Monsters University’ Global Total $136.5M: #1 N.A.
Paris Barclay Elected DGA President; 2013-2013 Officers
‘Man Of Steel’ Speeds To $345.6M Worldwide 
Jon Stewart Visits His Egyptian Twin Bassem Youssef, Takes
EMMYS: Drama Series Overview 
EMMYS: Primetime Soaps 
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NBC Announces Fall Premiere Dates 
Hot Trailer: Ashton Kutcher In ‘JOBS’ 
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‘Doctor Who’s Matt Smith Sends Thank You
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Internet Perma-Kitten Lil Bub Partners With
UPDATE: Here’s the Walt Disney Co statement:
BURBANK, Calif., December 31, 2009—Advancing its strategy of delivering great branded content to people around the world, Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) announced today that Disney has completed its acquisition of renowned character franchise company, Marvel Entertainment Inc (NYSE:MVL).
“We’re thrilled to welcome to the Disney family the talented team at Marvel,” said Iger. “We believe the creative and business potential of this combination is substantial and can help us grow both our top and bottom line, leading to a significant increase in long-term shareholder value.”
Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on Thursday, December 31, Marvel shareholders will receive a total of $30 a share in cash plus approximately 0.7452 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own.
Marvel’s assets include a library of over 5,000 characters featured in a variety of media over 70 years and businesses, including licensing, movie production and publishing.
Here’s the Marvel official news release:
New York, New York – December 31, 2009 — Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: MVL), a global character-based entertainment and licensing company founded in 1939, announced that at a special meeting held this morning, Marvel stockholders approved the adoption of the Agreement and Plan of Merger entered into by Marvel and The Walt Disney Company (“Disney”), which provides for a merger in which Marvel will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney. Marvel anticipates that the merger, which, based on the closing price of Disney’s common stock on December 30, 2009, has an estimated value of approximately $4.3 billion, will be completed today after the close of the market.
The completion of the merger is subject to satisfaction of remaining conditions disclosed in the definitive proxy statement/prospectus filed by Disney with the Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to Rule 424 on December 2, 2009.
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Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Next up for Disney: Reacquiring The Weinstein Company, and/or making a play for MGM. Why not try for Paramount as well? Happy New Year
This is just too easy for Disney. There will be legal problems starting with Viacom and Paramount saying that negotations were secret if it comes to that, but Marvel also has a contract with Paramount and Viacom to distribute movies over the next few years. In addition, Disney is clearly growing due to the money paid by cable operators for ESPN. Quite frankly, Disney needs to spend money on rival studios. Their current properties aren’t doing as well as they say. Pixar is a good example, but the studio doesn’t produce as good of product as you would expect. The Disney studio isn’t producing much of anything, and the TV division, like I said, is operating on the success of Disney Channel and ESPN.
The most likely thing that will happen is that Viacom will file a lawsuit on Monday (1/4/10) to get a judge to set an injunction from keeping the merger from becoming final. That injuction would void today’s (12/31/09) vote to merge by Marvel shareholders. Translation, this will result in a long bloody trial or a settlement which, in either case, Disney would be a big loser.
The main reason why Disney wants Marvel is because they saw how Ironman did at the box office and want to tap into the lesser known superheros. Also, I suspect this was a backdoor deal between Bob Iger and Stan Lee in a move that would put Spiderman on ABC. If this is a backdoor deal, Disney is really sunk because there is no way Paramount would have known about it until after the deal’s news was announced.
This is just an addition to my original post. Here is the original announcement regarding the deal.
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/shocker-disney-buying-marvel/
I just want to say one more thing about Pixar/Disney. They put out LEGO sets of the Toy Story franchise. Those toy building sets are sitting on the shelf while a new alien series called BEN 10 is selling like hotcakes.
First off your post has many misconceptions, Viacom doesn’t have a pot to pee out of or a window to throw it out of, so they couldn’t afford Marvel at 4+ Billion, Disney didn’t get Marvel cheap they paid one hell of a premium, if other studios were really interested in Marvel they would have offered much more, but since Disney paid the steep premium no one else stepped in.
Second, Disney knows very well, they will not control the Marvel properties controlled by Fox, Sony, or Paramount / Viacom. But they will share in the profits of each film made, just like Marvel would have.
Third if you knew any thing at all about Marvel you would know Stan Lee does not control Marvel, so his input is immaterial, it was Isaac Perlmutter, who is one of the largest shareholders of Marvel and will receive 1.4 billion out of the 4 billion Disney is paying. This deal will go through and Marvel will be delisted from the NYSE, Disney will have complete control of Marvel.
Disney knows they won’t get control over the Marvel characters that Marvel has already licensed Iger has said that in many articles, it’s the lesser known ones they want to exploit.
Do you really think any Hollywood studio is going to go against Disney? I don’t think so.
Stan Lee has no connection with Marvel. His present company, POW! Entertainment, has a first look deal with Disney, but that’s as far as it goes. If Iger would offer Lee a consultancy, that would be smart.
I never said that Stan Lee had a connection with Marvel. He just has infulence with both companies, but how much do you think a Disney/Marvel merger benefits Stan Lee? Much more than Isaac Perlmutter that is for sure. Like I said, for one thing, it would allow for ABC to do a Spiderman live-action TV Show and it is Marvel that controls that character because the TV rights weren’t sold.
Also, Paramount and Viacom do have a case. Paramount is due to make five more Marvel movies including Iron Man 2 due out this spring and Thor. No doubt that Disney will try to rush a different Marvel character to screen before the Thor release, but anyway you slice it, it is a breach of contract. Finally, consider this timeline of ownership of Disney Characters:
* Walt Disney fails to copyright such characters such as Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, Chip and Dale, and so on. As a result, most shorts bill the shorts as RKO Radio Picture releases meaning that RKO Radio owns the copyright.
* In the mid-1950′s Desilu purchases RKO Radio to add to their empire. Later on, Lucille Ball, when in ownership of all of Desilu enterprises, sells out to Gulf and Western Company.
* Gulf and Western Company sells out to Paramount Pictures.
* Paramount merges with Viacom meaning that all characters orginally created by Walt Disney should be under Viacom control.
Translation, Disney would have to give up on Marvel and give payments and so on to Viacom to the point that Disney would have to either pay a horrific high preminum to buy back the likes of Mickey Mouse and his friends, or face a merger with Viacom. Quite Frankly, this could turn out to be one of the big scandals of 2010.
“* Walt Disney fails to copyright such characters such as Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck, Chip and Dale, and so on. As a result, most shorts bill the shorts as RKO Radio Picture releases meaning that RKO Radio owns the copyright.”
Where did you hear this? As I understand it, Walt DID copyright the characters & shorts from Mickey Mouse on (not copyrighting Oswald the Lucky Rabbit led to this very action). If you look at the title cards (reading “A Walt Disney (insert name of character)”), you would see that the copyright was assigned to Walt Disney Productions.
“* In the mid-1950’s Desilu purchases RKO Radio to add to their empire.”
Wrong again. Ball only purchased the RKO studio lot (the film library, which again does NOT include the Disney films/characters, would IIRC wind up with United Artists, then Ted Turner, and ultmiately Warner Bros.). The RKO name/trademark rights would go to General Tire.
Disney merged with Marvel because they have no creativity left on that sad little lot of theirs…
With great income comes great responsibility.
A handful of characters created by a poor Jewish kid from the Bronx are worth four billion dollars. “What a country,” as my Grandma used to say.
That is a very smart comment and keen to the playing field. -Reacquiring the Weinstein Company makes excellent business sense, That ship will not survive with out the influx of what Disney can offer. Also TWC want to keep making their kind of films. they may not have any choice. I remember when they were Miramax they use to make Urban films and keep their cash pipeline going they would always have a flood of cash from DVD they stop doing that to just make films for once again 1/3 of the globe.
This just in: Disney has bought at 10 percent stake in Stan Lee’s and Gil Champion’s POW! Entertainment. I wish I could claim credit for influence, only foresight, in my earlier post. The lag between submitting and posting appears to have thrown Isb, Jessy S, and me out of sync.
GIVE MARVEL BACK!
DISNEY!you better give marvel back!OTHERWISE someones goikng to force you to give it back!your making alot of people ANGRY!GIVE MARVEL BACK DISNEY!!!!