Marvel is a company that Liu Lang attaches great importance to. This company has been established for more than 30 years. Since the birth of Captain America during World War II, it has become the largest comic company in the United States. Shengtang Company started with Transformers two years ago.
Some people said that Shengtang Company would become the most powerful rival of Marvel and DC in the future, but no one said that two years later, because the two companies no longer seem to be on the same level.
Marvel's market value this year is only 210 million U.S. dollars. Now Shengtang's valuation exceeds 500 million U.S. dollars, more than double that of the other company. In terms of market value alone, Marvel and DC combined are not as valuable as Shengtang.
many.
There's no way around it. Marvel and DC have been doing business in comics for so many years, and there are also a few live-action movies. However, the special effects in the 1970s are simply unbearable. For example, Iron Man is a real person with an iron helmet on his head and straps on his body.
The cardboard box, I was afraid of damaging the "armor" when I moved, and the Hulk, who smeared green paint on a WWE player.
The box office of these two live-action movies was very average, neither exceeding 20 million US dollars in total. Therefore, the business focus of the two companies is still on cartoons and comics, which is destined to fail to expand their development. After all, the current pop culture mainly focuses on cartoons and comics.
Or in terms of songs and movies, how much money can you make selling comic books?
In fact, the comic book market has shrunk a lot in recent years, and Marvel and DC have begun to decline, which also paved the way for Marvel's crisis more than ten years later.
Liu Lang proposed the idea of cooperating with Marvel. How to cooperate? It is to allocate shares to each other. The initial plan is for Shengtang to exchange 2% of the circulating shares with 7% of the other party's circulating shares. This suggestion is in Shengtang.
No one objected, even though many people were a little confused and felt that the styles of Marvel and Shengtang did not match.
It is undeniable that Marvel has so many comic characters, too many to count. Someone has made statistics. In the more than 30 years since Marvel was founded, they have created more than 500 characters, mainly Marvel's characters.
There are many designers, almost more than a hundred designers have worked for Marvel. Even if these people leave Marvel, most of them will work for DC, so many of the images of the two companies are similar.
Naturally, if there are more designers, there will be more characters. No, not just characters, but also many non-human images. There is a problem with many characters, that is, it is difficult to write stories, so Marvel Company came up with the idea
I came up with a bad idea, which was to open up the multiverse, that is, the Marvel universe, and separate these characters. There are dozens of Marvel universes, the most important of which is the 616 universe. Many stories take place in this universe.
There are more universes, and it seems that the stories are richer, but in fact, this is purely a last resort method adopted by Marvel to justify itself. So many universe designs have annoyed many readers. Everyone reads comics to be happy and happy, who likes it?
Reading a book and guessing riddles?
The style of Shengtang's Transformers is completely different from that of Marvel. There is only one main line, the war between the Decepticons and the Autobots, and then it expands outward to the earth, turning into a contest of controversy and evil. Under this theme
New images are constantly appearing, but the protagonist is the Autobot and the human side. There is no doubt. The plot is simple, clear and smooth, which makes people feel very comfortable.
So when Liu Lang proposed cooperating with Marvel, many designers were afraid that the Transformers would be taken astray by Marvel in the future. They didn't want to see a cheating plot like Optimus Prime vs. Captain America.
Of course Liu Lang would not design it like this. Even if Marvel is acquired by Shengtang in the future, the two universes will be independent of each other. For example, in the previous life, Marvel was finally acquired by Disney. Have you ever seen the Seven Dwarfs and the Fantastic Four appear in the same universe?
On screen? Have you seen Snow White and Black Widow "pk" together?
What he values is the huge potential of the Marvel world in film and television in the future. After all, not everyone can compare with the other party's decades of experience. In the ten years from 2008 to 2018, ten Marvel movies have created hundreds of movies.
The US$100 million Marvel Universe has made Disney the world's largest entertainment film and television company in one fell swoop. Marvel's role is irreplaceable. In this life, Disney was tricked by Liu Lang. First he robbed Industrial Light and Magic, and now he wants to rob him again.
Marvel and Disney may not be able to escape the fate of being acquired in the future.
"Mr. Liu, Mr. Stan Lee, one of the founders of Marvel and the chief designer, has some different opinions on this plan. It's not that he doesn't want to cooperate, but he thinks that we can exchange 2% of our shares with them for 7%.
In exchange, Marvel suffered a loss in the transaction, and they hope that both parties will exchange it in equal proportions!"
Lin Guodong replied.
"Equal exchange? Are they crazy? What is the price of our Shengtang's shares? What is the price of Marvel's shares? These old guys are already in the sunset. Do they still think it's the era of Captain America? They are really overestimating their capabilities.
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Lucas was very unhappy, and others nodded frequently. Today is no different than before. More than a year ago, Shengtang's goal was to catch up with Marvel, but now the situation has changed. Marvel is still the original Marvel Animation Company, and now
Shengtang is a giant company with diversified businesses, and the gap will only get wider.
"I talked to Marvel, and the highest they talked about was only four percent, but seven percent seems to be very difficult. These guys are very stubborn!"
Lin Guodong then spoke.
"Four percent... well, this time I'm going to the Nasdaq headquarters anyway, and it's not far from Marvel. I'll pay them a visit on the way!"
Liu Lang knew that Marvel's decline was inevitable. It should be next year that Marvel introduced a new investor in order to reverse the unfavorable situation. An investor named Perelman became the chairman of Marvel.
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This Perelman is a speculator, very good at capital operations, but his methods are different from those of cartoonists.
First, he decided to further stimulate the sales of Marvel comics by including a card in the plastic sleeve of each comic book. If collectors wanted to collect all five cards with different designs, they would have to purchase the same work multiple times.
This routine is so backward. You must know that the classic "Universe Brand Cigarettes" played this routine at China's Spring Festival Gala four years ago.
This routine of focusing only on marketing without paying attention to creation quickly lost its advantage with the popularity of television.
By the early 1990s, the collectible value of comics and cards began to plummet. Between 1993 and 1996, comic sales dropped by 70%, hundreds of comic retailers went bankrupt, and Perelman was also sold out by many Marvel shareholders.
A board meeting was proposed, but the culprit left and the mess is still there, what should I do?
At that time, Marvel was already heavily in debt, and finally filed for bankruptcy as a last resort. Later, in order to preserve the entire company, Marvel reached an agreement with a number of production companies and began to sell off the filming rights of many of its characters. However, at that time, Marvel
The financial situation is difficult and there is no upper hand in negotiations, except for the version
In addition to the rights fee, Marvel could only get 5% of the revenue from each movie released by the other party. In the end, Marvel reluctantly gave up and began to sell off its assets. The character Spider-Man was sold to Sony for US$7 million. Later, Sony
Filmed the first Spider-Man trilogy and earned US$2.5 billion.