Marvel: here is the only condition for Disney to recover the rights to Hulk and Namor

Last month, we revealed to you; that the takeover of Fox by Disney was a very bad idea according to this recent report, which suggested to us that at the time In the long term, the strategy of the firm with the big ears concerning the Fox catalog could be unfavorable to it. And even more recently, a financial analyst on Wall Street suggested that Disney could make this decisionmajor compared to; its establishment in the streaming sector, with the aim of focusing on one of its flagship franchises, àgrave; know Marvel.

hulu vs marvel?

As a reminder, it was in 2019 that Disney finalized; the acquisition of 21st Century Fox, with a takeover which then amounted to $71.3 billion. In doing so, Disney got their hands on the Fox catalog, allowing it to have to; its disposal of many cult licenses. But that's not all, since thanks to this operation,the American giant has also become the majority shareholder of Hulu, the streaming platform.

À note however that Disney had already started his foray into this sector a decade ago. Indeed, the company joined Comcast and Fox as a Hulu stakeholder in 2009, i.e. two years after the creation of the platform. Its objective was to be able to distribute the content of its ABC, ESPN and Discovery Channel channels, and had therefore joined the project by holding 30% of the shares of the streaming service. But thanks to the acquisition of Fox in 2019, Disney is now in possession of 67% of the shares of Hulu, thus becoming the majority.

However, some suggest that Mickey's company could abandon the streaming platform, in order to get their hands on the rights to certain characters from the Marvel universe. Indeed, as reported by The Wrap earlier in the month, Jason Bazinet, an analyst from Citibank (or Citi) had suggested that Disney might be willing to give Hulu away in exchange for the rights to two Marvel superheroes, to Hulu. namely Hulk and Namor. It stated this:

While Disney owns all of the property intellectual property of Marvel, Universal [which is owned by Comcast] owns the rights to distribute Hulk and Namor. So if Disney makes a Hulk or Namor movie, Comcast can distribute it on Peacock. If Hulu is sold, Disney could take advantage of this opportunity. to secure these distribution rights.

But in reality, it is far from being as simple as that. Indeed, under an agreement reached in 2019, Disney can buy out Comcast's remaining stake in Hulu as early as January 2024. this, Comcast may also require Disney to buy it out. That's why Bazinet believes that instead of completely acquiring the streaming platform, Disney could try to divest itself of its stake in the company, in exchange for the rights to Hulk and Namor.

And if Disney has not indicated whether or not he intended to acquire the distribution rights to these characters, this hypothesis could potentially make sense if we trust the recent declarations of Bob Iger, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company. &Acute; that the leader had recently announced; certain drastic measures following the the massive loss of subscribers, not sure that the company is ready to pay minimum 9 billion dollars, which corresponds to; the estimated minimum value from Comcast in Hulu.

Yet as reminded < em>The Verge, Iger himself had acknowledged that Hulu was a “solid platform” and “very attractive” for advertisers. It stated this:

He has already been proven that Hulu had value for [advertisers], and advertising; has proven that it was valuable to us. But the environment is very, very complicated; right now, and before making big decisions about our level of investment, our commitment to this sector, we want to understand where we are going. it could be fine.

On his side,Comcast executive Mike Cavanagh also said; that he remained open to other proposals, thus suggesting that if a more interesting offer than Disney were to come along, present himself by then, he would be ready to dissolve the agreement he currently has with the big-eared firm. And given the deadline set for January 2024, there are a lot of bet that this subject will be talked about again in the months to come. come.

And to find out how Bob Iger intends to remedy Disneyland price hike, see our previous article on the subject, right here.