Last week, Disney made a huge move by acquiring Marvel Entertainment. As even the most casual X-Men fan knows, Marvel Entertainment is responsible for the X-Men franchise, which means that Disney is know the owner of the X-Men, as well as Spiderman, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and many more. Because Marvel Entertainment is such a powerhouse of a company (now more than ever thanks to the ongoing success of all their superhero movies, which are now only successful once, but are also successful throughout the entire series that is released), it cost Disney four billion dollars to buy the company. The irony of Disney buying Marvel is that it occurred literally days after the company celebrated seventy years as a successful independent company.

So, why did Disney make the purchase, and why did Marvel allow it? Well, while Marvel has had a very successful run as an independent company, they aren’t idiots, and given the fact that most analysts considered this to be a generous offer from Disney, it makes sense why they took the deal (even though it did happen at such an ironic time). From Disney’s side, the deal made great sense as well. Not only do they get to harness the creative staff of Marvel, but they also get the rights to over five thousand different Marvel characters. Although some of the characters who have already been in movies have contracts with other large media companies, when you take into account that there are over five thousand Marvel characters and only a tiny portion have made it to the big screen, Disney has a lot of potential to do a lot with these characters.