Take this news with a grain of salt since I haven’t seen it up anywhere else, but according to this article over at marketwatch.com, it looks like Disney is going to acquire Marvel Entertainment and all its characters including Spider-Man, The Hulk, The Avengers, and the X-Men. As a result it looks like Marvel’s stock price has shot up 25%, while Disney’s is actually down 1.5 %.

[UPDATE] Press release from Marvel is here.


From the article:

“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. “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.”

This seems to continue Disney’s trend of hopping on the back of other companies’ creations and innovations while they continue to lag behind with their own intellectual properties, and in some cases (Gargoyles), continue to run them into the ground. Perhaps this is the reason that Disney decided not to renew the license for the Gargoyles comics. Much as the stock price shifts show, it seems that this deal favors Marvel far more than Disney and only then if Disney can keep its hands out of Marvel’s ongoing content.

There will be an investors conference call this morning.

An investor conference call will take place at approximately 10:15 a.m. EDT / 7:15 a.m. PDT today, August 31, 2009. To listen to the Webcast, turn your browser to http://corporate.disney.go.com/investors/presentations.html or dial in domestically at 800-260-8140 or internationally at 617-614-3672. For both dial-in numbers, the participant pass code is 51214527.

The discussion will be available via replay on the Disney investors website through September 14, 2009 at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT.

And yes, I spent entirely too much time on that post banner.

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