With visions of movies, TV, video games and theme-park attractions dancing in its head, the Walt Disney Co. said today it is buying Marvel Entertainment and its 5,000 comic-book characters for $4 billion.
However, theme-park rival Universal Orlando will likely retain the park rights to its four Marvel superstars, including Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk.
Disney Co. President Bob Iger and Marvel Entertainment executives extolled the benefits of using Disney's worldwide, multi-platform marketing machine to promote such comic-book characters as Iron Man, X-Men and Captain America.
Iger and others announcing the deal this morning had little to say about Marvel's current arrangement with Universal Orlando, which has an entire theme-park area, Marvel Super Hero Island, dedicated to Marvel characters. 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.
Without naming Universal directly, Iger did address the theme park question on CNBC earlier today.
"Marvel characters have already proven to be strong in terms of theme park attraction and we believe there are a lot of opportunities around the world, not in every one of our parks because there are some existing agreements that we obviously have to honor, but in a number of places for us to use the Marvel characters to basically help us grow our theme park business and better entertain people," Iger said.
Universal Orlando said Marvel characters will remain a staple at its parks.
"Marvel Super Hero Island at Universal's Islands of Adventure and the Marvel characters are a beloved and important part of the Universal Orlando experience. They will remain so," said Tom Schroder, a Universal spokesman. "Our guests are going to get to meet Spider-Man and all our other Marvel characters. We believe our agreement with Marvel stands and that the Disney/Marvel deal will have no impact on our guest experience."
Disney is offering Marvel shareholders a stock-and-cash deal worth $50 a share. That includes $30 cash and 0.745 shares of Disney stock for each share of Marvel stock. Disney Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs said he expects the deal to be completed by the end of the year.
The acquisition would give Disney rights to a wide variety of action characters that appeal to teenagers and young adults, and which have endured for generations. Iger said he is particularly interested in Marvel's recent success converting comic-book characters into blockbuster movies.
"Over the last decade, [Marvel Chief Executive Officer] Ike Perlmutter and his team have done a terrific job building a licensing, publishing and movie business around such great Marvel characters as Iron Man, Spider-Man and the X-Men, to name a few," Iger said. "In particular they have shown a tremendous skill in increasing the appeal of characters like Iron Man that traditionally weren't well known outside Marvel's core fan community, and we believe there is significant opportunity to mine Marvel's rich intellectual property portfolio."
Marvel has several long-term agreements in place already with various other companies for many of its characters, including movie deals with Paramount, Sony and Fox, for such characters as Iron Man, X-Men, Spider-Man, Captain America and Thor. Those contracts will be honored until their terms expire, which could be several years or more in some cases.
Marvel also has various deals with the two-park Universal Orlando. The agreements governing two of Universal's hugely popular rides, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk roller coaster, appear to be virtually perpetual deals. According to Universal's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Universal Orlando retains American rights east of the Mississippi River for as long as its attractions are in operation.
Universal and Marvel also have various deals for everything from merchandise sales to the theming of many other portions of the Orlando resort's Islands of Adventure theme park.
When asked about Marvel's licensing deals with other companies for movie projects, Iger said Disney would honor the terms of those contracts. He did not specifically comment on Marvel's deal with Universal Orlando, nor did Perlmutter.
