Bob Iger credited Steve Jobs with helping Disney acquire Marvel in an article remembering the late Apple CEO and co-founder.
Under the leadership of CEO Bob Iger, The Walt Disney Company has acquired multiple companies and IP’s, including Marvel. In a Vanity Fair piece paying tribute to the late Steve Jobs, Bob Iger explained how the Apple co-founder facilitated Disney’s acquisition of Marvel by easing the doubts of then-CEO Ike Perlmutter.
In the piece, Bob Iger recounted how he would discuss his large ambitions with Steve Jobs, who was a Disney board member and the company’s largest shareholder. When Bob Iger brought up the topic of Disney purchasing Marvel, he outlined how the acquisition of the IP that came with the company would put “some real distance between” them and the rest of the competition. Bob Iger wrote that after closing the deal, Marvel’s Ike Perlmutter informed him that Steve Jobs vouching for the Disney CEO was what convinced him to sell:
Later, after we’d closed the deal, Ike told me that he’d still had his doubts and the call from Steve made a big difference. ‘He said you were true to your word,’ Ike said. I was grateful that Steve was willing to do it as a friend, really, more than as the most influential member of our board. Every once in a while, I would say to him, ‘I have to ask you this, you’re our largest shareholder,’ and he would always respond, ‘You can’t think of me as that. That’s insulting. I’m just a good friend.'”
Steve Jobs was also the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar. In October 2011, Steve Jobs died of respiratory arrest related to a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor.
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Under Bob Iger and Disney’s supervision, Marvel Studios released several projects to box office success and critically acclaimed, with Avengers: Endgame eventually becoming the highest-grossing film of all-time. Marvel Studios’ future features with Disney include Black Widow, The Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Love and Thunder.
Source: Vanity Fair
