So What’s Next?
With the Disney/Marvel buyout announced today, what’s in store for your favorite Marvel properties? Well, according to Disney, nothing initially. They have announced that for the time being the licensing agreements that are in place will stay until contractual agreements are met and/or the relationship(s) come(s) to a natural end, but moving Marvel development in house at Disney is a possibility in the future.
Marvel movie properties like Spider-man, X-Men, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk , and Fantastic Four have proven to be very lucrative for Marvel as have Video Game licenses to Activision (Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Spider-man), Sega (Iron Man), and Capcom (Marvel Vs. Capcom). Once these movie and video game deals are over where do these go?
Can we expect Marvel Vs Disney, or Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 developed by the team behind the Hannah Montana games? Maybe Zach Efron will play Captain America, or will we finally see a Donald Duck/Punisher Crossover. Are they going to move all of the Marvel based cartoons to the Disney Channel and have them air after The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
I don’t see Disney changing the way Marvel publishes its comics, since Marvel is pretty much the expert in that area, but the other media outlets that have been so good to fans in the past decade are where the risk stands.