New IRONMAN 2 Photo!

Here it is. The Disney influence is already begining to show.
They are probably thinking of the new title

Ironman 2: Rise of the Mouse.

Seriously, Thanks to Radio Maestra and Lord Cybron for the art.

Disney is buying Marvel Comics.

Now this is a surprise!!!

LOS ANGELES – The Walt Disney Co. said Monday it is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters. Many of them, including the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, were co-created by the comic book legend Stan Lee.

Analyst David Joyce of Miller Tabak & Co. said the acquisition will help Disney appeal to young men who have flocked to theaters to see Marvel's superhero fare in recent years. That contrasts with Disney's recent successes among young women with such fare as "Hannah Montana" and the Jonas Brothers.

"It helps Disney add exposure to a young male demographic it had sort of lost some balance with," Joyce said, noting the $4 billion offer was at "full price."

Disney said Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash, plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own. That values each Marvel share at $50 based on Friday's closing stock prices.

Marvel shares jumped $10.17, or 26 percent, to $48.82 shortly after the market opened. Disney shares fell 47 cents, or 1.8 percent, to $26.37.

Disney said the boards of both companies have approved the transaction, but it will require an antitrust review and the approval of Marvel shareholders.

Disney last made a big purchase in 2006 when it acquired Pixar Animation Studios Inc., the creator of the "Toy Story" franchise, for $7.4 billion in stock.

Disney CEO Robert Iger said the latest acquisition combines Marvel's "strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters" with Disney's "unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties" and ability to maximize value across multiple platforms and territories.

Marvel earned a net profit of $206 million last fiscal year, up 47 percent from a year earlier, on revenue of $676 million, as it took movie production in house instead of just cutting licensing deals.

Yup...I can see it now...X-Men: Rescue Rangers, Hanna Monmutant, HULK-E, an E-Ticket ride called "Is a Fantastic Four World after all".

Damn you Disney...DAMN YOU!!!!

And the Box Office Champion this week is...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – "High School Musical" heartthrob Zac Efron graduated to the big leagues at the North American box office on Sunday as his new comedy crushed a weighty thriller starring Russell Crowe.
"17 Again," in which Efron plays a dispirited 37-year-old family man who gets to relive his glory days at high school, earned a better-than-expected $24.1 million, distributor Warner Bros. said.
Crowe's "State of Play" opened at No. 2 with $14.1 million, but managed to exceed the modest expectations of its distributor, Universal Pictures.
Last weekend's champion, "Hannah Montana: The Movie," fell to No. 4 with $12.7 million, taking the 10-day haul for Walt Disney Co's Miley Cyrus vehicle to $56.1 million.
Just ahead of it, the family cartoon "Monsters vs. Aliens" held steady at No. 3 with $12.9 million. After four weekends, the DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc production has earned $162.7 million, making it the biggest movie of the year so far.
Also new was "Crank: High Voltage," a sequel starring British actor Jason Statham. It opened at No. 6 with $6.5 million. Pundits had expected the thriller to do better than "State of Play."
While "17 Again" is the latest in a long line of body-switch comedies including such hits as "Big" and "Freaky Friday," its producers had their cake and ate it too by poking fun at the genre.
"I don't think we tried to play the earnest version," said producer Jennifer Gibgot, who originated the project after working with Efron in "Hairspray."
Critics were generally kind to the picture, which also stars "Friends" veteran Matthew Perry as the adult version of Efron, and Leslie Mann as his wife.
Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc, said it had been hoping for an opening in the low $20 million range, and was heartened by preliminary data showing that the PG-13 movie was playing to a wider audience than the 9-to-12-year-old tweens who made Efron a star in the "High School Musical" franchise.
EFRON AS LEADING MAN
Gibgot said her goal was to show that Efron, 21, could be a leading man. She envisaged future roles for him in smart thrillers or the sort of movies that made Michael J. Fox a star, like the "Back to the Future" series.
"State of Play," on the other hand, was dogged by the same challenges that have befallen other adult-oriented thrillers, such as "Michael Clayton" and "Duplicity." Older audiences generally don't flock to the cinemas on opening weekends, and may wait for the DVD.
"Adult films don't rock the box office," said Nikki Rocco, president of domestic distribution at Universal, a unit of General Electric Co's NBC Universal.
But she said "State of Play" was off to a solid start, and she hoped it would hold up well over the next few weekends.
The $60 million movie, based on a BBC miniseries, stars Crowe as a grizzled reporter who investigates a political conspiracy. The cast is rounded out by fellow Oscar-winner Helen Mirren as his editor and Ben Affleck as a politician. Critics were effusive in their praise.
"Crank: High Voltage," which did not screen in advance for critics, was released by Lionsgate, a unit of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. A spokesman was not immediately available for comment. The first film, "Crank," opened to $10.5 million in 2006 and ended up with $28 million.
Overall sales rose for the fourth consecutive year, when compared to the year-ago weekend, according to tracking firm Media By Numbers. Year-to-date sales are up 17 percent at $2.9 billion, placing the industry on a firm footing ahead of the summer movie-going period. "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" kicks off the lucrative season on May 1.

And the Box Office Champion this week is...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – OMG! OMG!
Sixteen-year-old actress Miley Cyrus became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood on Sunday as her first nonconcert movie topped the North American box office, earning twice as much as Disney had forecast.
Walt Disney Co's "Hannah Montana: The Movie" sold $34 million worth of tickets at the three-day Easter weekend, as fans of the perky starlet rushed to see the first big-screen adaptation of her hit Disney Channel TV series.
Cyrus returned the favor, turning up with her father and co-star, Billy Ray Cyrus, at theaters in Utah and Tennessee and blogging about her wild weekend on Twitter.
"omgomg! my fans rock! the movie is doing great you guys! omg AND its all cause of you!!!! I LOVE U ALL! IF YOU HAVENT SEEN IT YET CHECK IT!," she wrote, using the "omg" acronym as shorthand for "Oh, my God."
As in her TV show, Cyrus plays a regular schoolgirl by day and a pop star by night. But her father (Billy Ray Cyrus) decides she needs to get back to her small-town roots, so takes her on a surprise trip to her old Tennessee home where love and other complications ensue.
Going into the weekend, Disney had hoped "Hannah Montana" would perform in the same range as 2003's "The Lizzie McGuire Movie," a vehicle for Disney Channel star Hilary Duff. "Lizzie" opened to $17.3 million in 2003, and ended its domestic run with $42.7 million.

On Sunday, the studio denied that it had deliberately set a low target. "It caught us by surprise. No doubt about it," said Chuck Viane, the studio's president of domestic theatrical distribution. "Outside of Wow! what can you say?"
Exit polling showed that women made up 80 percent of moviegoers, and 60 percent of the audience was aged between two and 17, Viane said.
Cyrus' previous big-screen outing, "Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour," opened with $31 million last year, ending up with $65 million to become the biggest concert movie of all time.
Disney will soon begin shooting another Cyrus movie, "The Last Song," Viane said.
Cyrus is now a bigger draw than Oscar-winners like Julia Roberts and Jodie Foster, who each had $13 million openings with their last movies, "Duplicity" and "Nim's Island," respectively.
Last weekend's champion "Fast & Furious" slipped to No. 2 with $28.8 million, taking the 10-day total for Universal Pictures' race-car thriller to $118.0 million. The studio is a unit of General Electric Co's NBC Universal.
DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc's "Monsters vs. Aliens" was down one at No. 3 with $22.6 million in its third weekend; its total rose to $141 million.
Also new was the dark comedy "Observe and Report," which opened at No. 4 with $11.1 million, falling short of the expectations of its distributor, Warner Bros. Pictures. The Time Warner Inc.-owned studio had hoped for an opening in the $14 million to $15 million range.
The Japanese-inspired fantasy "Dragonball Evolution" opened at No. 7 with $4.7 million, also a little lower than the modest forecasts of its distributor 20th Century Fox. But the News Corp-owned studio said the film is doing better internationally with sales to date of $37 million.

"Family Guy" wins one over Disney!

This lawsuit has finally settled! The mouse got trampled!

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Creators of the U.S. television show "Family Guy" did not infringe copyright when they transformed the song "When You Wish Upon a Star" for comical use in an episode, a U.S. judge ruled on Monday.
Music Publisher Bourne Co., the U.S. copyright owner of the song made famous in Walt Disney's "Pinocchio," sued Fox Broadcasting Co., creator Seth MacFarlane and producers in October 2007 for copyright breach.
The lawsuit said the song "I Need a Jew," featured in one of the animated show's episodes, was a thinly veiled copy of the music from 'When You Wish Upon a Star' coupled with "new anti-Semitic lyrics" and had done damage to the original.
But U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts ruled that the lyrics and tone of the song used in "Family Guy" were "strikingly different."
The judge also said it was fair for it to be imitated for humorous effect since the music publisher had benefited from the song's association with other more "wholesome" shows like "Pinocchio."
"It is precisely that beneficial association that opens the song up for ridicule by parodists seeking to take the wind out of such lofty, magical, or pure associations," she said.
The song, by composer Leigh Harline and lyricist Ned Washington, was introduced in 1940 in the movie "Pinocchio" and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song that same year. It has been recorded by more than 100 artists and orchestras.
Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, initially did not distribute the controversial "Family Guy" episode in recognition of how offensive it was, the suit claimed.
It was eventually broadcast on the Cartoon Network in 2003 and has run at least 36 times in syndication and reruns.
Bourne Co. did not return a call seeking comment.

It's good to see that the big "D" can be taught a lesson every once in a while! They don't own the world! Just a piece of it!

And the Box Office Champion this week is...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Disney family adventure "Race to Witch Mountain" outran superhero movie "Watchmen" to take the top spot with $25 million in this weekend's contest at the North American box office.
The reworking of the 1975 action adventure "Escape to Witch Mountain" stars Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson, who also headlined Disney's "The Game Plan."
"We had a big family audience, but about 20 percent of the audience was unaccompanied adults," said Mark Zoradi, president of the studios motion pictures group at Walt Disney Co. "There was a little bit of people looking back toward the first movie."
He declined to make overall projections for "Witch Mountain" but said, with schools out for spring break over the next few weeks, it looks to be "in for a good solid run."
"Watchmen," an adaptation of a cult comic book series, saw its weekend box office take fall 67 percent from a week earlier to $18.1 million, distributor Warner Bros Pictures said.
The drop was in line with expectations and similar to the one after openings of other "tent-pole" movies, said Jeff Goldstein, executive vice president and general sales manager of domestic distribution at the studio owned by Time Warner Inc.
He said the studio believes "Watchmen" has "tremendous staying power" and will make a projection for overall receipts next week.
The film's take for its first two weeks was $86 million.
The debut of horror film remake "The Last House on the Left" came in No. 3 for the weekend with $14.7 million.
Produced by Rogue Pictures/Universal Pictures, the film stars Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter in a refashioning of Wes Craven's 1972 horror thriller.
It fell far short of the more than $40 million opening last month of another horror genre remake, "Friday the 13th."
Universal is a unit of General Electric Co's NBC Universal. Rogue is a unit of closely held Relativity Media.
Fox's Liam Neeson thriller "Taken" slipped to No. 4 with $6.7 million in its seventh weekend. It has earned $126.8 million to date. Fox is owned by News Corp.
Actor/writer/director Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail" dropped to No. 5 with $5.1 million, taking its haul to date to $83.2 million. The black-themed comedy was released by Lionsgate, a unit of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.
No. 6 for the week, "Slumdog Millionaire," has so far earned $132.6 million, moving the tale of impoverished Indian orphans into the top-10 highest grossing Best Picture Oscar winners of all time, according to Sheila DeLoach, senior vice president of distribution at Fox Searchlight.