george johnson

Okay... now where, does this legally sit, on the release of the
Champions ONLINE game?

Even worse. Will they "Kid-Friendly" alter the Marvel Comics and Marvel
Movies to be (yech) "Suitable for ages 8 and younger"?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/31...for-4-billion/

Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment For $4 Billion
by Robin Wauters on August 31, 2009
148 Comments

The Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment in a
stock and cash transaction, the companies announced this morning. Under the
terms of the agreement and based on last week's closing price of Disney,
Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus
approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own.
Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the total
transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

Under the deal, which has been approved by the boards of both companies,
Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its portfolio of over
5,000 Marvel characters. That portfolio includes many familiar names like
Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor.

Says Disney CEO Robert A. Iger in a statement: "We believe that adding
Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant
opportunities for long-term growth and value creation."

Ike Perlmutter, Marvel's CEO, added: "Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's
fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content
creation and licensing businesses. 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."

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.
Marvel stock is surging following the news, up 10+ points at the time of
writing (+27%), while Disney's is down a little (-0,5%).

coinspin

<snip>

No effect on Champions whatsoever... You might recall that originally
it was Cryptic, Marvel (and I believe Microsoft?) developing Marvel
Online, only to have it fall apart. Then Cryptic took their work,
licensed the Champions IP (an old Pen & Paper RPG owned by Hero Games),
and continued their work. No more Marvel influence, in fact I think it
was Marvel that pulled out of the partnership? (going by memory, too
lazy to look it up

And your fears about kid-friendly mirror my own first reaction to the
news today... Disney is a bit more modern these days, they've got some
offshoots that do more hard edged movies, so maybe Marvel will just
become a studio/affiliation and continue to operate as it always has.
Disney would be absolute idiots to try to change a recipe that has been
working for all this time.

--
~ CoinSpin