Corona | Coming Attractions

Early Monday morning The Walt Disney Company announced that it had negotiated with the owners of Marvel Entertainment to acquire the company for a mixture of cash and stock worth $4 billion dollars.

Shareholders of Marvel, the comic book publisher of such titles as Uncanny X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk and many more, will receiving a minimum of $30 a share plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own. However, the deal is structured that Disney must pay the fair market value for the shares at the time of the transaction, which right now would equate to $48 a share -- or about $4 billion dollars to own Marvel's 5,000 superheroes and supervillains lock, stock and barrel.

"This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney's creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories," said Robert A. Iger, president and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company in an issued press release. "Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.

"We believe that adding Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation."

Already the question has been broached about how, if any, Disney's acquisition of Marvel might effect the deal between Marvel Studios and Hollywood studios that distribute upcoming movies starring Marvel superheroes. For example, Paramount currently has a deal with Marvel Studios to distribute five movies including sequels to Iron Man as well as new ones based on Thor, Captain America and The Avengers. While nothing is changing between the pre-existing deals between Marvel Studios and other film studios, Disney is already thinking of "self-distributing" movies using Marvel superheroes once the currently existing deals expire.

Additionally it was revealed in a conference call this morning that Pixar chief John Lasseter met with Marvel representatives last week and started the process of thinking about what kind of creative endeavours could arise between Pixar Animation Studios and Marvel. According to Lasseter, he got "pretty excited, pretty fast."