(AP Photo/Marvel Entertainment Inc.)
Moviegoers have shown a willingness to be entangled by Spider-Man’s web over and over again. Now, as Disney prepares to buy the comic-book powerhouse Marvel, it faces the question of whether fans will also get attached to characters as obscure as Ant-Man and Iron Fist.
The Walt Disney Co. is making a $4.2 billion bet that they will as it nears completion of its acquisition of Marvel Entertainment Inc. this week. The cash-and-stock deal brings those characters and thousands of others to an entertainment empire that already includes Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog and Hannah Montana.
Disney’s biggest challenge will be to get enough people enthused about second-string superheroes to justify the price _ about $1.2 billion, or 40 percent, more than what Marvel’s stock was worth when the deal was announced Aug. 31.
The high price means Disney will have to find new ways to earn revenue from Marvel _ perhaps by bringing Marvel-licensed toys to more store shelves around the world, and by digging deep into its comic vault for potential new blockbusters.
Although Disney is constrained by the fact that big-name Marvel superheroes such as Spider-Man are already locked up in long-term deals with rival movie studios, Disney has had a history of successfully turning unknown talent such as Miley Cyrus, the actress behind “Hannah Montana,” into multibillion-dollar enterprises.
“With Marvel, it’s not just about `Iron Man’ and `Hulk,'” Caris & Co. analyst David Miller said. “It’s all about the other 5,000 characters that you and I don’t even know about yet.”
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