You have to ask, how could eBay have been so incredibly stupid to spend billions of dollars on essentially nothing? Well, it appears that Disney did the exact same thing.
As we’ve all heard by now, Disney bought Marvel for about 4 billion dollars. At first blush it seems like a deal made in heaven. Disney makes movies and superhero movies are hot right now.
However, due to prior contracts Marvel had with other movie studios, Disney is essentially unable to make any Marvel superhero movies for a very long time, maybe even forever.
For example, Sony has a perpetual right to make Spider-Man and Ghost Rider movies.
20th Century Fox has a perpetual right to make movies involving the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra, Silver Surfer, Kingpin, Dr. Doom, Bullseye, and all of the mutants who have appeared in the X-Men movies.
Universal Pictures has a perpetual right to make Hulk movies. (And if you think Disney can use Marvel characters in its theme parks, think again. Universal has that right, in perpetuity, for its own theme parks.)
So who’s left? Paramount Pictures only has the right to distribute the upcoming Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man 3 movies. So in about ten years Disney would be set to go on its own. If superhero movies are still popular in ten years.
And that’s a big if. If Disney bought Marvel for the long haul, in hopes of making Superhero movies way off in the future, I think the plan will fail. Superheroes are big now because the baby boomers grew up with them. That’s why superhero movies are always rated R and hard PG-13. Because they’re made for adults. The adults who grew up with them.
In ten, twenty years no one is going to give a rip about Spider-Man. Much in the same way no one gives a rip about Cowboy and Indian movies. Genres die. It’s a fact of life in Hollywood.
Still, if Disney doesn’t want to wait it can dig deep in Marvel’s vault and release a Doctor Bong movie. How about Forbush Man? Ruby Thursday?
Let’s face it, Disney got screwed.
Hmm. Howard the Duck II?
Not a totally accurate account (Marvel created Marvel Studios to retain movie rights to Hulk, Iron Man and the other Avengers, but indeed distribution rights have already been negotiated for those films).
But, and laugh if you will, these are COMIC characters and COMIC books are where they will live forever. Countless writers and artists will continue to take on these iconic figures and fans old and new will continue to read them. Comic sales are a drop in the bucket, obviously, but that’s the source where every other money-making venture is derived from.
1. Eric said, “Sounds like the get the other studios to do the work while they sit back and cash checks. Not bad work if you can get it.”
God, get a clue. Marvel didn’t sit back and collect checks, it got royally screwed on its movie deals. That’s why it produced the Iron Man movie itself. It was tired of getting its ass reamed.
3. JFStan said: But, and laugh if you will, these are COMIC characters and COMIC books are where they will live forever”
Are you really that naive? Way back in the old days (before my time) kids grew up watching cowboy and indian movies. Those movies were produced solely for kids.
Those kids grew up so westerns were made for those adults. Those movies had very adult themes and were not for kids.
Now, no one makes westerns anymore. The genre is dead.
The same is true of super hero movies. They started off making them for kids, such as in the old Superman and Batman serials in the 40s. The tv shows in the 50s and 60s. And all the animated cartoons of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Those kids grew up. So grown-up superhero movies were made for adults. TV shows such as the Justice League were made for adults. And graphic novels were made for adults.
What’s going to happen when those superhero loving “kids” die from old age? By then Hollywood will have moved on to some other genre.
Spider-man alone was worth the purchase. Super hero’s are not cowboys and indians. Show any kid on the street any age a picture of Spider-man and ask them who it is?
6. Higghawker wrote: “Spider-man alone was worth the purchase”
God, did you even read what I wrote?! Disney cannot make any Spider-man movie. And according to the article I linked, Disney cannot even use Spider-man in its theme parks.
Is it really that hard to read and then think before mashing your fingers on the keyboard?!
Higghawker continued his keyboard mashing….Show any kid on the street any age a picture of Spider-man and ask them who it is?
You could have done the same thing with a picture of John Wayne up through the 70s. After that, no kid knows who he is. My point is proved. The problem you have is that you think very short term. You think everything you love will be loved forever. You’re utterly and completely wrong.
And by the way, when was the last time they made a Flash Gordon movie? Buck Rogers? Oh yeah, those extremely huge and beloved characters died off. Because no no one gives a rat’s ass about them. In the exact same way no one is going to give a rat’s ass about Spider-man in forty years.
I have to go with SN on this.
The big question is, “are all those royalties worth $4 billion”?
One of the things that killed cowboy movies was finding a place you could make them without having to do it inside the computer.
Another was most of the real cowboys are dead. What percentage of people can actually ride a horse running full out across country now without killing themselves?
Last and not least most of the cowboy movies were b westerns made for boys under 12 and contained violence. The black hat got shot/whatever.
Every generation is going to want its own super heroes. Paul Bunyon, Mike Fink, David Crockett Pacus Bill were the super heroes of a previous generation.
You also had train engineers, Casey Jones, and steel driving men, and men that worked the steel mills, and Rosy the Riveter, GI Joe.
I still like Gilgamesh the mighty, Samson and Hercules and his buddies but not many have even heard of those. Of course those are really ancient and guess what? Ooops I was wrong. We do have movies about some of them.
In fact I think I’ve seen movies about most of the people? named and Disney Studios made some of those movies.
I’m not sure Marvel is worth 4 billion though.
All Disney has to do is buy out the contracts. Not a hard thing to do.
The real reason that Disney bought Marvel isn’t for movies but for television. With the Disney Channel being dominated by girl-oriented programming Disney recently rebranded their Toon Disney channel as Disney XD and made it a boy-oriented channel. Currently that channel shows pretty much every Marvel superhero cartoon made in recent years. So why not buy the company that owns the majority of their programming?
9. Deowll wrote: Every generation is going to want its own super heroes”
Couldn’t have put it better myself. Kids and adults in forty years will have their own superheroes, not ours.
Actually, cowboys and Indians are back in. Lone Ranger comics are out and the Lone Ranger movie is in the works. Genres don’t die, marketers do. It just takes that one person who thinks that he/she can re-invent a genre to bring it back to life with examples such as; Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Universe, or 3:10 to Yuma.
Enjoyed the article.
10. “All Disney has to do is buy out the contracts.”
But that increases the cost of buying Marvel by a wide margin. The three Spider-man movies brought in 2.5 billion dollars for Sony. How much will it cost Disney to buy the rights back just for Spider-man, another four billion? How much for the X-men, another four billion?
“The real reason that Disney bought Marvel isn’t for movies but for television.”
When was the last time there was a hit Spider-man TV show? They keep trying them and they keep failing.
12. “3:10 to Yuma”
You do realize that was a remake, right?
“Enjoyed the article.”
Thanks for taking the time to actually read it. I wish everyone else who commented did that.
None of the movies you mention are rated R, and are any of them even a ‘hard’ PG-13?
SN, If you don’t want comments or people’s opinions, turn off the comment box. Yours and the links opinion are this purchase was a mistake, and that may be so?
My opinion is that YOU may be wrong? My opinion is even in 10 years these movies will still be going strong. There are endless possibilities that have only scratched the surface with these characters.
In 10 years you can flame me!
“Flash Gordon movie? Buck Rogers? Oh yeah, those extremely huge and beloved characters died off. Because no no one gives a rat’s ass about them.”
I disagree. Hollywood has always been able to take the old, gloss it up with special effects, and make it new again.
Example 1: Superman. When they did the Christopher Reeves film, Superman was dead. I was a young teenager then and I couldn’t stand the stupid Superman comic. Yet they still managed to reinvigorate it.
Example 2: King Kong. Who woulda thunk they could have redone that?
Example 3: Star Trek. When they did the first Star Trek film, who would have guess that they could take a cheap, silly, cancelled sci-fi tv show and make major films out of them.
You mention remakes. Most everything is a remake. I remember reading that there are basically 7 stories, and every film, book, and play is just a variation on those.
And you also forget that there are new humans on the planet that haven’t experienced what you have. So these characters, plots, and genres are new to them. Give it enough time, and everything is new.
Ok, a bunch of movie studios have the perpetual rights to make movies about the Marvel characters.
But movies are expensive and sometimes (thanks to Hollywood accounting) don’t make money. All the real money is in the merchandising. The movie is just a 2-hour (or shorter) commercial for the toys.
So who owns the merchandise rights? If it’s Disney, then they’ve scored: The movie studios spend all the money making the movies – and Disney sells the toys.
Thanks for posting. I had failed to undestand why buy at such a price. Prior articles stated the Disney TV channel needing more boy marketing – but $4 billion’s worth? Maybe Steve Jobs is just a comic book fan…
WTF is wrong with hollywood these days!?!? Seems to me instead of paying writers and getting some new ideas, they’re contantly buying up the rights to comics, cartoons, and remakes. Any wonder that box office numbers are so bad they’re closing cinemas all over the place. Piracy isn’t killing hollywood, it’s the cheapass corporate execs, and the quickbuck philosophy.
When was the last time there was a hit Spider-man TV show? They keep trying them and they keep failing.
They may keep failing but,as I said, look at Disney XD’s lineup. Half of it is Marvel cartoons including those failed Spider-Man cartoons. Obviously Disney thinks they have a big enough audience that it is worth airing those failed cartoons instead of their own backlog of cartoons like Ducktails, Darkwing Duck, Rescue Rangers and so on.
Also, owning Marvel gives them a company with expertise in comics. So rather than letting Gemstone get a cut. Additionally, Boom studios recently licensed a lot of the Pixar properties and is having success with them. I would look for Disney to cancel those contracts and for Marvel to make them so that Disney gets 100% of the profits rather than Boom getting a cut.
I think the analogy to cowboys & Indians is misguided as is the claim that once the baby boomers are gone that kids today will not be interested in these stories.
1) Part of the reason for the decreased interest of westerns is that the gap between the modern age and the past was becoming too large for young audiences to relate to. Superhero stores generally take place in the modern age and tell contemporary stories.
2) The superhero genre is all about the character, not the actor playing the character. Peter Parker can always be a high school/college student. If Tobey Maguire is getting too old, they cast a new Peter Parker, but they can’t cast a new John Wayne. He got old and most kids didn’t want to see a 50-year old man riding a horse anymore.
3) Batman has been around since 1939, that’s enough for 3-4 generations of audiences and is still going strong.
4)”When was the last time there was a hit Spider-man TV show?” How about now? The Spectacular Spider-Man animated series is a critical and commercial success, with many comparing it on par to Batman The Animated Series. It is currently airing its second season on Disney XD.
5) Audiences have always loved spectacle and the biggest spectacle in films and television currently come from sci-fi, superhero, and animated story genres. That’s not going to change anytime soon.
6) As another poster commented, the major reason Disney bought Marvel was for the TV programming, merchandising, and video game rights (a successful video game franchise, like Grand Theft Auto, can be worth a billion dollars). Disney crunched the numbers and decided that $4 Billion was worth it.
Once you consider all revenue streams, I think Disney made a great deal.
SN==yea, the hair went up on the back of my neck at that headline. Still, Pedro at #16 hit the pro view which you did not address at all. Analyze the pro’s then the con’s and then compare and contrast. Examine only the negatives of a deal, and it looks pretty bad. Examine only the positives, and it looks pretty good. The actual contract had to have what they were buying? And some genius thought it was worth 4 Billion.
Segue to joke about investing 4 Billion in beer, drinking it, and getting more money back by recycling the aluminum cans.
The Art of the Deal. The ONLY Super Hero movie I have liked is Iron Man and some parts of the Batman franchise. Yea–adults who grew up with comics, except they never grew up.
And by the way, when was the last time they made a Flash Gordon movie? Buck Rogers? Oh yeah, those extremely huge and beloved characters died off. Because no no one gives a rat’s ass about them. In the exact same way no one is going to give a rat’s ass about Spider-man in forty years.
Since Superman is only 10 years younger than Buck Rogers and only 6 years younger than Flash Gordon and Superman just had a movie made about him a few years ago I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that just because a character is old no one cares. Flash Gordon had a tv show just a year or two ago.
Merchandise royalties, that’s where the money’s at. Don’t forget all the money George Lucas is getting from all those toys, games, shirts, etc.
In the end, these comic book-based movies are nothing but expensive infomercials nowadays.
#27 Pedro,
These idiots who live in their ivory towers still think that the best way to remake a classic is to make it a skater/twink themed turd.
The last really good animated series I saw was Nickelodeon’s Avatar.
Which was canceled ’cause nobody saw it.
No the Flash Gordon show was canceled because it sucked. It was terrible. It deserved to be canceled. and its creators to never be allowed to work in the tv industry again.
Wow, that explains a lot. Paramount has the Right to Ironman, Thor, Captain America, and the Avengers.
But Universal Has the rights to Hulk and Hulk was one of the original Avengers and can’t be in the Avengers movies now. Nice Management.
While it’s true that there are very few Marvel characters left that Disney can tap for movies, this doesn’t mean Disney bought a pig in a poke. Marvel’s contracts with Paramount and others are constructed so that Marvel makes a ton on the backend of each movie as well as a healthy advance – and now all that money goes into Disney’s coffers. Any huge profits Marvel makes on anything goes into the corporate coffers now – Disney’s coffers – so there are still plenty of ways for Disney to monetize their purchase. I wouldn’t worry too much about the Mouse…
#27 Pedro
I saw it. It was produced by the SciFi Channel and was stereotypical SciFi channel Quality.
I swear that channel exists for the sole purpose of Hollywood elitists dumping money in a place that keeps SciFi from gaining mainstream traction. It’s the only explication for the grade school SciFi effects and kindergarten scripts.
While on the surface your premise seems reasonable, there are many possibilities that you might be overlooking:
1. There are many exhibition rights of which cinematic is only one. What about video, free tv, pay tv, internet…
2. The rights might include all distribution mediums but not include the creation of TV content such a new children’s series or even made-for-tv movies.
3. Do the contracts cover worldwide distribution or only domestic?