Investorial

Did you hear this? In an effort to build an in house production studio for movies based on its comic book characters, Marvel essentially mortgaged 10 of its comic intellectual property for a revolving credit line of $525 Million dollars. In return, the financier Merrill Lynch Commercial Finance Corp secured film rights to 10 Marvel characters.

Marvel was tired of sharing profit with other companies. They collaborated with Sony, in a sour deal turned lawsuit, during the “Spider-man” series. The financing deal worked out very well for Marvel. I guess nobody at Merrill Lynch is a comic book fan. Just take a look at the list of Marvel characters involved.

The only characters that have commercial viability are Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Cloak & Dagger and Dr. Strange. The others are merely fillers for the agreement and will most likely never see one day of movie production. Why would anybody care about Shang-Chi?

Marvel has to get high marks for pulling off a creative financing deal with the help of sub par characters. Or is it that Merrill Lynch was simply operating in unfamiliar territory?

For more details of the financing arrangement, read this article.

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