Financing in Marvel Studios

As Marvel had started as a comic book publisher, they had managed to build up a great profit growth to start converting the popular comic book franchise into TV series and then into cinematic films. According to WikiPedia, Marvel had arranged a seven-year development deal with 20th Century Fox to cover markets in the United States and internationally.

Marvel had help with an initial financing structure from Merrill Lynch Commercial Finance Corporation. Marvel had a contract with Merrill Lynch Commercial Finance Corp to start with $525 million to make a maximum of 10 movies based on 10 different characters from their large collection.

 Marvel had to restructure their company in order to avoid bankruptcy, so they created Marvel Studios due to selling it's TV and Film sister company New World Communications Group. In 1997, bond holders and Marvel's litigation trustees had filed a lawsuit accusing Perelman and other Marvel Board Directors of diverting around $553.5 million from 1993 and 1994. In the lawsuit, it was demanding of $470.8 million worth of damages. The court decided that the proceeds didn't go to Marvel's benefit or Marvel itself. In the end, Perelman offered $80 million which the trustees settled for.

Blade was the first film that Marvel Studios had licensed, which was based on the vampire hunter "Blade". When it was released on the 21st of August 1998, it had grossed $70,087,718 in the United States and Canada, and $131,183,530 worldwide.

After Blade, X-Men had been produced. Released on 14th July 2000, X-Men had grossed $157,299,717 in the US and Canada and a total of $296,250,053 worldwide.

December 31st, 2009, The Walt Disney Company had purchased Marvel Studios’ parent company Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. Current Marvel shareholders would receive $30 and 0.745worth of Disney shares, per share they had of Marvel.

With the instant success of their first lot of movies that had originated from the comic book series, they had started to gain a great profit; therefore making them want to make more.