Hang on to your hats, true believers... Disney to acquire Marvel Entertainment.

As reported at Tech Crunch, Disney is acquiring Marvel for approximately 4 billion dollars in cash and stock...

"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."

"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."

That last part there is a bunch of corporate gibberish that translates to "we will rape this entity until every nickel has been actualized."

It could be easily argued that a Disney spin could destroy established Marvel franchises in multiple mediums. The more likely scenario, at least in the short term, is that the talent from Marvel is still going to be in place. Not unlike Pixar, I am sure that this deal included security for a large number of the creative people that made these franchises what they are today. Over time, of course, as they go on to other things, you will likely see some truly frightening developments, such as crossovers...

I got you now, Spiderman! HA HA!