Disney Wants Its Heroes Back

[crazy4wdw]

Disney Wants Its Heroes Back

Disney Wants Its Heroes Back
By Anders Bylund | The Motley Fool
October 19, 2010

Longtime Walt Disney investors may not be aware of the complex financial machinations behind the Marvel film production business. An intricate lattice of bank loans secured by superhero ownership rights and distribution contracts with multiple partners launched Marvel into the rarefied air where Disney picked the company up last December for $4 billion.

But with the House of Mouse at its back, Marvel doesn't really need any of that fancy stuff anymore. Disney and its Buena Vista operations are powerful distribution entities in their own right, and liquidity has never been a problem for Disney. It's high time to untangle Marvel from the old support system.

In that spirit, Disney just restructured the distribution deal with Viacom subsidiary Paramount Pictures. Paramount still gets to market and make available the upcoming Thor and Captain America films, and the first two Iron Man movies will remain under the Paramount imprint. But Disney will pay $115 million to Paramount in exchange for distribution rights to Iron Man 3 and The Avengers. Thanks to a pre-existing side contract, The Avengers will also be licensed to cable channel EPIX, which also makes the movie available as a Netflix digital stream.

This way, Disney gets to retain the 8% distribution fee it was supposed to pay to Paramount for Avengers and Iron Man 3. The first two Tony Stark movies each earned more than $500 million in global box office receipts before you even account for TV rights, DVD sales, and other incidentals. I see no reason to believe that the third installment would do any worse, and the Avengers movie rests on the bankability of several of Marvel's most valuable characters.

For the time being, News Corp's 20th Century Fox remains the producer and distributor of the X-Men franchise, and Sony is rebooting the Spider-Man saga under its Columbia Pictures umbrella. I wouldn't be surprised to see Disney buying back those contracts eventually, but the in-house production projects had to come first. Disney spent a lot of money on Marvel and should be determined to milk every possible penny out of the new assets. This is a good start.

 

[JB2K]

I had posted somthing similar on the Podcast thread -- and suggested if Disney can buy the distribution/marketing rights for IM3 and The Avengers, they could certainly pitch some money to Universal (in the future) to jettison the Marvel characters from their Orlando park.

Needless to say, I was met with some criticism from the "I don't want superheroes at my beloved WDW" camp.

And there was also an interesting post suggesting that Universal's future owner (Comcast) may not even want to be in the theme park business...

 

[TisBit]

I had posted somthing similar on the Podcast thread -- and suggested if Disney can buy the distribution/marketing rights for IM3 and The Avengers, they could certainly pitch some money to Universal (in the future) to jettison the Marvel characters from their Orlando park.

Needless to say, I was met with some criticism from the "I don't want superheroes at my beloved WDW" camp.

And there was also an interesting post suggesting that Universal's future owner (Comcast) may not even want to be in the theme park business...

Even if Disney doesn't use the super heroes at their park, pulling them back from Universal woudl be beneficial. How many items in a Disney store can you buy that doesn't have a ride/attraction attached to it (a lot ). But Disney will not put a single item in a WDW store that could even remotely promote Universal Studios.....so there is more incentive then just to build a ride.

No one really knows what type of contract Universal had with Marvel and how hard it would be to break that contract. But I think that Universal is also working hard behind the scenes to break from under the Disney Umbrella with these characters. It is only 4 attractions, so a retheming wouldn't be unheard of, but also it is way too early and not worth the money to Disney to try to breach the contract or for Universal to start a retheming until closer to the end of said contract (if there is a an end...)