The Spider-Man and his companions of Marvel Entertainment will be part of Walt Disney Company now. Disney announced that will pay US$ 4 billion – being 60% in money and 40% in shares – for the acquisition of Marvel, that has a collection of about 5 thousand characters, among them X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Man of Iron, Wolverine and Thor.

Marvel explored in an aggressive way their more popular characters, with films and consumption products, and has a series of agreements with several. For instance, Twentieth Century Fox will continue with the franchise X-Men, while Sony Pictures Entertainment will maintain the Spider-Man. And Paramount Pictures will continue distributing films of the Iron Man – at least, until that the agreement expires. Therefore, essentially, Disney is operating with three competitive studios.

However, the company thinks it will enjoy an enormous opportunity to increase the characters of Marvel to their other businesses. The characters of Marvel will start to be part of Disney’s thematic parks, while the consumption products will constitute an enormous group, particularly with respect to the international market, in that Marvel has less penetration.

The acquisition is being prepared there are several months, when Disney’s main executive, Robert A. Iger, contacted the main executive of Marvel, Ike Perlmutter. The conversations intensified in the last two weeks, and Disney agreed with one of the main demands of Marvel: that the shares were part of the agreement.

The acquisition happens when Disney, with their great operations of thematic parks and of publicity for television, faces difficulties for the lack of success DVDs, for the weak publicity sales in ABC and for the reduction of the consumers’ expenses in the thematic parks. In the third quarter finished on June 27, the profit of the company had fall 26%.

Via: Sacramento Business Journal.