Disney set to buy Marvel !
 

Looks like the great Mouse is ready to buy Wolverine & gang for a record 4 Billion dollars in cash and in assets. I just heard this over the radio while driving home last night and then again this morning on the highway.

What's really peculiar at this point is the thought of Disney's characters combined with Marvel's because both are opposite extremes. Also, what bothers me is unknown fate of my fav. characters at Disney's discretion.

Would love to hear your views, opinions, assumptions and forecasts on this one coz believe it or not, every user on this forum will definitely choose to go with either Disney or Marvel.

I am on Marvel's side and the Logan in me says, "this" doesn't feel right !

Hate to break it to you, but Disney's side and Marvel's side are the same side. If Marvel didn't want to be bought, they wouldn't have been.

thats not surprising (acquisition).. one just wont know how disney plans on running marvel

Let's hope Wolverine goes into the Jonas Brothers' dressing room and impales them each on his finger spikes (one each) while Cyclops toasts them with his lasers.

Alternatively, Iron Mickey Spidermouse!

The deal actually make a lot of sense from a business point of view. Similar to when it purchased Pixar.

Marvel are currently doing pretty well with their movies, but the extra funding and support from Disney can make further inroads into that market (and offset the risks that a flop would put Marvel back into the bad old days). It also opens up the theme park market to Marvel to promote their characters to a new young audience.

From Disney's point of view, it is pretty good with the young female market (Hanna Montana, Jonas Brothers etc) but is seen as weak in the young male market. The Marvel characters give them leverage into that market and also allows them to use the characters etc to promote their theme parks etc where income has been falling recently (Except in Florida where Universal has the licence to the Marvel characters)

Like the Pixar deal I see Disney largely staying out of the day to day running of Marvel. The creative side of the comics shouldn't see a huge difference.

The problem is that most of the huge Marvel IP are already committed to films with other studios that Disney can't break (and Universal in Florida would stop Disney using them in their main parks), but it might be interesting to see Disney try to promote some of the lesser known characters and how much would Pixar love to get their hands on Marvel movies.

The only editorial interference I anticipate is that whenever a particular brand (like Spider-Man) becomes popular among kids, they'll tone down the adult content in those comics. I'm okay with that. It's obviously not ideal, but if that's the price to pay for getting a bigger audience it's worth it.

I expect to see even more cartoons of Marvel characters, and possibly some live-action shows. I'm hoping for a live-action Runaways. That would be awesome. I'm also hoping for a cartoon which is set in the current Marvel universe (as though it were just another comic). But realistically, I'm expecting a lot more of the usual Spider-Man and X-Men adaptations. Or whatever they actually have the rights to- a lot of stuff (like movie rights) they'll only have after many years of waiting patiently.

I'm looking forward to the extra marketing and distribution channels Disney's sure to give the comics. I expect flashy advertisements for the comics at the beginnings of DVDs, on all their family channels, etc. I expect them to start getting some of the comics in more visible places than comic book stores. This is going to be really healthy for the comics, I think.

Hopefully not like classics of the past (Pinocchio, Snow White, etc.) from the originals.

I don't see how that sentence is supposed to make sense.

Oh well.

This would probably have bothered me a lot earlier, but...

I stopped reading marvel a long time ago anyway, it was just too soul suckingly addictive and expensive, kind of turned into a nasty routine, and they tried pretty elaborately to get you more and more hooked. I'm incredibly jaded against all these monolithic franchises in general... star wars, star trek, d&d, etc.

Everything is becoming so incredibly conglomerized, this isn't all that shocking.

could the future marvel action movies be impacted by this merger?

Iron Mickey Spidermouse, anyone?
Let's hope they don't use their business massiveness to sue MF DOOM is my only real worry.

Have you read the original Pinocchio? It is much darker than the Disney film.

Marvel with Disney
 

Creatively, I'm a little nervous, but I don't think Disney would want to meddle too much with what Marvel does creatively. They know they are not the comic book experts here, and won't try to micro-manage the creative side, most likely. If they do something as outrageous as censoring gay characters, they can expect hell from the liberal-leaning reader base. The key to making money here is to keep Marvel fans happy while gaining more of them. There are also plenty of examples of other Disney franchises that lie far away from the cuter side of Disney, so the company obviously knows to offer a wide range of products.

Here come the X-Mice!

lol

I read about this last week, on the newspaper here in Medford, Oregon, and I thought it was a pretty cool news article. It should defintely help Marvel in making new Superhero films that could probably rival The Dark Night (which is definitely the best Batman film ever!), so I'm optimistic about this.

However, when I went to go to Gamespot to see what everyone thought of this on the forums, everyone was freaking out completely. They were complaining that Disney was going to completely ruin Marvel, forcing them to do stuff like pit Wolverine against Mickey Mouse, for example.

I just found this to be completely insane, and apparently I was not the only one, too. A few of the members of the Gamespot forums told everyone to calm down, and they were overreacting way too hard.

My point is, this deal of Disney acquiring Marvel has really riled a whole lot of people up. Me however, I am very excited about this, and I can only hope for great things to happen with this deal.