The House of Jack Kirby wants Marvel Back from Disney

Uh-oh the Phoenix Force is coming for Disney in a huge way. The heirs of the Jack Kirby estate (Oh, Kirby is the co-creator of characters of X-Men, Fantastic Four and many super folks) shot out 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel, Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and Jesus it seems.

They are not happy about this merger and want it to end like last week.

The legal notices expressed an intent to regain copyrights to some creations as early as 2014, according to a statement from Toberoff & Associates, a Los Angeles firm that helped win a court ruling last year returning a share of the copyright in Superman to heirs of the character’s co-creator, Jerome Siegel.

Disney said in a statement, “The notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights seven to 10 years from now, and involve claims that were fully considered in the acquisition.” Fox, Sony, Paramount and Universal had no comment.

Marvel shareholders must still approve the sale of the company to Disney, which is already battling criticism from some Wall Street analysts that Marvel comes with too messy an array of rights agreements. The worry is that Disney will have a hard time immediately executing a coordinated exploitation of Marvel’s various brands.

Could this be over before it starts and I wonder if other shareholders will join the Kirby Force? This is going to get interesting.

source