Breaking News: Disney Acquires Marvel

From the official press release now making the rounds:

Worldwide leader in family entertainment agrees to acquire Marvel and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters. Acquisition highlights Disney’s strategic focus on quality branded content, technological innovation and international expansion to build long-term shareholder value

Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company (DIS) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (MVL) in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today.

Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on August 28, 2009, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own. At closing, the amount of cash and stock will be adjusted if necessary so that the total value of the Disney stock issued as merger consideration based on its trading value at that time is not less than 40% of the total merger consideration.

Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

“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,” said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”

“We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,” Iger said.

“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney’s global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel’s properties.

The Boards of Directors of Disney and Marvel have each approved the transaction, which is subject to clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, certain non-United States merger control regulations, effectiveness of a registration statement with respect to Disney shares issued in the transaction and other customary closing conditions. The agreement will require the approval of Marvel shareholders. Marvel was advised on the transaction by BofA Merrill Lynch.

Laura Martin signs exclusive with Marvel

The Dollar Bin’s favorite colorist Laura Martin had some big news announced at the San Diego Comic-Con; she has signed an exclusive deal with Marvel Comics. And with her outstanding work on Marvel titles like The Stand, Astonishing X-Men and Thor, it is no wonder the folks at Marvel wanted to keep this member of Gaijin Studios exclusive to them.

From Vaneta Rogers’ article at Newsarama:

“Any publisher would kill to have her exclusive. Every penciler in the industry wants to work with her,” said Marvel talent liaison C.B. Cebulski. “Seriously. We were just lucky enough that Laura wanted to make Marvel her home. We’ve developed a great working relationship over the years and the Marvel artists that work with her wouldn’t want anyone else coloring them, so formalizing our working relationhsip on an exclusive level was just the natural next step. Everyone’s thrilled about having her as the newest member of the ever-expanding Marvel family!”

You can read more of the feature by Vaneta here and coverage of the Marvelous Women of Marvel panel featuring Laura and many others here.

Iron Man 2 News from SDCC

The first Iron Man film made a huge impact at the San Diego Comic Con in 2007. With the high anticipated sequel set to be released on May 7th, Marvel Studios hoped for a repeat performance at this year’s show. By all accounts from Saturday’s panel, it seems like the Iron Man 2 hype machine is firing on full repulsor power.

Speaking of those accounts here are a bevy of links for you to check-out for all of your relevant Iron Man 2 news from the San Diego Comic Con.

Super Hero Hype! has written coverage of the Iron Man 2 panel and awesome audio interviews from Jon Favreau, Kevin Feige, Sam Rockwell, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr. Plus a gallery of pictures from the press releases for the film and a bunch of pics of various things from SDCC.

At Newsarama they talk to Matt Fraction about writing the Iron Man 2 video game, and they also have detailed coverage of the Q&A session. Wired has similar panel coverage and some great pics from the Iron Man displays at the convention.

If you don’t want to just read about the panel, Ropes of Silicon has video of the Q&A portion as well as a pretty detailed breakdown of the footage shown from the movie.

The official site for the film has also been (slightly) updated.

Marvel's Big Captain America Announcement

More than 2 years after his death, Marvel is bringing back Steve Rogers as “the” Captain America. On July 1st, a five part mini-series titled Captain America Reborn will finally reveal the Red Skull’s master plan that has been an ongoing story in the Ed Brubaker written Captain America title and will also begin Steve Roger’s return to the Marvel Universe.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 trailer

Originally the only peek fans were given of this game is that it would be subtitled ‘Fusion” and feature heroes being able to combine their special abilities for powerful combined attacks. While that might turn out to be an interesting piece of game play, fans were more interested in what storyline the game might have. It would seem with this trailer released at the NYCC that we now have information on the story the game will follow. That storyline? Marvel’s recent “Civil War”…take a look at the newest trailer for MUA2 below.