In 1940, American publisher Martin Goodman discovered a novelty of comic books.

At the suggestion of his friend Frank Tope, he founded Times Comics, published his first comic magazine, Marvel Magazine, and dug up his first gold mine in the comics industry.

Martin Goodman is a very pure businessman, and he only cares about two things: the early market trends and later sales volumes of comics.

He hopes that his painters and writers can keep up with the trend and create a large amount of content. If a new character or title is sold, it will be left behind and will be abandoned.

Under his leadership, Times Comics Company is like a high-speed machine, creating more than 7,000 well-known comic heroes in ten years.

This number is 6 times that of Times Comics' old rival DC Comics.

But the good times did not last long. After the 1950s, the American cultural community launched a large-scale attack on the comics industry, accusing comics of having a negative impact on children and promoting teenage crimes.

The anti-comics movement in the cultural world even came to the Senate investigation, and the American comics industry was hit hard. Times Comics' sales dropped from 15 million copies per month at its peak to 4.6 million copies, and it was once on the verge of bankruptcy.

In order to cut expenses, Martin Goodman had to lay off major employees, leaving only one employee Stan Lee.

It turns out that Martin Goodman made a great decision.

Stan Lee became the "superhero" of Times Comics. The series of classic comics such as Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and × Men created by him have brought Times Comics back to life.

In 1961, Times Comics, which returned to its peak, was officially renamed Marvel Comics.

Just when Stan Lee was ambitious to lead Marvel to create a more brilliant career, Martin Goodman sold Marvel to Cadance Industrial for $15 million.

As part of the deal, Martin Goodman continues to serve as president and publisher of Marvel Comics,

Stan Lee is still the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics.

In the following years, Martin Goodman retired. He hoped that his son Chip Goodman would be recognized by Cadance Industrial Company and served as the president of Marvel, but Cadance Industrial Company chose Stan Lee.

Stan Lee set a grand goal for Marvel Comics to bring comic characters to Hollywood screens and turn Marvel into the "next Disney".

But unfortunately, reality gave Stan Lee a heavy blow. Kadance Industrial Company did not care about how creative the comics were adapted as saying that movies were, and Hollywood did not welcome a comic company to make movies.

Marvel's transformation failed and soon fell into a dilemma. Stan Liran left the stage and Jim Galton became the president of Marvel Comics.

Under his leadership, Marvel returned to the old path of comic book business, but still could not hide the decline. Many comic practitioners even had to change careers to make ends meet. This low period did not improve until the 1980s.

In 1986, Marvel Comics' parent company, Kadance Industrial, declared bankruptcy and Marvel was officially acquired by New World Film Company.

What's ridiculous is that when the deal to acquire Marvel Comics was finalized, New World Films president Bob Reheim excitedly told his vice president of marketing: "We just bought Superman."

After the acquisition of Marvel Comics, New World Film Company attempted comic adaptation projects several times, but failed. It also planned to imitate Disney and set up a Marvel retail store, but the plan was later stranded due to shortage of funds.

After that, New World Film Company's financial situation deteriorated and was eventually acquired by Ronald Perelman for $145 million in 1989.

Ronald Perelman is a businessman specializing in corporate mergers and acquisitions and selling. His business method is to buy and sell.

From 1989 to 1996, Marvel experienced a series of dizzying changes and conspiracies that made Ronald Perelman gain huge benefits, but the company did not develop much.

By 1996, Ronald Perelman was in high debt, and Marvel was once again in trouble and came to a critical moment of life and death.

He took a desperate gamble and merged his toy company with Marvel, hoping to turn Marvel into profits, but things went against his expectations. The company's debt rating was downgraded and the stock price fell.

At the same time, Ronald Perelman's illegal means of making money during the company's operation were also exposed, and shareholders filed a lawsuit against him.

Marvel Entertainment thus launched a protracted lawsuit.

Some time ago, Marvel's lawsuit came to an end, and shareholders led by creditor Ike Piermuth won, and they reached a bankruptcy settlement with Ronald Perelman.

It was at this time that Lin's Pictures and Bubble Universe intervened in this business dispute. After Marvel announced bankruptcy, creditors led by Ike Piermud and others gained control of the company, but at the same time they also bear $200 million in debt.

For Marvel at this time, this debt was an astronomical figure.

If these new shareholders cannot turn the company into profits in a short period of time, then Marvel is likely to continue to sink.

At this moment, Lin's Pictures and Bubble Universe appeared in front of Ike Piermud like the White Knight, and offered a quotation of $750 million, intending to make a full acquisition of Marvel.

After Marvel Entertainment went public in 1991, its market value at its peak was only US$1.5 billion.

Now that I have just experienced bankruptcy and reorganization, I still have a debt of $200 million. The acquisition price of $750 million has directly made shareholders kneel down.

In less than a month, Marvel Entertainment officially changed hands.

After chatting for more than half an hour, Tao Yushu explained the details of the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.

"Just take it down, this move is crucial to Lin's Pictures and Bubble Universe," said Lin Chaoyang.

The acquisition of Marvel Entertainment was Lin Chaoyang's proposal. Tao Yushu fully trusted him and implemented it without hesitation.

But in the blink of an eye, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent, and she might have to invest some more money in the future for the company's operation. Thinking of this, she couldn't help but feel a sense of pressure.

"Anyway, I've explained the general direction to Yumo, so it's up to her next."

Tao Yushu now follows Lin Chaoyang and has also begun to become a hand-off manager, which has made Tao Yumo, who is in the United States.

Lin Chaoyang laughed and said, "This girl may scold you now.

?

"It's so hard for those who are capable. Don't you often say that she is more suitable for business than me?" Tao Yushu said with a relaxed expression, "Her style is very open and close, and she is indeed very suitable for M&A."

After gaining control of Marvel Entertainment, Tao Yumo's primary goal was to find ways to save money.

The first thing she did was to sell off the surrounding companies under Marvel Entertainment, Ferrier and Sky Box, which had been losing money. Ferrier is a trading card company and Sky Box is a collection card company.

Marvel bought these two companies for more than $300 million, and the acquisition price was so expensive.

It is also because Ronald Perelman has gained his personal pockets.

Now Tao Yumo has sold off two companies and has only recovered $54.5 million in funds. This transaction can be said to be a loss.

But this is not over yet. Then Tao Yushu carried out another wave of major layoffs, directly laying off 1/2 of the company's employees.

And these things were done in the past week.

This is the business method of "big opening and closing" as Tao Yushu mentioned.

Although he did not recognize some of his sister's practices, Tao Yushu had to admit that such decisive killing was indeed the most effective method at critical moments.

"But the next step to take back the copyright of the comic will be a protracted battle. She is still too impatient.

Those people in Hollywood are more beautiful than monkeys when they are attached to their hair."

Lin Chaoyang smiled and said, "It doesn't matter if you try it, the meat is rotten in the pot anyway. The most valuable thing about Marvel is copyright. So many popular comics are licensed to those big companies at a bargain price, which is really a bit amazing."

Tao Yushu nodded firmly, "You are right. The audience of these comics is calculated in billions.

I just didn’t find the right way to monetize before. With so many audiences, as long as I find a feasible way to monetize, I will definitely create considerable profits."

Movies are obviously one of the best channels for the monetization of Marvel comics. In the past twenty years, Marvel has tried more than once to make movies.

"X-Men" and "Sky-Falled Soldiers" But without exception, all of these projects ended in failure.

This is not only a failure of Marvel, but also a strange tale in the entire American comics industry.

Over the past few decades, all the popular IPs in the American comics industry, except for a few works such as "Superman" and "Teenager of Ninja Turtles", the other comics, no matter how popular the original work is or how suitable for movie adaptation, will end up with a crushing defeat.

This phenomenon even had its own term in the past years, and was called "development" by Hollywood

hell” (development hell).

So under the last resort, Marvel once awarded many of its popular comics to major Hollywood film companies at a low price.

Fantastic Four, X-Men, Daredevil, Hulk Hulk, Silver Shadowman and Iron Man—

But Hollywood is not stupid either. Since the early 1980s, most of the Marvel licenses have been on hold.

The development of comic-adapted movies has been a "brave game" for the past decade, after all, the success rate of this thing is too low.

If it weren't for the success of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" series, Tao Yushu wouldn't have made up his mind to take Marvel into his pocket.

However, Tao Yushu also understood that Hollywood people are not fools. Lin's Pictures and Bubble Universe have become the target of public criticism after acquiring Marvel Entertainment. At this time, we will focus on negotiating the retrieval of copyright, and some people will definitely wait for the price.

So what she told Tao Yumo was that if the copyright can be reclaimed, it would be reclaimed, and if it could not be reclaimed, it would not be forced.

Anyway, the authorization has a deadline, so it will naturally return to Marvel when it expires.

Even if the comic-revised movie developed by Lin's Pictures succeeds in the future, other film companies followed up and drank the soup.

But as long as the copyright is in the hands of Marvel, in the long run, these companies will make wedding dresses for Marvel.

After sorting out this business logic, Tao Yushu is not in a hurry to withdraw his authorization.

But since Tao Yumo wants to try it, it doesn’t matter if she lets her try it.

If it fails, just treat it as giving this girl a memory.
Chapter completed!