It’s been almost three years now since Bob Iger asked then-Marvel Studios chairman David Maisel to pass along a message to Isaac Perlmutter. To be specific, the Chairman & CEO of the Walt Disney Company wished to talk with the Chief Executive Officer of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. about the Mouse possibly acquiring Marvel and its portfolio of over 8,000 characters.
What followed was three months of highly secretive, very intense negotiations. Mind you, what made these talks particularly ironic for Disney Company veterans is that they remembered all of the other times Mouse House managers had previously considered trying to acquire Marvel.
Disney’s First Attempt to Acquire Marvel
“When Michael Eisner was in charge of Disney, I can recall three separate occasions when senior management had some very serious discussions about possibly going after Marvel Entertainment,” recalled one longtime member of Disney’s board of directors. “But each time, it was Eisner himself who derailed the deal. Michael just didn’t think that Marvel and Disney would be a good fit. He couldn’t see how these two very different sets of characters could ever come together.”
Disney’s Lack of Property for Boys and Teenage Males
Whereas Iger … Well, Bob pushed for this deal because — as Jay Rasulo (i.e. the Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of The Walt Disney Company) explained during his January 2012 appearance at Citigroup‘s 22nd annual Global Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference …
“(Disney) really did lack a property with strong young boy and teenage male affinity. (So by acquiring Marvel Entertainment, Inc.), we’ve now filled that.”
Jay continued:
“(As far as Disney management was concerned, our August 2009 acquisition of) Marvel was clearly an intellectual property play. (The management team at Marvel Entertainment, Inc. was) running a business … that simply did not have either the bandwidth, the touch points, the machine that Disney is. And we thought that taking (Marvel’s) great capability to create intellectual property with deep story, talented executives that knew how their story and their brands work, and putting it into the Disney apparatus, the machine that takes our product all over the world, (that) would be a very profitable partnership/”
And — to be honest — that was what also struck Marvel insiders about the beauty of merging with the Mouse. As Joe Quesada, the Company’s Chief Creative Officer recalled in a recent interview with JHM:
“I remember those initial meetings before the merger (actually) happened. We were given research by Disney executives … Let’s show you where your characters lie in popularity not just domestically, but let’s see what they look like in Brazil, let’s see what it looks like in Japan, what it looks like in Russia. And we all just sat there with our jaws slack because it was … To be honest, it was proving what we kind of knew in our gut. but we never actually had the chance to do the research.”
And the fact that the Mouse was willing to put its money where its mouth was (EX: Disney’s October 2010 deal with Paramount Pictures to take over the marketing and distribution of “The Avengers” and “Iron Man 3.” In order to acquire these rights, Disney had to agree to pay Paramount a minimum of $115 million. Mind you, this was in addition to the $4 billion in stock & cash that Mickey had spent the previous year to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. outright) really impressed people like Jeph Loeb, the Executive Vice President in charge of Marvel Television.
Initial Worries – “We Want Marvel to be Marvel”
Which isn’t to say that Marvel fans weren’t initially very worried about the changes that could possibly come about once Disney execs was calling the shots at the House of Ideas. As Loeb told me last month at the “Ultimate Spider-Man” press event:
“At least from the television side of things, we absolutely did hear from (our) fan base. They were concerned that suddenly that Punisher was going to be hanging out with Mickey. And that was never going to work.
It really was from the first day — from the top, from Bob Iger himself — who basically said to all of us. ‘We did not bring you over here because we could turn you into something else. We want Marvel to be Marvel. You guys know what it is that you do. and we want you to be able to do it and do it well.’
And one of the things that I think has been absolutely extraordinary is that (the Disney acquisition) has given us an opportunity to do things that we otherwise would not have been able to. Marvel would not be in the television business. This is not a business that makes sense to Marvel. I mean, look how long it took us to get into the motion picture business and build our own studio. For us now to be able to have a live-action television division and — as of January 1st — we just opened a state-of-the-art facility in Glendale where we’ll now be able to make our own Marvel Animation specifically for Disney XD. We would have never been able to have the bandwidth to do that. And now we do. And the encouragement to do so.”
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“Marvel Universe” on Disney XD
More to the point, with the April 1st launch of that “Marvel Universe” programming block on Disney XD … Well, because this cable channel already has a pretty extensive global reach (Disney XD has 23 existing channels and programming blocks around the world and will soon be seen in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia), showing “Ultimate Spider-Man” and “The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” on Disney XD is actually a very smart way to grow and support the Marvel brand, to introduce the Company’s characters to parts of this planet that aren’t already all that familiar with Iron Man and the Hulk.
Disney’s “Avengers” Promotion
Of course, given the way that the Disney publicity machine has been gearing up to get the word out about “The Avengers” (EX: The “Avengers” -skinned monorail that’s now making the rounds daily at Walt Disney World. Not to mention tomorrow’s red carpet premiere of this Joss Whedon film at Disney’s movie palace in Hollywood, the El Capitan Theatre), I seriously doubt that there’ll be anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know the Marvel characters by this time next week. Which suits Joe Quesada just fine.
“That’s what’s so amazing about this merger with Disney. When people used to interview me about what my future plans for Marvel were, I used to joke that I wanted total world domination. Well, now that we’re with Disney, that’s no longer a joke. We are now within a company that will actually allow us to do that …
Have there been growing pains and adjustments along the way? Sure. But that sort of stuff always happens whenever two companies with their own distinct cultures merge. But Bob’s initial words to us have never been truer. It’s always been about keeping Marvel Marvel.
And thanks to the overall muscle of Disney, look at what we’ve managed to accomplish in less than three years time. We’ve got two great new animated series on Disney XD. A terrific new feature film about to bow in theaters. Jeph’s got some exciting new Marvel-based TV series in the works for ABC and ABC Family. Plus stuff for the theme parks.
This is a really exciting and exhilarating time to be working for Marvel. And it’s all happening because Bob reached out to Ike back in 2009. I just wonder where we’re going to be four or five years for now.”
Your thoughts?