Disney v.s. Marvel: Disney prevails and buys Marvel for $4 billion

The Walt Disney Company recently agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment Incorporated for roughly $4 billion in cash and stock. Marvel, most known for its major characters like Iron Man, Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk through comics and film, will now join forces with Disney juggernauts Peter Pan, Aladdin, Jimmeny Cricket and many others.

This means changes for Marvel. In an interview Disney Chief executive Robert A. Iger said, “Marvel's brand and its treasure trove of content will now benefit from our extraordinary reach.” This is good news since Marvel needed to sell off certain overseas distribution rights to raise the required third of its cash for their films Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. Now thanks to Disney, Marvel will self-finance a third of each film to get around this obligation. Disney will also benefit from Marvel's partnership with Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment and 20th Century Fox, all of which who have long-term deals to make or distribute movies based on superhero characters.

Disney will be honoring contracts with studios such as Paramount who has an agreement to distribute five Marvel films, including two Iron Man sequels, over the next few years. The goal for Disney is only to bring these franchises in-house. "Our intention obviously is to respect the deal that's in place," Iger said. "It clearly would be in our best interest, I believe, and more attractive to us if over time we ended up as the sole distributor of these films."

Another big change will be Marvel's integration in Disney theme parks of California, Paris and Hong Kong. The Florida theme park will remain untouched due to Marvel's longstanding agreement with the Universal Studios theme park (known as The Islands of Adventure). This can only mean great superhero themed roller coasters and 3-D simulations since Marvel based rides in The Islands of Adventure theme park are very popular themselves. However, Disney executives don't expect to introduce Marvel character's into their theme parks for a couple of years.

Not everyone is happy about the Marvel/Disney team up. Marvel fans have been shaken by this news. When the article was posted on the Web site Superherohype.com, which features any news about upcoming superhero films, the message boards blew up.

User MrBentertainment asked, “Anyone else getting chills about this news? Imagine Wolverine with Mickey Mouse ears?” User El Barto predicted "next summer, Zac Efron is Spider-Man. Soundtrack by The Jonas Brothers." One the most concerned comments came from user MHR75killsU saying "never in my lifetime did I expect to see the end of Marvel. Now that Disney has control of it there will never been anything aimed toward adult readers ever again and every story is going to be flowers and daisies … I was really looking forward to the next Marvel movies, but now Iron Man is not a drunk, Wolverine gives people angry looks and they go away, Hulk turns happy instead of angry. Goodbye Marvel I loved you so, you will be missed.”

Fans everywhere need to re-watch their favorite Marvel superhero film adaptations and sip a very tall glass of the finest calm-down juice. No company buys another for four billion dollars to ruin it. There are only a couple Marvel films that have been R-rated. The major films that people remember — like Iron Man — were PG-13 yet still played to all audiences. If the people who work for Marvel Entertainment — mind you they are die-hard fans themselves — are not the least bit worried, so neither should anyone else.

Change is inevitable, yet it isn't always for the worst. In this case, one major company joined up with another major company to use each other’s valuable assets. Let's not forget that when Disney partnered up with Pixar, the movies that resulted were even better than before. Even though Marvel is now under the Disney name it will not be renamed into something like “Disarvel” or “Misney.”

This should be seen as win for Marvel since now the company can reach a more global audience. The Marvel fan boys have little faith for this merger, but need to relax as Disney is well aware of the thousands of devoted fans.

Disney and Marvel characters will not be having any crossovers for many years to come. If it finally comes time for a crossover film, we may see Wolverine find his way onto The Black Pearl in Mutants of the Caribbean. If it's in 3-D I'll be sure to reserve my tickets.