A “Marvel-ous” Acquisiton

In 2009, Disney announced that it would buy Marvel Entertainment for a price of $4 billion. In this example of horizontal integration, Disney gained the rights to the Marvel movie studio and all 5,000 characters including Spider-man, Thor, Iron Man, X-men and the fantastic four. When the deal was made, Disney CEO Robert Iger was quoted saying ““Marvel’s brand and its treasure trove of content will now benefit from our extraordinary reach.” Clearly, Disney was not only looking to capitalize on the film power of the movie studio, but also the powerful marketing that goes behind it. While Disney had previously done a fantastic job of appealing to girls with it’s princess themed films, they were sorely lacking in their marketing efforts to boys. This deal and it’s huge cast of super heroes remedied that problem fairly easily. Another benefit of this deal was that it gave Disney much needed partnerships with other motion picture studios such as “Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment and 20th Century Fox, all of which have long-term deals to make or distribute movies based on superhero characters.” So as one can see, this “Marvel-ous” merger was a win on many fronts.

This video is a CNBC news clip is from 2009 where CEO Robert Iger is interviewed and discusses the intentions behind the Marvel deal.