Chapter 456 Target: Marvel

Like MGM, Marvel has had its moments of glory, otherwise it would not have become one of the symbols of American culture.

Marvel Comics was founded in 1939. In October of that year, the first comic was launched on the market and its first superhero, Aquaman Namor, was created.

Captain America, launched in March 1941, once again caused a sensation. When it first appeared, it sold 1 million copies of the comic.

Since then, Marvel has successively launched superheroes such as the Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, and Iron Man.

The fate of Marvel has also been as ups and downs as its heroes. After a series of accidents such as World War II, Marvel has changed hands many times——

In 1986, Marvel was sold to New World Pictures by parent company Cadence Industries; three years later, it was sold to MacAndrews \u0026 Forbes Holdings...

In 1994, Andrews Grou and ME reorganized Marvel into Marvel Holdings; in 1996, Marvel was involved in a power struggle between Carl Icahn and Perelman.

On December 27 of that year, Marvel officially declared bankruptcy, and later got out of bankruptcy with the help of many parties.

The comics industry as a whole was in decline at the time, and Marvel was in financial crisis.

In order to tide over the crisis, Marvel decided to sell the rights to film superhero movies.

For example, Fox obtained the X-Men license and launched the movie X-Men in 2000; Sony obtained the Spider-Man license and launched the movie Spider-Man in 2002.

In 1999, Marvel sold the movie rights to "Spider-Man" to Sony for US$7 million. The latter made a huge profit of US$1.6 billion through the first two movies of "Spider-Man", but the share given to Marvel was Only $75 million.

In 2005, Marvel's licensing business has become the largest revenue business. The licensing revenue in 2005 was US$230 million, accounting for nearly 60% of the total revenue that year.

Seeing that the major movie studios are making a lot of money through their own IP, Marvel, which owns a huge amount of IP, is naturally not willing to give in.

Just last year, Marvel established a film company, and then used the copyrights of some characters as collateral to borrow $225 million from Merrill Lynch to prepare their own superhero movies. The first movie they chose was " iron Man".

Marvel's decision can be said to be a desperate one.

Barron naturally knew that Marvel's gamble was finally successful. In his previous life, "Iron Man", released in 2008, earned $585 million at the global box office and helped Marvel get out of trouble.

Marvel has made a total of three "Iron Man" movies, with a total global box office of US$2.38 billion. The DVDs of the three movies have sold a total of more than 17 million copies and earned US$300 million, making it one of the most profitable movie series in the world. .

In 2009, Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment for US$4.24 billion in cash and stock. Then under Disney's leadership, Marvel gradually began to take back the copyrights of superhero movies scattered everywhere, and Marvel became a part of Disney. A money-making machine: movies, animations, toys, games, and amusement parks continue to develop in an industry chain.

If you want to invest in Marvel, naturally you can't add icing on the cake. If you wait until they succeed before joining, then the conditions will naturally be higher.

We still need to provide help in times of crisis. Just like now, Marvel needs to mortgage the copyrights of its characters to get loans to make movies. So if someone is willing to provide them with funds, it will definitely be a dream.

This time, Annika Dawson, CEO of Blue Valley Capital, proposed a wholly-owned acquisition agreement to Marvel. Therefore, the negotiations have lasted for nearly two months, mainly focusing on the acquisition price and post-acquisition impact on Marvel. We will discuss some specific terms with Marvel's management and shareholders regarding support and other aspects.

Initially, Blue Valley Capital proposed to acquire Marvel at an all-cash price of US$1.5 billion. After all, Marvel was not in a good situation at this time. The company almost entirely relied on selling superhero licenses to survive. , as for comics... In this era, how many people still read comics?

Moreover, this time the copyrights of many characters were mortgaged and a large loan was obtained to film movies, which also put great pressure on Marvel, especially its management and shareholders.

In fact, the loan they borrowed from Merrill Lynch was a full US$525 million - with 10 characters including Thor, Captain America, Nick Fury, and Hawkeye as collateral. If they did not repay the loan when it was due, then Merrill Lynch will have these roles immediately.

In this last-ditch battle, the reason why Marvel Studios borrowed so much money is to prepare to shoot many movies including "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk".

There are many objections to their decision among Marvel's shareholders. After all, although Marvel can only rely on licensing to maintain the company's operations, it is at least slightly stable. But if such a big bet is made, , if it fails in the end, I am afraid that what awaits Marvel will be another bankruptcy.

After all, many superhero movies had failed miserably before this, and neither "Iron Man" nor "The Hulk" were as well-known as Spider-Man and the X-Men.

Therefore, there are still many shareholders who are willing to avoid risks and sell their stocks to the "takeover man" Blue Valley Capital. For them, all they need is an appropriate price.

However, for Marvel management at this time, since they can mortgage character copyrights and borrow more than 500 million to independently shoot superhero movies, they still hope to take a gamble.

To convince them to sell Marvel to Blue Valley Capital, they must work hard to support Marvel after the acquisition.

So most of the time, Annika Dawson still needs to convince them.

She determined that the support that Blue Valley Capital could give them after acquiring Marvel could be stipulated in the form of an agreement, including the provision of funds and other resources.

In addition, Annika Dawson also found Avi Arad, an important figure in Marvel at this time, and Kevin Feige, the CEO of Marvel Studios who was discovered by him. She promised that Blue Valley Capital will strongly support their "Marvel Universe" concept and help them realize this grand vision.

In fact, these two people are the main promoters of Marvel Studios' movie plans, so after back-and-forth negotiations, Blue Valley Capital finally made some concessions and agreed to an all-cash deal of US$1.7 billion. In the form of acquisition of Marvel Entertainment (Marvel Entertainment, which owns Marvel Studios, Marvel Games, Marvel TV, etc.), and will later inject US$300 million into Marvel Entertainment to support their subsequent development.

In addition, for the future development of Marvel, there are many more detailed provisions in this acquisition agreement. In a word, if you need money, give money, and if you need resources, find a way to give resources.

After receiving such a promise, everyone was finally happy, and the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment began to be made public.