even bowing out of a comic-con booth for a few years), and it wasn't until the current crop of superhero films started doing really well (X-Men and forward) that they managed to get out of the hole through leveraging their comic properties in film. it would be smart for disney to leave the comic book stuff mostly alone, although they could probably easily shift the publication of disney comics to marvel once the current disney comics license expires.