Disney Targeting the Rest of the Marvel Kingdom
Posted 10.20.10 by Ryan
Disney made a surprising and calculated move last year by acquiring Marvel Entertainment for a cool 4 billion dollars. Marvel scored huge hits with Iron Man and Iron Man 2. WithThor, Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers on the horizon, Disney stepped in on Marvel's wide array of characters and storylines. However, the House of Mouse isn't satisfied that they don't have the movie rights to every Marvel character.
IESB reports that Disney is looking into how they can wrestle four Marvel franchises from the rival studios of Twentieth Century Fox and Sony Pictures. Fox owns the rights to Daredevil, Fantastic Four and the X-Men movies, while Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man. Daredevil is already getting a reboot, and The Fantastic Four has a reboot in the works as well. Sony has a Spider-Man reboot that is set to start production at the end of the year, while Fox also has two X-Men movies in the works: X-Men: First Class is currently shooting, and Wolverine 2 is looking at a March start date.
The IESB reports claims that the agreements with Fox and Sony are sound, and as long as both studios continue to develop movies for the character they own the rights too, there's likely little that Disney can do about it.
"In October 1993, Marvel and Fox signed an agreement (the "1993 Agreement") pursuant to which Marvel licensed to Fox all the rights that Fox may require in order to produce, distribute, exploit, advertise, promote, and publicize theatrical motion pictures based on the X-Men comic book series.
So what about Sony's Spider-Man franchise? Same thing as the Fox deal, the contracts protect the studio 100% but they do have to continue to make movies with the Marvel characters on a regular basis."
The report goes on to state that Fox has previously told the site that they "own the rights to their Marvel properties for perpetuity," leaving Disney in a grim situation. Still, never count out the power of the Mouse.