Well, this was going to be a very nice, short little tired-on-a-Monday-morning post, but this just broke over at Comic Book Resources (and, I'm sure, other sites). Disney has bought Marvel Entertainment. Click the link, read the story.
It's some very interesting stuff, and honestly, I'm not real sure how to react to it. Marvel Entertainment means the comics, the characters, the toys, the MOVIES, the whole shebang. Every. Single. Thing. that Marvel owns.
Wow.
This is some big, honking news, folks. So big that Bleeding Cool News (Rich Johnstone's comics news site) is not opening on my browser, and I'm assuming it's due to the insane traffic they must be experiencing now.
According to CBR (and Newsarama), Disney will pay out $4 billion to acquire Marvel. There will be a teleconference with investors (hear that, Nathaniel?) later today, and I'm sure there's going to be a ton of coverage all week on the comics sites.
What does it mean for the comics? The creators? The movies? Honestly, I'm going to go out on a limb and say not much in terms of the near future, but really, who knows what will happen down the road?
Marvel characters in Disney Theme Parks?
Kurt Russell in every Marvel movie?
One thing's for sure--the Internet is bound to break in half today.
4 comments:
Here's my thought, knowing absolutely nothing about what's going on: Disney will let Marvel go on doing whatever it wants with the hardcopy comics. Motion comics will be more prevalent and probably very well done, consistently. Animated Marvel TV shows and/or movies will start showing up on the Disney channel.
Disneyland will have a Marvel section of the park. Marvel movies carry on as planned for the near future, but after the Avengers movie, Disney will really start reaching in and messing around with things.
DC will try some wild gambles with big companies like Disney and try to copy whatever Marvel does just to stay ahead, and when that starts failing they'll try some really stupid tricks with their printed comics to try to generate more revenue to compensate for the money they've wasted, but actually shoot themselves in the foot and damage their fan base.
The sequel to The Dark Knight fails to live up to expectations, Marvel buys out the rights to the second half of the Green Lantern movie and Hal Jordan gives up the Lantern ring and transforms into Deadpool, and the guys who made the Arkham Asylum video game buy DC and totally rejuvenate the entire company, making a strong comeback and once again becoming even competitors with Marvel.
Then a bigger company will buy them both out and put DC and Marvel permanently in the same continuity.
How's that?
There's a third player where themeparks are concerned, though. Marvel already licensed a lot of their stuff to Universal.
A quick google result to that effect:
"Universal's contracts apparently gives it exclusive U.S. rights east of the Mississippi River for theme-park attractions built around certain of those characters, notably Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, X-Men and Dr. Doom."
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/134754033
I know there's something spiderman-y at Universal's LA park, too, so I don't know how much can change at D-land, either.
Oh, and DC's already owned by Time Warner, so I don't see Fuzzy's conglomorama scenario actually happening. ;-)
All I know is that the idea of Pixar doing Marvel-character films gives me a pleasant tingling sensation in unmentionable areas. :-D
Thanks for the info, Falyne. I was wondering about all that, myself. Though it's hard to imagine Disney NOT cashing in on this, where the theme parks are concerned.
I guess they'll just have to wait until those contracts lapse.
I went to Universal (Orlando) a few years back, and I remember there being a comics shop in the Marvel "Island" part of the park. When I read about the deal, I was like, "well what the heck are they gonna do?"
I guess they're good, though.
And I agree about PIXAR--that's incredibly exciting stuff.
OH!
Also, here's my favorite one-liner about the merger thus far, courtesy Brian Lynch's Twitter:
"Disney just read a FANTASTIC FOUR comic while watching THE INCREDIBLES and decided to sue itself."
Check out his hilarious entries running through his Twitter today: http://twitter.com/BrianLynch
I also imagine that this will mean that all of Disney's comic ventures, ongoing and promotional alike, will go through Marvel or a Marvel subsidiary from now on.
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