When Michael Tried to Buy Marvel

Some of you may not know this but Marvel was courted by numerous buyers in the past, the oddest of which was Michael Jackson.  Yes, THE Michael Jackson.  And when I say “oddest” I don’t mean he was odd as a person, I meant the reason he wanted to buy Marvel was odd.

As most of you know (and if you don’t I’m stunned) Michael Jackson was a phenom for most of his life.  He started performing in his early childhood and was considered “The King of Pop” until the day he passed.

As you also know, Michael was famous for making interesting purchases and attempting to make interesting purchases.  For instance, you know that he had his own amusement park at his home and that he purchased the copyrights to The Beatles’ music catalogue.  You are also probably aware of the rumors of him offering to buy the “Elephant Man’s” bones.  What you may not know is that Michael wanted to buy Marvel as well, but for reasons that go a little beyond the ordinary.  Here’s what happened:

Although Michael was known for his popularity in the 80’s, he was also hugely popular in the 90’s.  During that time Batman was reigning in the cinemas and Marvel was struggling to make ends meet.  Frankly, Marvel was doing just about everything wrong.  In order to try for a few wins Marvel was trying to get the Spider-Man and X-Men movie projects underway.

For the Spider-Man movie, Marvel was talking to James Cameron.  Who they weren’t talking to was Michael Jackson, who desperately wanted to be cast as Spider-Man.  Yes, THE Michael Jackson wanted to be Spider-Man.  Can you picture that?  If not, here’s some help:

(Author’s note:  these pictures are NOT my handiwork...thankfully.)

As Michael knew this was NOT going to happen without him having some clout at Marvel, he decided to try to buy it.  After all, Marvel was facing bankruptcy at the time anyway, so why wouldn’t they consider him a potential suitor?  

As a quick aside, Michael’s rationale may not have been on target here.  You see, the owner of the company doesn’t get to make casting decisions, the Director and the studio get to do that.  Licensing the property to the studio does not a Casting Director make.  Perhaps he would buy Marvel and make himself the Director?  Who knows.

But I digress.

Michael decided to pursue the purchase and started to build a relationship with Stan Lee Media.

If you’re not familiar with Stan Lee Media’s origin, here’s a review.  Stan Lee Media was born out of an effort between Stan Lee and a business partner to buy Marvel outright.  This came from the fact that a new CEO has screwed Stan out of everything he negotiated with Marvel over the years.  This included a life-time salary in exchange for Lee not pursuing legal claims of ownership of the characters he created.  This is why Stan Lee Media (who Stan Lee no longer has any affiliation with) seems to think they can make legal claims to Stan’s characters.  They argue that Stan’s contract with Marvel was terminated, along with the stipulation that he couldn’t sew them for ownership.  I won’t go into any further detail because I either don’t know it or it’s too much extra content for this article (you decide).

Again, I digress.

Michael went to Stan hoping that Stan could throw his weight around and secure him, and his production company Kingdom Entertainment, the rights to produce a Spider-Man movie.  In fact, Michael secured a promise from Lee that if Michael purchased Marvel, Lee would help him run it.  In a further effort to get the ball rolling, Jackson hired a financial firm to help with the negotiations.

The problem was that Toy Biz CEO Ike Perlmutter (Toy Biz being the company that owned Marvel at the time) and Lee were not on the best of terms.  So, the fact that Lee was going to help run the company for potential owner Jackson, did not sit well with Ike.  To try to kibosh the deal Ike did what any vindictive owner would do, he raised the price to $1 billion (WAY more than Marvel was worth at the time).

Jackson decided to walk away.  The rest is history...Toy Biz sold to Disney for $4 billion (about 30% more than what the company was valued at at the time of the sale).

To add to the whole weird scenario it should be noted that Spider-Man wasn’t the only character for which Michael had lobbied.  He also wanted to play Professor X in the X-Men movie (eventually played by Patrick Stewart).  

(Author’s other note...this picture isn’t my handiwork either...thankfully.)

He also wanted to be “Agent M” in Men in Black 2.  As a consolation prize, Michael got a cameo  as himself in the MIB2.  Not quite what he had hoped for, but at least it was something.