Fab Five and Fantastic Four: Disney Buys Marvel

MouseStation 344 – Fab Five and Fantastic Four: Disney Buys Marvel

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Show run time 0:39:46

On today’s show, Mark and Mike discuss The Walt Disney Company’s purchase of Marvel Enterprises.

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MousePlanet at D23 Expo, September 10-13

It’s official: MousePlanet will be part of the Fan Forum at the upcoming D23 EXPO, September 10-13 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The MousePlanet Lounge is the place to come mix and mingle with MousePlanet readers and staff, and where you can meet other members of our MousePad discussion board. Kick up your feet and relax in our comfortable lounge, and be sure to pick up a special MousePlanet button designed just for the EXPO. We have a few other surprises in store, so keep checking for details.

Feature: Fab Five and Fantastic Four: Disney Buys Marvel

On today’s show, Mark and Mike discuss The Walt Disney Company’s purchase of Marvel Enterprises.

From a brand perspective, Marvel gives Disney instant credibility with the tween boys market, where Disney has historically had problems. There are some concerns about the grittiness of the Marvel characters may not play well within the family-friendly Disney brand. Though the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have stretched the boundaries, Marvel may pose some integration problems with the core brand. If Disney is careful, though, they may be able to pull it off.

Mark mentioned some comments that were made during the announcement conference call regarding allowing Marvel to continue running itself, similar to the way that it worked with the Pixar purchase of a couple of years ago. Mark wondered whether Marvel would end up with John Lasseter overseeing them or if they would remain reporting directly to Disney CEO Bob Iger. Mike noted that Entertainment Weekly had stated that Pixar was already working on a movie based on the Marvel character Ant-Man.

Mike feels that the interactive gaming products will probably largely stay as is with the possibility of The Incredibles possibly being added to one of the Marvel titles.

With films, there are a number of characters tied up in existing deals: Spider-Man with Sony, X-Men titles with News Corp. and Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, Fantastic Four and one additional movie to be named later (likely Iron Man 3) with Paramount. The contracts likely won’t be terminated early, but they likely will be monitored as close as possible.

Marvel’s existing contract with Universal may prove restrictive. Universal can continue to use the characters that they’ve already got as long as they don’t violate the terms of the agreement. However, they will not be able to modify or update the attraction or other use, which may provide some additional pressure to drop the usage.

Mike noted that Disney may have an issue with how some of the walk-around Marvel characters are portrayed at Universal. Mark noted that non-compliance could trigger clauses in the existing contract that could result in Unveral losing those rights. Mark noted that a great rundown on the details on what rights Universal had and what may be happening is in a series of two articles by Nikki Finke for Deadline Hollywood. Further information on terms of the contract are in an Orlando Sentinel article by Jason Garcia.

Marvel also has a deal to build their own theme park in Dubai, There’s no word yet on whether that project may proceed or not.

What do you think? Let us know by sending us an email or calling our toll-free feedback line (1-866-939-2278)!

Twitter/Facebook poll questions

Here are the responses to some questions that Mark was asking on Twitter and Facebook in the last week. If you’d like to get in on answering these questions in the future, you can follow Mark on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.

To those who can’t attend D23: Are you planning anything special to do instead, or just ignoring it?

• Twitter snooze and FB hide… that’s how I’m dealing with it.
• I’ll be crying all weekend 🙁
• DVC Cruise for me 🙂
• I like johns idea the best. 🙂
• I guess I’ll just be following along on facebook to see what’s happening at D23.
• I plan to eat a quart of ice cream and cry myself to sleep.
• I second what Jeff said. Tears and Ice Cream are in my future. :o(
• John’s idea works for me too, and I’m gong to Expo!
• nothing special
• following a few people in twitter who are going and watching blogs.
• It’s hard to ignore it with everyone FB and Tweeting it. Not planning on doing anything special for it.
• I plan on stalking the boards/blogs/twitter/YouTube looking at as much pics and footage as I can!!
• I cant be there so im pretty much ignoring it. I’m sure ton o’ podcasts will be doing things about it though. That’ll get old fast.
• We can’t do D23 Expo 🙁 so we will be at WDW instead. Not the same but still Mickey.
• not sure if it’s what you meant. But I’m going to run a crazy #D23 sale on my poster! Wishing I could go.
• Yes, I`m planning to sit quietly in my chair, ripping my hair out by the roots, envying the ones actually at D23.
• I will consume every bit of News, Audio, Pictures and videos I will find about the Expo.
• I’ll be in WDW, is that special enough? 🙂 Although I will have to miss all the announcements,so I’ll be following it all on Twitter
• Gonna follow D23 on the net and sulk since I can’t be there.
• well, I for one will be glued to the internet all weekend, anxiously awaiting Twitter updates!
• The D23Expo onslaught may be enough to force me to finally take a break from Twitter for awhile, we will just have to wait and see. For us we were scheduled to go and had to cancel, so it’s more “painful” to hear about people having fun there.
• I agree… I enjoy hearing where people are and what’s going on, but sometimes there can be overload!!
• Since I can’t attend D23 event I am relegated to following it on the internet.

What do you think?

Again, if you’d like to get in on answering these questions in the future, you can follow Mark on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.

MouseAdventure at Walt Disney World, November 14

Don’t forget that registration is now open for MouseAdventure Walt Disney World! Get your team ready and register now!

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Wrapping up

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