It’s been revealed that Disney has opted to fire Ike Perlmutter, who was the Head Of Marvel Entertainment, and honestly, I thought that Ike had already left the company. It seems as though there’s a lot going on behind the scenes over at Marvel Studios.
They had recently just gotten rid of Victoria Alonso, who had been with Marvel Studios since the very beginning. Well, the departures haven’t stopped there, as the Walt Disney Company has reportedly parted ways with the longtime chairman of Marvel Entertainment, Ike Perlmutter. The businessman and corporate executive has been with Disney since he sold Marvel to Disney back in 2009.
Perlmutter gained control of Marvel during the 1990s when the company was at one of its lowest points financially and nearly went out of business. After Marvel went bankrupt in 1996, Perlmutter and Avi Arad — who together owned Toy Biz, which produced action figures of Marvel’s many characters — assumed control of the company. By the mid-2000s, Perlmutter was Marvel’s CEO. Then, in 2009, he sold Marvel to Disney, netting hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and Disney stock options.
Ike Perlmutter has been fired by Disney
Credit: AP
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Perlmutter had been with Disney for years. He served as chairman of the Marvel Entertainment division. This is separate from Marvel Studios, which produces the company’s popular films and television shows. Marvel Entertainment is in charge of publishing Marvel’s comic books, and I believe the toys also.
According to The New York Times, there has been a lot of ongoing corporate layoffs and restructuring over at Disney, and Marvel Entertainment was declared “redundant” and will be “folded into larger Disney business units.” As a result, Perlmutter and several other high-ranking executives within the division were laid off.
Also, according to the Times, Perlmutter had a reputation within the company for “corporate frugality”:
Mr. Perlmutter’s zealousness for corporate frugality in service of profit is well known in the entertainment business. In one particularly vivid example, he used to pluck paper clips out of garbage cans at Marvel offices for reuse. People at Marvel still talk about the time he suggested serving potato chips at a movie premiere to save catering costs.
What does this mean for the future of Marvel?
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Perlmutter has always been a rather controversial individual. Over the years, there have been rumours that he was the reason why it took Marvel Studios so long to make its first female-led superhero movie. That movie ended up made, and it was Captain Marvel, and it did pretty well at the box office.
Since then, we’ve seen Marvel make multiple female-led projects such as Black Widow, WandaVision and Ms. Marvel. Perlmutter was in the news recent when he openly tried to get his friend (and activist investor) Nelson Peltz a seat on the Disney board. Those efforts eventually proved unsuccessful (surprise, surprise).
Perlmutter’s firing comes just a few days after the sudden and surprising firing of Marvel Studios’ Victoria Alonso, who had been with the company since prior to the release of the original Iron Man, and was one of its most tenured and respected producers.
We’ve been hearing multiple reports suggesting why Marvel and Disney opted to let Alonso go, however, it seems as though it had something to do with the fact that she was the producer of the Amazon Studios movie, Argentina, 1985, which ended up being nominated at the Oscars.
This was reportedly a breach of her contract, which was why Marvel was forced to let her go. However, Alonso and her lawyers are appealing the decision and it looks like this will be a battle fought in court between Alonso and Disney.
What do you make of this news? Are you at all shocked to hear that Disney has laid off Ike Perlmutter, the former head of Marvel Entertainment? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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