| The Walt Disney Company is one of the largest show business corporations in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923 by Walt and Roy Disney as a small animation studio and now regarded as one of the biggest Hollywood studios, owner of 11 thematic parks and two aqua-parks and also several television networks, which include the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).
The headquarters of the Walt Disney Company and main production facilities are concentrated in Walt Disney Studios, Burbank City, in the State of California, USA.
The Walt Disney Company is part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Market capitalization as of November 20, 2006 was about 69 Billion USD.
History:
The Walt Disney Company was formed on October 16, 1923 by Walt & Roy Disney, brothers, as a small animation studio.
Divisions:
Entertainment Division:
Until 1955 the original and only business of the Walt Disney Company was film making. The division is also known as Walt Disney Studios, which includes film and animation Disney studios, sound recording labels and a series of Broadway theatrical presentations. Since 2002, this division is headed by Dick Cook.
Film-making:
Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group is a group of primary Walt Disney film studios, which includes:
Walt Disney Pictures
Touchstone Pictures (not under the “Disney” brand);
Hollywood Pictures (not under the “Disney” brand);
Miramax Films (not under the “Disney” brand);
Sound recording labels:
Buena Vista Music Group;
Walt Disney Records;
Mammoth Records;
Lyric Street Records;
Hollywood Records;
Theatres:
Walt Disney Theatrical;
Hyperion Theatrical (not under the “Disney” brand);
Animation:
Walt Disney Feature Animation;
Walt Disney Television Animation;
DisneyToon Studios;
Pixar Animation Studios
Parks and resorts:
Besides the theme parks (“Disneyland”) and resorts, given divisions include Disney Regional Entertainment (under which fall a chain of ESPN Zone sports restaurants), Walt Disney Imagineering and Walt Disney Creative Entertainment.
Television networks:
Walt Disney Television;
Touchstone Television;
ABC Entertainment;
ABC Television Network;
Buena Vista Television;
ESPN;
SOAPnet;
Lifetime
The Walt Disney Company possesses a number of cable television networks including The Disney Channel, ABC Family, Toon Disney, a network of channels on ESPN and SOAPnet. Disney is a substantial shareholder in Lifetime Television (50%), A&E Network (37.5%), E! (40 %) and in Jetix Europe N.V. (100 %).
Disney supervises 10 local television stations, 26 local radio stations and also ESPN Radio and Radio Disney through the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Buena Vista Television broadcasts television shows such as “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, “Live with Regis and Kelly” and “Ebert and Roeper”.
Disney owns the publishing company Hyperion and also the Internet division Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG) and web sites such as Go.com, Disney.com, ESPN.com, ABCNews.com and Movies.com belong to WDIG.
In 2009, an agreement was reached for 4 billion USD, according to which Disney became owner of the Marvel Entertainment Corporation, which publishes a popular comic series. 5000 characters shall become the property of Disney including Spiderman and Iron Man, which are popular amongst the youth.
Consumer goods:
Disney Publishing Worldwide;
Disney Store;
Jim Henson's Muppets;
Buena Vista Games
Activity parameters:
Turnover in the financial year, which ended on September 30, 2006 constituted $34.3 Billion (the year before - $31.9 Billion), net profit - $3.4 Billion ($2.5 Billion).
Marvel Comics is an American company, publishing comics and its subsidiary is Marvel Entertainment. Having received the nickname “House of ideas” amongst the admirers of comics, Marvel is very famous for comic series such as the “ Fantastic Four”, “Spider-Man”, “Hulk”, “Iron Man”, “DareDevil”, “SHOCK”, “Thor”, “Captain America” and “X-Men”. The majority of the comic characters of Marvel live in one fictitious Universe, which was named the Marvel Universe.
From 1960 Marvel Comics is one of the two largest American companies publishing comics on the same level as “DC Comics” (whose most popular characters are “Superman” and “Batman”).
The company is based in New York.
In August 2009, news spread that “The Walt Disney Company” is interested in buying Marvel for 4 Billion USD. Permission from the US Antimonopoly Committee is only awaited for the conclusion of agreement.
The company “Marvel Comics” was founded by the competent publisher of Pulp-magazines Martin Goodman in 1939 as a group of associated companies under the common name “Timely Comics”. The first publication was Marvel Comics #1 (October 1939), in which for the first time appeared the Human –Torch android superhero, created by Carl Burgo and it also had the antihero-mutant Namor the Sub Mariner, created by Bill Everett. The comics were super hit, though the company did not have enough financial resources to satisfy the demand and “Timely Comics” had to pump-in the resources from the outside company “Funnies Inc”.
The first editor of the company, writer and artist Joe Simon joined forces with future comics industry-legend Jack Kirby to create the first patriotic superhero, Captain America, who debuted in the Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941). In terms of sales, the Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) was also a super hit.
Though other characters of Timely were not as popular as these “Big Three”, some appreciable heroes of that time were Whizzer, Miss America and Destroyer. The original Vision and Angel continue to appear in modern comics. |
The Mouse bought Spiderman, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and the X-Men... On August 31st Walt Disney announced it was buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, just days after the comic-book publisher had celebrated 70 glorious years of independence, during which it had created many of the most famous cartoon characters not invented by Disney itself. Disney will get access both to Marvel's creative minds and potentially far more valuable in an age when familiar stories rule the box office - an archive containing around 5,000 established characters, only a fraction of which have yet made the move from paper to the silver screen.
