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Disney Buys Marvel For $4B
whisper_jeff writes "Disney has announced they will be purchasing Marvel. 'Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today.'"
I doubt that Disney will interfere much with Marvel's comics, I just hope they give Marvel's movie-production division as much autonomy.
All I can say is, if this opens the door for a sequel to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 including all of the famous Disney characters I am all for it. It would be a lot of fun to whoop some Mickey Mouse or Snow White azz with characters from the Marvel roster. You know you want to, just admit it.
Universal uses Marvel trademarks in one of their Theme Park (Universal's Island of Adventure) in Central Florida. Will Universal continue to pay for these Likeness rights when they are to a rival company?
We've finally given up thinking of our own ideas and as soon as existing licensing deals run out we are going to squeeze the Marvel universe for everything we can get out of it, by giving it the "Disney" treatment".
Although... Pixar doing Marvel comics? Could be good.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I'll take Porky, Bugs Bunny and especially Animaniacs over anything from Disney thanks all the same.
Red Leader Standing By!
Marvel has been going downhill for a long time. So much so that I consider this deal to be part of a natural progression. Between poor writing and poor management, I haven't seen anything good from Marvel Comics since the late 90s, or maybe early 00s. Some of their movies have been good, some have been horrid. I know "continuity" is optional at best, but you can only "re-imagine" a plot so many times before it becomes complete drivel.
This deal will ruin Marvel like old mayonnaise ruins a dog crap sandwich.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
I hate Fox and Rupurt Murdoch, but they were the ones to push the envelope with media. It's too bad Fox didn't have the foresight to buy properties like Marvel so that the seriously adult themes in comics can be fully developed.
Best regards.
... But doesn't Universal Pictures own the rights to many Marvel comic book movie properties? How's that going to work?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
These comics came of age in the time of existentialism right after WWII. Many of the original themes, especially for the better comics, were those very adult issues of moral relativism, personal responsibility vis-a-vis society, and other challenges to society.
We can't expect Disney to extend these adult issues in a format that might appeal to younger audiences. Indeed, we can't really expect Disney to even appreciate the history of comics from that era.
Best regards.
Umm. Disney has earned their reputation for bowdlerized drivel; but they are part of the history of that era(some of their wartime propaganda work, especially the pacific theatre stuff, is "interesting"). They've been around since 1923. Any lack of understanding of that period on their part is simply pandering to tastes that don't like very adult issues, not a product of any historical gap.
Disney was around at that time. They've been slaughtering Grimm's Tales since 1923. (Trust me, Grimms Fairy Tales are much better in their original form...)
You just need to realize which modifier is modifying what:
It may look like:
quality (branded content)
But really they mean:
(quality branded) content
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
"Like the toupee on a fading fame
The final whistle in a losing game
Thick lipstick on a five year old girl
It makes you think it's a plastic world
A plastic world and we're all plastic too
Just a couple of different faces in a dead man's queue
The world is turning Disney and there's nothing you can do
You're trying to walk like giants
but you're wearing Pluto's shoes
And the answers fall easier from the barrel of a gun
Than it does from the lips of the beautiful and the dumb
The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun
With Coca Cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun "
Surely this must be a sign of the Apocalypse...?
When Cedar Fair (owners of Cedar Point) bought up the Paramount branded theme parks a few years ago the new company simply rebranded the Paramount movie themed rides. 'Top Gun' became 'Flight Deck', 'The Italian Job' became 'Backlot Stunt Coaster', 'Tomb Raider: The Ride' became 'Time Warp', 'Cliffhanger' became 'Riptide' and 'Drop Zone' became 'Drop Tower'.
It would probably depend on the ride, but even heavily themed rides like Top Gun and Tomb Raider made quick transitions with simply removing the respective logos.
Perhaps Marvel will help Disney with their "anti-two parent home" rage. Disney has always HATED two parent families.
Don't believe me?
Where are Donald's nephews parents?
Ariel's mother?
Goofey's Wife?
Scrooge's Parents?
Mickey's?
Miney's?
That little brat from Tailspin?
Jasmine?
I mean holy crap they hate parents apparently they are either dead or MIA!
Marvel has plenty of Parents, Kids, Grandkids, hell whole genetic lineages running through the ages.
Perhaps, just maybe, Disney will learn from Marvel... we can hope some day for an answer to the anti-parent obsession the Disney corp has...
Stop teh h8 Disney! Stop teh h8! :)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
while the Grimm brothers just penned them down from oral tradition. They didn't do 'original' work either..
I think they're talking about the modern channel and its overall ludicrousness. Any entity is going to change over the course of 20-60 years, leading to different types of material being produced, if they're talking about movies.
Wow. Marvel has sucked at controlling its rights. They fling their lawyers around like idiots with dice. Remember "Marveloution" back when they tried to buy up all the comic book distributors and have their own little "Marvel" stores?
Fail. They were too inept. Bit off more than they could chew. The screwed up the comics industry but good so that it took nearly a decade for everybody to get back on their feet.
Now Disney, on the other hand. . .
They know how to suck the soul out of a property and employ slave labor in China to make toys in a manner only Todd McFarlane could fantasize about! Oh yes indeedy! --The seedy beginnings of Marvel, (Didja know it sprang from the same family publishing um. . , 'empire' from which the classy skin-mag "Hustler" grew? Now you do. You're welcome.), all the way through their never quite taken seriously by 'real' publisher trajectory. . , that's what makes Marvel Marvel.
And that's why Marvel has always felt edgy and honest, (if adolescent and stupid half the time) and all kind of held together with spit and. . , well, staples. It's been run by a long succession of people who don't fit into respectable society and who don't really understand business, --and who had a lot of fun (and a lot of burn-out) as a result. For all its warts, I love Marvel. --While Disney is pretty much an evil entity; It has no character and no soul except the practiced gleaming smile of a charming sociopath. --Hopefully they'll catch whatever Marvel has, get the shakes and die. But I'm not holding my breath on that.
I hope comic shops don't change too much. Comic shops are one of the few paper media outlets which don't feel like they've sold out. (They would have if they could, and heaven knows they've tried, but the truth is, they've never had any capital the rest of the world really wants or understands, and so selling out hasn't been a serious option until these movies started coming out. Until then they had nothing to sell but adolescent power/sex fantasies and the occasional gem tagging along for the ride. If Disney gets its teeth in, do we really think that people like Jeff Smith and Dave Sim could have done their thing?) Hopefully Manga will keep things creepy and weird enough to prevent the grown ups from tidying up.
After all, there's a dark and a light side to everything. Maybe Disney won't screw it up.
Heh. Yeah. . . You gotta have a dream.
-FL
I think we will end up getting another Superman now by Disney/Marvel though instead of WB...
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And those DVD's play where? They are some of the worst part of the Japanese animation that some think of as ubercool. The story lines are still adolescent quality with nothing that drove the revolution into the graphic novels and bleeding edge.
If they had one scintilla of a real Frank Miller, instead of paying a passing homage, then maybe I'd given them respect.
Let me put it plainly, so you can see where you went wrong:
The current crop of anime compared to where comics have gone, is the same as where SyFy is compared to true SF.
It is a pale, cheap, flimsy excuse, with a direct-to-DVD quality that doesn't fulfill the promise of the characters that it rapes for the money.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.