I grew up on the Muppet Show – a racy, double entendre fest rife with creativity, edge and cunning that strongly informed and influenced my formative mind. Then Disney bought it and when I went to the Muppets show at EPCOT center in Florida I saw a cleaned up, white-washed version that had none of the snags or trickery that had provided me with skepticism, cultural awareness or linguistic sleight of hand with which I had grown up.
Now the monster Mouse Corp is set to take over Marvel Comics – and seeing as I worked as an actor in the very edgy and first Marvel Knights title Punisher: War Zone, I can only wonder what the PTA mop that is Disney will do to the comics company.
Disney is set to takeover Marvel Comics for a mere 4 Billion US dollars (also reported on CNN). Pocket change, for the Mouse House. I can hear the Comiconistas screaming already.
Another hoax? Methinks not.
Don’t get me wrong – I certainly patronize Disney’s marketplace, but sometimes diversity is the key to a beautiful and small world. After all…
special thanks to Adam Fimio for the heads up on this.
7 responses to “First The Muppets, Now Disney To Buy Marvel Comics”
Can’t wait to hear what the Global Punisher Army has to say about this one.
Posting what I’ve already posted on my FB page:
It’s hard to say if they’re going to water down the comics or not. Disney has gone into deals with other companies promising to leave their grubby mouse-mitts off the handling of content. They’ve brought the films of Miyazaki over to North America, and the adaptations have been faithful to the original. But that’s a distribution thing. In this case, they now own Marvel outright. I really don’t know at this point. Wolverine’s claws replaced with sporks?
You know Disney did make the Pirate of the Caribbean films, which at times were pretty dark (I mean the third one had a child getting hanged), so I doubt anything will be compromised or watered down with the Marvel films. Marvel Studios never really had the intention of making movies beyond a PG-13 rating anyway.
But, Disney does own Miramax, so if Marvel was to be so inclined as to do R rated films for lesser known characters, they got a studio right there. Though because Punisher: War Zone bombed so horribly, it basically killed the character for the foreseeable future film wise and this whole Disney/Marvel thing wouldn’t have affected it anyway.
PWZ may have bombed but the idea of Marvel Knights stories being made was of great interest to fans, that is more the concern, not so much that Punisher won’t be greenlit again for a long while. Thanks for commenting!
I can’t help but scream “This is major league bullshit.” Looks like I’ll have to fear for an apocalypse after Stallone’s Expendables is released (provided it doesn’t become PG-13). BTW, War Zone was my favorite Punisher movie and it pretty much jump-started my interest in Ennis’s MAX run. Hell, I’ll even go on record saying that I preferred this movie over the mainstream Marvel movies. You, Lexi, Ray, and crew really made a special movie despite whatever hell the production went through.
I appreciate that Dibol. I grew up on Punisher comics but have to admit that until I was fortunate enough to be invited to PWZ cast I had lost touch with my comic collecting and thus had not see the new MAX series – and wow it was a whole other level. I mean, they were using some REALLY strong language haha.
At any rate, once I got up to speed on the way things were being done I understand exactly what Lexi and the gang were doing.
The thing that most upsets me about this takeover by Disney is not ultimately whether or not they will ever be able to make something like PWZ again, but that Marvel itself will become gentrified the way that Disney did with Jim Henson’s brilliantly creative world.
It will undoubtedly engender even more homogeneity due to the fact that, at best, its all coming more and more from the same place. I created this blog three years ago to promote diversity in our culture, to keep things from becoming sanitized, and institutionally sanctioned and only “when approved by”. This deal is a nail in the coffin for that aim.
That seems like jumping the gun, I don’t think it’ll stifle Marvel’s creativity. The worst that may come out of this is Disney may only want to release one or two Marvel films a year instead instead of Marvel Studios’ original of three to four. For all we know Disney is gonna let Marvel keep doing things how they have been doing them.
One of the great things to actually come out of this is the prospect of the folks over at Pixar doing a Marvel film, which is just a flat out awesome. Regarding the Marvel Knights line of films, I’m hard pressed to think of another character besides the Punisher that would benefit from an R rated treatment, as much as the fanboys want it not every comic story needs to be grim and gritty. And again like mentioned Disney owns Miramax which released a lot Tarantino’s films, There Will Be Blood, no Country for Old Men, Bad Santa. So the option for Marvel to put out Marvel Knights films is still viable.
Back to the Punisher, even if PWZ did good at the box office and Marvel got the rights back from Lionsgate somehow, I’m in the minority in thinking that a PG-13 Punisher film could work, you would just have to rely on characters/dialogue and amp up the intensity and not solely rely on the gore (which, sorry to say is exactly the problem PWZ had).