Disney Faces More Problems Over Marvel Deal
Posted by Ashley McChesney on Fri, Dec 11, 2009 @ 09:22 AM
A brief recap on the issues over the 4 billion dollar Disney-Marvel deal:
1. Disney has been served paperwork with the intent to sue by several people claiming they are owed money in the acquisition, including the estate of Jack Kirby (co-creator of Captain America, X-men, and Iron Man to name a few.)
2. Universal's Islands of Adventure uses several Marvel characters as a theme for a large section of their park. They also have a long term agreement saying they can use them and advertise them only to the East of the Mississippi. No details are known about how long the agreement is for or how either Disney or Universal Studios will be affected.
3. Sony owns film rights to Spiderman. 20th Century Fox owns film rights to X-men.
Disney president and CEO Bob Iger recently indicated that the company is content for now to focus on the licensing aspect for franchises out of their direct control. He also said that some of the lesser known characters in Marvel's library could lead to "potential surprises" and new franchises.
Disney's plan to test drive the Marvel underdogs will be to put out web content and/or TV series for the characters on Disney XD.
So, at this point it is looking like Disney is paying 4 billion for the off chance that there is a gem hiding in the Marvel catalog that they actually have access too, and hopefully they get back the rights to what they cannot currently use (by the way, all the popular characters are currently taken.)
Irony of the day: Marvel sued Disney in 2004 to reclaim copyrights.
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