How to Marvel at Disney

Let’s just say, the peeps over at the Mouse House are no dummies, deciding to acquire Marvel Entertainment for a cool $4 billion. It’s the BIG story of the week, got everyone buzzing on what Disney will do with all those superheroes.

Robert A. Iger, Mouse House prexy and CEO, said this in a statement: “This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories.” Just fancy words for “We got ’em and we’re gonna USE them!”

Personally, I thought Disney was strapped for cash (see my earlier post), but I guess I was wrong. I’m sure this is all positive and the Mouse Nazis won’t interfere too much. They let Pixar do what they want, but then again, every Pixar movie makes a jillion dollars. Fantastic Four, on the other hand, may need a jump start (apparently, 20th Century Fox is going to do just that, according to Variety). Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, Iron Man‘s Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. are thinking about doing an entirely different kind of comic-book adaptation together: Cowboys & Aliens, based on the graphic novel by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley. It’s set in the Old West, where cowboys and Native Americans are at each others throats – that is, until a spaceship crashes, filled with mean aliens and loads of high-tech weaponry, and unites them against this new enemy. They had me at the title.