The Ride of a Lifetime - Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10: MARVEL AND MASSIVE RISKS THAT MAKE PERFECT SENSE 

Iger along with his business executives decided that it is a good idea to acquire more companies, even after Pixar. Therefore, they, at first, concentrated on companies that can provide excellent intellectual property rights. Their list was narrowed down to two companies: Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm. (Lucasfilm will be discussed in the next Chapter)

This happened three years after the Pixar acquisition and the CEO, Bob Iger, decided that it was essential to keep operating ambitiously and take advantage of their momentum as well as increasing their portfolio of branded storytelling. 

One key question that Bob Iger would always ask prior to an acquisition of another company was: “Would we possibly destroy some of their value by acquiring them?” It was pivotal for him to ensure that the brands could be run respectfully and separately and to operate side by side without one being negatively affected by the other and vice-versa.

Correspondingly, Disney acquired Marvel and due to its great success, Iger, then, shares an important principle for Human Resource (HR) managers: “Surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do. You can’t always predict who will have ethical lapses or reveal a side of themselves you never suspected was there. In the worst cases, you will have to deal with acts that reflect badly on the company and demand censure. That’s an unavoidable part of the job, but you have to demand honesty and integrity from everyone, and when there’s a lapse you have to deal with it immediately.” 

Subsequently, Iger provides an inspiring story on the idea of creative the movie Black Panther, which was done by Marvel. People would always say to him that “black casts, or with black leads, will struggle in many international markets.” Iger believes that “That assumption has limited the number of black-led films being produced, and black actors being cast, and many of those that have been made had reduced budgets to mitigate the box-office risk.” Nevertheless, Iger very rightly emphasises that: “I’ve been in the business long enough to have heard every old argument in the book, and I’ve learned that old arguments are just that: old, and out of step with where the world is and where it should be. We had a chance to make a great movie and to showcase an underrepresented segment of America, and those goals were not mutually exclusive. I called Ike and told him to tell his team to stop putting up roadblocks and ordered that we put both Black Panther and Captain Marvel [which would also include the Black Panther] into production.”

At the time of the author writing this book, “Black Panther is the fourth-highest-grossing superhero film of all time, and Captain Marvel the tenth. Both have earned well over $1 billion.”