The Rocchi Files: Spider-Mouse (or, Everything You Wanted to Know About the Disney-Marvel Merger but Were Afraid to Ask)

It was one of those rare business deals that became front-page news because it reached all the way from corporate boardrooms into people's dreams and memories: On Monday, it was announced that the Walt Disney Corporation -- owners of ABC and the Muppets, ESPN and Mickey Mouse, Pixar and Hannah Montana -- had purchased Marvel Comics for a staggering four billion dollars. It came as a shock -- reputed, reliable and industry-standard comics blogger Heidi McDonald noted that on Monday, her morning began with her fiancé literally shaking her awake to tell her the news. It was unexpected, but not unprecedented; after all, Time Warner had bought the DC comic-book line, home to Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and Green Lantern in 1969 -- but this was a much bigger deal, for a lot more money. Soon, the internet was humming with simple, silly sight gags -- Donald Duck with Wolverine's claws, Spider-Man's distinctive red-and-blue webbing capped with mouse ears. But those pictures are worth far less than a thousand words; what does this deal really mean, and when will we see the ramifications of it play out on movie screens and your home theater?

The answers aren't as easy as you think. Take, for example, the fact that the Disney deal doesn't include the films Marvel Studios (the movie-making arm of Marvel Comics) has with Paramount Pictures. Paramount is contractually entitled to distribute, and share in the profits, of five more Marvel films -- Iron Man 2 and 3, Thor, Captain America and the all-star superhero lineup flick The Avengers. Of these, Iron Man 2 just finished principal photography; Thor (a fantasy fable about an ordinary man who can become the vessel for the Norse Thunder god) has director Kenneth Branagh attached. And Captain America (the shield-wielding champion of the red, white and blue) has a director attached but no cast. Will Paramount want to distribute movies that, as of Monday, feed into a rival's profit line?

And worse, other Marvel franchises are tied up at other studios. Sony owns Spider-Man lock, stock and webbing, with what seems like an infinite series of sequels already being written and planned. 20th Century Fox currently owns the movie rights to the X-Men, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four. And they'll do a lot to hang on to those rights; in fact, it was announced the evening of the Disney/Marvel deal that Fox has brought producer Akiva Goldsman (I Am Legend, Hancock, Starksy and Hutch) on board to "reboot" the Fantastic Four for the big screen -- after making two of the dullest, wrong-headed superhero films in the history of the genre out of the material already.

It's easy to see how this news sprang directly out of the Disney/Marvel deal; Fox may not actually want to make this film ... but they do want to hold on to the rights, and announcing they're in pre-production essentially makes that happen. If you're 20th Century Fox, right now you own a bunch of the other side's key players ... and you can either ask for money to give those rights up or profit from them yourself. The same goes for Universal's rights to the Hulk on film and the Marvel properties at the Universal theme parks; in fact, if you had to name the one group of people immediately happy on Monday in the wake of the Disney deal, it'd be the lawyers on every side. The big irony is that this deal may do more to move Marvel movie projects forward at Paramount and Fox than it will at Disney. The press release about the deal trumpeted how Disney now has access to Marvel's "5,000 characters." But a) it doesn't, as seen above and b) what good is access to 5,000 characters if most people have never heard of 4,994 of them?

And that's why I look at this deal with plenty of suspicion and a wait-and-see attitude; while some film fan sites have been making wish lists of previously-unused Marvel properties that could work on the big screen, that's no more than the comics-fan equivalent of the old hot stove league in baseball, where during the winter months you gather around a fire and argue about dream teams and shoulda-could-woulda for your favorite players. The fact is that Marvel was a cash-poor business looking for money and a chance to do some debt restructuring with a huge brand base of young men, and Disney has plenty of cash and a brand base that's shrinking among boys and only growing with girls. As Walt Disney Corp. chairman Bob Iger said Monday, "We'd like love to attract more boys, and we think Marvel's skew is more in boy's direction. Although there's a universal appeal, we think, to a lot of their characters and a lot of their stories. Just look at the Spider-Man and Iron Man films. This is a great fit. But we obviously know Disney has a lot of products that are more girl-skewed than boy. And we'd like the opportunity to go after boys more aggressively." I know certain principles are priceless, but $4 billion is a lot to pay for a stab at gender equity.

When Disney bought Pixar, they got Toy Story, The Incredibles, finding Nemo and more and then handed the animation division over to Pixar almost entirely, and proceeded to profit. Even though John Lasseter of Pixar and Marvel's higher-ups have already met to spitball ideas, it's hard to imagine Marvel being given that kind of creative control and autonomy in film production -- and superhero movies aren't cheap; as show business analyst David Poland points out at his own blog, "It’s hard to do any of these movies for $125 million, much less under that figure." And even for a company with Disney's resources, as the old joke goes, you spend $125 million here, $125 million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. But that money stream may come from the toys to pay for the films in the theaters; this deal unites the first-largest name in merchandising (Disney) with the fourth (Marvel) -- and it's hard to argue with that kind of financial throw-weight at the end of the day (or, rather, the quarter). Of course, I like it when movie companies make money from films and story-telling, not mugs or t-shirts; I know Wall St. doesn't care where the profits come from, but I kinda do.

Right now, though, I'd use the precognitive powers I gained by being bitten by a radioactive business analyst to say this: You won't see a Disney/Marvel film in theaters for at least three years; we may see a Marvel TV property on ABC or the Disney Channel within two year's time, if everyone involved moves fast. Every month, Marvel Comics' four-colored adventures wrap up with a rock-'em, sock-'em finale or a nail-biting cliff hanger; in the world of business, where you can't solve problems with a web shooter or an invisible force field, it's going to take a lot longer to see how the arranged marriage of Spider-Man and Mickey Mouse turns out.

Comments

[David]

What will happen to universal studios on forida? will disney buy this park to

[John Morrissey]

I expect Fox to panic and adopt a mentality similar to the management of the Detroit Lions or Chicago Cubs: You don't have to put out a good product, you just have to put out a product. They'll keep rebooting the Fantastic Four every couple of years whether they have a good script or not just to keep the rights, all the while hoping someone at Fox will figure out how to do straight super hero films right. (That doesn't include distopian revisionisms like te X-Men franchise.) Sony will keep up Spider-Man just to keep their hand in. Paramont and Universal on the other hand, have deals with Marvel Pictures and that seems to be more of a pay to play deal with only short term commitments.
On the Other hand, Disney will end up adding a new theme park and hotels to Disney World where you can tour Avengers Mansion, apply for a job at the Daily Bugle, and watch Spidey puch out Doc Ock in Times Square. It'll be overwealmingly cool.

[Amy]

Charlie will be missed but I think Diane will be a great replacement.