Well, yeah, that is true. But at the time I did not know Blackstone would be selling. And even if I had known that I wouldn't have thought Universal would buy them out. Not that these are bad things ultimately but it appears to me Universal has decided to hang on to Marvel for now. I don't get the logic but then I am on the outside looking in. Time will tell if they stick with this plan over the long term.
I'm impressed with your response. I was expecting something more evasive. Well played.
The logic for holding on to Marvel seems pretty obvious to me. The contract was negotiated when Universal was in the driver's seat and Marvel needed the money. They couldn't get a deal like that today. And with the movies, the Marvel property is worth more now than when the deal was signed. Universal would be crazy to let this deal go.
I think Uni is holding on to Marvel because they know its a huge intellectual property owned by Disney that they have some power and control over. It would be like Uni buying Pixar and Disney keeping theme park rights to it for years and years. Essentially, you get paid a fee, but you really can't do squat with it.
Exactly. I'm sure they wish the Disney deal hadn't happened. But the deal favors them so strongly that Disney's involvement is a relatively small matter in the grand scheme of things.
The only real control they have is over the theme park rights in a limited geographical area. I just can't imagine that is all that important to them especially since from what has been reported Disney can develop new characters and put them at WDW.
What may be the clincher is that they know they can't let go of Spiderman because that attraction is just too important to ticket sales. I think that is what it boils down to.
Well, Disney can try to develop new characters. But they bought Marvel because they were having lousy luck doing so. And Marvel's track record for creating successful new characters outside of the established franchises is abysmal. They really don't have any such character.
It's possible Marvel could create such a character. But it's not what they do. As soon as they have a successful character, they are going to put them on the Avengers to boost sales. That's more important to them than leaving the character out of their shared continuity in order to potentially allow them to be used in a theme park attraction.
If I was the decision maker at Disney on this I would really consider, letting them keep the Spidey character and buy out at the contract on least X-men and Avengers related characters. There is so much they could do with those characters at the studios its ridiculous.
Disney's got a full plate for a while. I can't see them shelling out big money for any Marvel fights when they are already shelling out big money for Avatar. Even after Avatar is done, you would have to think it would make more sense for Disney to develop the properties they already own rather than paying big money to Universal to use the Marvel characters.
Also, if they really want to use Marvel, they can do so in several parks outside of Orlando. No real point buying the Orlando rights. Especially at the prices Universal would surely demand.
Funny how this conversation keeps going on when Disney CAN NOT do anything in Florida with any characters of significance.
Not to mention the fact Iger is having some issues getting along with the folks who run Marvel (gee, if they didn't expect him to interfere they obviously spoke with no one at Pixar before agreeing to become Mouse food!)
Oh, and the only thing that seems to be selling worse than Duffy merchandise at WDW would be Marvel ...
~GFC~
I recently heard that many at Marvel are hoping for more Disney involvement at this point. Marvel hasn't been able to hit their goals lately and have started cutting costs. Lay-offs. Page-rate cuts for pretty much everyone but the writers and pencilers. And people who leave aren't being replaced. A smaller and smaller group of employees is being asked to do the same amount of work for less and less money.
They are hoping (perhaps in vain) that Disney will step in and start treating them more like an R&D group than a comic book publisher. That's basically how WB views DC Comics.
