Disney + Marvel
So Disney just bought Marvel for $4 Billion dollars. Thoughts?
Marvel, of course, has been struggling a bit since the collapse of the comic book bubble in the late 90′s. It’s movies, which I believe was constituting most of its profits the last decade, have been mixed. Yes Spiderman and Iron Man did fantastic. Other venues, such as The Punisher, have been far more mixed.
Disney, on the other hand, has been returning to form. The dark times are passing and there is even a new high quality 2D animation project coming out tied to the story of the frog and the princess.
The big question is how will this affect everyone? I trust Disney right now. But then let’s not forget that Eisner had a pretty great run reinvigorating Disney in the 80′s. Marvel I’m more mixed on. I love some of the characters but honestly haven’t bought comics since I was a young teen. I have liked some of the movies and think they’ve been doing a much better job of late – despite some duds like Fantastic Four and Blade III.
Posted on August 31, 2009, in Pop Culture. Bookmark the permalink. 27 Comments.
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I don’t think this has anything to do with paper comic books and has everything to do with TV (cartoons, etc.) and movies.
Disney is Evil!
Pretty soon they will own the whole world!
I think a few years ago, I’d have been worried for Marvel. Disney had a record of ruining anything they got their hands on. I think mostly because they took over creative control and would vanilla-ize everything. Recently however, they are allowing their minions to have more creative control over their own stuff.
I am hoping this has to do with the paper comics. I want MJ back and married to Peter. I want my superheroes to be superheroes and my bad guys to be bad guys. Marvel has been successful when they’ve kept this formula (except FF, which just sucked). In short, if all that comes out of this is Peter and MJ fixed, I am happy.
I think if Disney approaches Marvel with the same hands-off approach that they largely take with Pixar, that might be a good thing….
…except that Marvel’s films have never been as good as any of Pixar’s. Maybe some Disney quality-control intervention is what they need.
Who knew Marvel was worth $4 billion?
$4 Billion seemed awfully high to me, especially since film rights are largely spoken for right now.
I think that if they can use some of the Pixar process on Marvel movies then this could be exceptional. By that I don’t mean making computer animated movies. What I mean is to hone the script and that storyboard and do the hard upfront work to make great movies.
I think that Pixar currently has a great team process and an undeniable batting average. If they are able to bring that sort of artistry to live action super hero movies then we are in for a treat.
Frankly, Pixar’s got the fish out of water thing down, and isn’t that what many of the Marvel characters are about?
Clark,
Film rights are spoken for, but the profits that would have gone to Marvel will go to Disney. They’d just better hope that Fox and Universal don’t put out flops.
This frightens me. I can’t quite explain why right now, but it does. Maybe it has to do with how Disney turns everything into a commodity and how it fiercely guards it’s images. Of course, Marvel does that sort of thing, too, so maybe I’m just being weird.
I would trust Lassiter, if he is handling future film stuff, but his aesthetic seems to me to differ from Marvel. In fact, I kind of think the artiness of Pixar is more suited to DC, which more explicitly deals in archetypes than Marvel. There is nothing in Pixar or Disney that leads me to believe that they know what to do with realism or grittiness (relative terms in comics, I admit, but Marvel’s appeal has always been that it has been grounded in our world(-ish)).
Warner Brothers has owned DC for a long time now. One of the more interesting things about that was that DC could take a few more risks, and even publish books that were losing money, because WB treated DC as an in-house research and development department.
There are downsides to that arrangement, but it did mean that Marvel had to make a profit with every book it published, and so many good series were cancelled due to lack of sales. DC, on the other hand, could often afford to keep a low selling book around just to see if it would catch on or to try out different ideas.
So, if Disney treats Marvel in much the same way, but still gives them a measure of editorial independence, it might be a very good thing.
I’m a bit skeptical because of what Disney-Pixar has produced compared to when Pixar was on its own. And now I see that Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 are in production. Disney = Milk-it-till-it’s-stale.
So what does this mean about the Marvel attractions at Disney’s Orlando competitor, Universal Studios?
Brian, I believe both of those were in production prior to the Disney deal. Given that Cars and Toy Stories are very popular and dear to the heart of the head of Pixar I’m not surprised he’s doing more. Personally I wish they’d do a series of Incredibles films myself.
Good point Ivan.
Marval has been pretty stale for the last few years. If the pressure to be profitable on every single title abates, we could see The Next Big Thing.
Or marvel could cycle into retreads and publish the ultimate show down between Howard the Duck and Donald in which we learn of their shared girlfriends and the night in Vietnam when everything went wrong.
OK this is interesting.
What do you want to be all those movie deals with other studios have animation exceptions?
Gibbyg that would be *so cool*.
there has been an increase in some nice quality super hero cartooned feature length films; e.g. Batman: Gotham Knight, Wonder Woman, even the Green Lantern wasn’t too bad.
Perhaps with Pixar/Disney leading the way, they could really up the game on some of these cartooned movies for Marvel.
THAT gets me excited…
Disney’s gone down the tubes since Walt died. Now they are going to ruin Marvel too.
Hey! Disney executives! Get back to your roots (a la Rocky 2, Eye of the Tiger) and start making clean family entertainment again.
I wonder what this will mean for Mark Waid and Boom Comics, since he is doing Incredibles there right now. ALso, what about the oldGoldkey Scrooge McDuck Comics? Will they all go under the Marvel Logo?
I hope that Stan Lee is getting paid. I think there was some danger that he was being screwed over in regards to the Spiderman movies. Not sure if that was fixed or how it was fixed.
I hope that there are no more Stan Lee cameos in Marvel comic-book movies.
Crap. Stan Lee wants more cameos.
Floyd,
Eye of the Tiger is Rocky IV, and I’m not sure you want Disney to go there.
Eye of the Tiger is Rocky III, so you’re both wrong.
The two of you are appalling.
Eye of the Tiger is Survivor, so all three of you are wrong.
You all make me sick.
IF anything, I would be super happy if a comic book came out of this I would feel comfortable having in my home with my 3 daughters.
Uncle Scrooge already had a comic book. Disney didn’t need Marvel for that.
Clark, see comment #19.