The Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced this morning. Under the terms of the agreement and based on last week’s closing price of Disney, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own.
Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the total transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.
Under the deal, which has been approved by the boards of both companies, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its portfolio of over 5,000 Marvel characters. That portfolio includes many familiar names like Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor.
Says Disney CEO Robert A. Iger in a statement: “We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation.”
Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s CEO, added: “Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses. This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”
Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.
Marvel stock is surging following the news, up 10+ points at the time of writing (+27%), while Disney’s is down a little (-0,5%).
wow, that is a lot of money.
Pixar’s Elastigirl vs. Marvel’s Mr. Fantastic. Who do you think would win?
ha, what would the kid look like, it’s Taffy Boy!!
you are all lucky man. i know a site selling cheap disney movies DVD.That it is poputrade.com
i am doing business with this site many times. it is good.
Money senses *tingling*
isn’t that your sprunger?
and what does this have to do with the internet?
techcrunch wanted first!!111!!
Exactly!!! By tech standards, their content should be free, giving it a valuation closer to zero.
>Exactly!!! By tech standards, their content should be free, giving it a valuation closer to zero.
Marvel and Disney never drank Richard Stallman’s kool-aid and thus retained their sense of value.
Yeah, I’m surprised there isn’t any mention of say Marvel’s digital strategy (they recently released their first comic on iTunes) versus Disney’s general digital strategy coming from TechCrunch.
Anyways, in various articles, the hands-off approach that Disney has taken with owning Pixar is being referenced as the model that Disney will apparently treat Marvel.
what a sad day for pop culture – @brianmbendis rotating in his grave, donald duck teams up with howard the duck, convinces him to become vegetarian and respectful to woman. human/mutant fight for survival was just a missunderstanding all along. xavier and magneta start to sing, everyone is happy.
lol u nerd.
but that was funny
High School Musical people are happily singing “everyday…” then Hulk busts through the wall…and…with a smile on his face…finishes the line with a happy baritone “of our lives”
This sucks. The characters are probably going to look like those “Spiderman and Friends” toys for kids
So Mickey and Minnie will have new buddies in Spider Man and Iron Man. Didn’t see this one coming.
Would we have met Wes Snipes’ version of Blade if Disney owned all the Marvel characters…?
just hope the future marvel movies don’t lose their edge and become G-rated movies
also, hope Stan Lee made some bank
This is exactly my fear. No more “R” rated movies. Sin City is one of my favorite Marvel movies.
Sin City is actually not a Marvel comic.
It’s created by Frank Miller and published by Darkhorse.
Not only is it not a comic published by Marvel, it’s not a movie produced through Marvel either. Damn if that comment didn’t make me laugh though.
Yeah, I realized I got that one wrong. :/ Always do. Heh.
/ungeek
Disney makes some R-rated movies through its subsidiary, Touchstone Pictures. Touchstone was deliberately created in the early 1980’s by Jeffrey Katzenberg to make non-G movies. The first Touchstone movie was Splash, which was PG, but Starship Troopers, Apocalypto, Miracle at St. Anna… All Touchstone, and all R.
Stan Lee has passed on dude.
Nope — Stan is still alive, and appears to have part of this deal.
http://www.tele...2.5bn-deal.html
“In 2005 Lee, now 86, won a court battle against Marvel, potentially worth tens of millions, after successfully arguing he had been wrongly cut out of profits from the films.”
If it had been a one-time payout, it wouldn’t be “potentially” — so there must’ve been some stock attached to the settlement.
Welcome to 30 mins ago. Damn Techcrunch what happened?
Oh, what a great comment, really.
True though, i read this on bbc this morning.
So nuts!
what a sad day for pop culture – @brianmbendis rotating in his grave, donald duck teams up with howard the duck, convinces him to become vegetarian and respectful to woman. human/mutant fight for survival was just a missunderstanding all along. xavier and magneta start to sing, everyone is happy.
Disney’s first order of business should be to fire both Quesada and Bendis and rehire Eisner to fill Quesada’s position.
That noise you hear is the sounds of thousands of fanboy’s heads exploding.
Based on this valuation, http://twitter.com/MARVEL as a function of follower count (< 36k) they are paying just over $100k per follower.
I can’t wait for Iron Man 2, which is about all that i have to say about this.
They better not get rid of Jon Favreau as director.
Assuming they don’t shut down your highly illegal pre-screening of the movie right? heh
Can’t you guys create a TwitterCrunch, a MediaCrunch and probably an AppleCrunch while you’re at it?
I’m all for you growing but I miss the focus on Tech startup / Internet news.
As for this news, I already have nightmares of those stupid marvel characters messing up in Disneyworld. I hope they’ll keep it separate.
+1
+1
Amen to that
“I’m all for you growing but I miss the focus on Tech startup / Internet news.”
One can’t report on what doesn’t exist.
{blink}
OK, you can, but that raises a whole different raft of complaints.
nooooo Disney is a fuck why..Marvel
Why is it that everyone is assuming that Disney is going to bring Mickey Mouse into the Professor Xavier’s house?
They are probably not that stupid.
“They are probably not that stupid.”
Given what they’ve done to other “properties” in their “stable”, I don’t see how you reached that conclusion.
Although a Stitch/X-Men crossover, that would be fun stuff
You have to remember that the Pirates of the Caribbean was also a Disney movie and it was pretty dark.
I also remember that Touch Stone pictures is/was owned by Disney and they have done some R rated movies too.
Not everything that Disney does is “Mr blue bird on my shoulders”.
You also have to remember how much the Pirates sequels sucked as well.
You also have to remember how much most sequels suck.
It’s amazing how people commenting can be so narrow minded. This are 2 media giants that you ALL can bet will use and develop great entertainment stuff for the web. This is a much more important news for the internet ecosystem than reading about an obscure startup of 1 guy that is going to “revolution” the world!!
People wouldn’t be bitching if Robin made the connection for us, as writers are supposed to do. He doesn’t explain what this has to do with anything about the internet or technology, he just posts it as if it’s plainly obvious why this story is on TC, when I’d have to say it’s probably the most off-topic post I’ve seen here in a LONG time.
Yeah, that connection could have been established in the article. Agreed
Hi,
Techcrunch probably isn’t the place for this, but as the stories been posted:
They’re overpaying for it on a headline going-concern basis, but on a strategic basis, they’ll be gaining the vast IP library, much of which they’ll be able to pump through Disney XD and other channels, they’ll save loads on all those over-lapping jobs where Disney are the best in the world for merchandise-planning (see high school musical) and finally, they essentially get a ‘clean’ company since Marvel positioned itself to self-finance and control distribution with ad-hoc partners, which like Pixar, is now guaranteed to go through Disney’s sales machine.
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
Last time I checked, Batman is a property of DC comics.
The funny thing is, most of the digs taken at DC by Marvel over the years have revolved around the fact that DC was part of a larger corporation. I’d like to see anyone at Marvel attempt to justify any comment like that based around this news.
STFU!
This actually seems like a perfect fit for the two companies that house timeless characters. Marvel will continue to live on forever powered by the Mouse.
But seriously, no Jonas Brothers comics ever please.
If that happens we should get as many people as we can worldwide and BURN THEM ALL! >=D
has anyone noticed a picture of batman is used for this post (batman is DC not Marvel
nooooooo, disney is going to ruin marvel movie. This sucks.
Disney own Pixar, which last time I checked, still makes movies which are quite good…
Please. Pixar owns Disney. Get it right.
Guess we can see both Mickey mouse and Wolverine at a DisneyLand in the future.
Does anyone else wonder what this does for rides like the Incredible Hulk roller coaster and Spiderman rides at Universal Studios Islands of adventure? I know they are small potatoes in the scheme of $4 billion but that creates some interesting licensing issues.
My concern exactly. As an Orlando resident, Universal Studios/ IOA was a last refuge from Disney. If those rides tank because of licensing, the whole place (as the thrill park we know and love) will tank.
I know. I wish they would announce what’s going to happen to those rides. That was actually my first concern too. Movies are movies and they’re going to be good or bad. BUT the rides, I LOVE those rides! . . . and I agree that park will tank if they close down that section. I know they’re getting ready to open the Harry Potter section, but Hulk is such a icon there, although I guess they could change the name of that ride. Spiderman would be GONE!
Glad to see the pic included on the cross post at CrunchGear is of Batman. Someone doesn’t know WTF they are talking about. Another good reason to keep this mess off of a tech blog
Thank you, that made me double take when I looked at it. Apparently Disney bought out DC as well?
“Someone doesn’t know WTF they are talking about. Another good reason to keep this mess off of a tech blog.”
They don’t know anything about tech, either. Why not be equal opportunity?
Hope MarvelLand will be a fact soon!
Think about what this will do to their competition with Universal Studio Theme Parks! They base a lot of rides and merch off of Marvel characters, now what are they gonna do?
This is a great way to get a whole new non-family oriented target market, and screw your competitor by buying the rights to some of their most successful themes!
I don’t like it though, seems like blasphemy…
Oh great…. More guys running around in lycra trying to save the world…. again!
They say that marvel has over 5000 characters but how many do they actually use? Back in the 80’s when I used to read them, they had a plethora of characters and great stories. Now it is just endless versions of the same characters.
so theyre making marvel more family friendly. this really made me feel bad. WHY MARVEL WHY WHY WHY. but props to disney for knowing how to milk this cash cow.
I hope the Batman graphic is supposed to convey some sort of irony. I truly hope you realize Batman is a DC comics Character, not Marvel.
Will be interesting to see how the licensing plays out. Several key characters are already tied to other film and theme park enterprises.
Several of Universal Orlando’s primary attractions are Marvel themed (Spiderman, Hulk, and Dr Doom).
This certainly can’t help but improve the quality of the Marvel direct to DVD animation efforts.
I love how the picture is of Batman, a DC comics icon. WTF is wrong with you guys?
Aside from the disgusting an increasing kidification of Marvel, my next thoughts were..
WTH is going to happen to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure? I mean they have like 1/3 of that park done up as a Marvel environment with Hulk, Spidey, and many other characters acting as the major draw. Will Disney kill off a competitor this way? Or just bleed them dry through licensing?
Wonder what will happen with all the spider man stuff at the universal stuidos park.
holy spider man batman!!!
The effect on Universal has to be heavy, although I am sure that they must have had a chance to play and decided to pass. Maybe they saw this coming and that’s why they went after the Harry Potter franchise. There may have to be a possible rebranding of the majority of the Marvel section. They’ll have to pay through the nose for the liscensing of the Spiderman ride which has become iconic at Islands but I don’t think that the other rides and attractions can’t easily handle a rebrand. I’ll still ride the Hulk and Dr. Doom no matter what they have to call it.
and also…I doubt that Disney will waterdown any of the Marvel comic/film franchise. Touchstone pix is Disney’s darker R rated outlet. They have the non-Disney branded film companies for R rated product. No worries Peter Parker…
Hahaha, I remember reading about Marvel’s stock price back in 1997 and it was pretty much bankrupt at the time. Only $1 a share back then! That’s less than the price of a comic book!
Well, Marvel as it has been known is now over. Disney ruins everything they touch.
Well, Marvel as it has been known is now over. Disney ruins everything they touch.
Just shows stories will always win! Story telling goes nowhere in the new world we are heading in and when u have characters to tell those stories around, well then u have something!
Well, we all know where this is heading… http://twitpic.com/fz4fl
Mark Cuban sure looks like a genius for getting 5billion for his company. Can’t believe they sold to Disney for 4billion. Spidey’s inconsolable right now.
why is this on techcrunch?
content fail.
NOOOO >>> Whats going to happen to Universals Islands of Adventure “MARVEL SUPER HERO ISLAND” ??
Robin – what, exactly, does this have to do with technology or the internet in ANY way? This is a complete waste of time for your readers. Maybe you’re a comic fan – that’s cool. But that doesn’t mean this is tech-news worthy material.
Steve Jobs sits on Apple’s Board, and has been very influential on many Disney standards for production. He could potentially influence the production of the next Marvel films. That is the closest link to tech I can find in this.
Holy Crap! That is an awesome power house. As long as they don’t lose each division’s talents and core spirit and expertise, it’ll be awesome.
http://www.traderbots.com
I can see it now. We’ll reboot X-men using Disney Actors. I can see Zac Effron as Wolverine and Miley Cyrus as Jean Grey. Raven can be Storm and Anne Hathaway can play the bad guy because shes old and stuff! It will be like totally awesome!
GAH! why did you have to cause my head to almost implode!
Great news. Disney plus Marvel = awesome entertainment. I am ready for more entertaining movies.
With this purchase Disney attempts to compensate for what it does not have, which is the ability to make movies that inspire people, or at least leave an impression. Their culture has shifted even further than the popular society has shifted. Their new abcdisney shows are about teen pregnancies and gays. This is not what their market wants. It is what a niche group in the LA area wants. Disney, you need to be careful about projecting your own LA values to those of your target market. UNDERSTAND YOUR MARKET!!
disney vs wb. time to level the playing field
I dont like it….
I don’t like it either. How will this change what Marvel does… I guess we will see.