Disney buy Marvel for $4 billion

Huge multi-national corporation spends ridiculous amount of money on another huge multi-national company. What this means for your weekend, after the jump.

Now this is A Big Deal. Marvel Entertainment, the last bastion of hope for comic-book geeks everywhere and home to characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men and Armless Tiger Man, have been bought by Disney. The Mouse House forked out somewhere in the region of 4 billion dollars in a shares and cash deal and now own the rights to the entirety of the Marvel canon.

Holy shit. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure you could buy France with that kind of dough.

Speaking purely in cinematic terms, Marvel Studios have been one of the biggest success stories in recent years, going solo without studio help and funding hugely popular movies like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. But with Disney pulling the strings, Marvel's release strategy will inevitably come under close scrutiny - even closer than it already does.

First, the good. Disney, believe it or not, know a thing or two about making money. They'll have seen Iron Man's half-a-billion worldwide gross and figured, "Hell, we want some more of that." All the right movies will continue to be made with all the right talent on board - if anything, the Disney dollar may coax some extra wattage cast-wards. Lord knows it will probably lead to the end of pay disputes like that of Terrence Howard.

Also, the crossover potential is absolutely huge. It's worth remembering Disney also own Pixar - what price an Incredibles sequel featuring a few famous faces?

Now, the bad. Disney are like one of those annoying neighbours who repeat the mantra, "The children are our future" because it's all they have to cling on to. And, like the creepy guy who lives down the road, they love children a little too much. They don't want to hurt them, they just want to cuddle them. Shhhh. It'll be our little secret.

What this will likely mean is that you can forget 'edgy' storylines like Iron Man's 'Demon In A Bottle' and kiss goodbye to failed R-rated experiments like Punisher: War Zone (no big loss). Just when The Dark Knight came along and showed Phillip J. Cinephile that comic-book movies didn't have to be camp and crappy, the biggest and brightest comic-book guys in the business sell out to Mickey fuckin' Mouse.

In short, then: Zac Efron will almost definitely be playing a superhero in the next few years.