Author: Jim Shooter Page 9 of 25

The notes and various artifacts that should accompany this post are in one of the boxes yet to be liberated from the storage space and sorted. I think the story is worth telling anyway. I’ll provide some exhibits later, as soon as I can.

A Real Mickey Mouse Operation

Sometime in late 1988 I got a call from a man named Michael Lynton who said he worked for the Walt Disney Company and was interested in possibly hiring me as a consultant.

1988 had been a lean year. I’d spent most of it in an attempt to buy the Marvel Entertainment Group from New World Entertainment, and that is an epic tale for later. My team, the Marvel Acquisition Partners, along with financial adviser/debt provider Chase N.A. and equity partner Shenkman Capital actually won the auction and for one glorious week, we thought we owned Marvel. But, Ronald O. Perelman, who was an insider at New World, managed to snake it out from under us. All that effort, all that time for naught.

There is an unbelievable amount of work involved in attempting such an acquisition. During the many months our attempt took I wasn’t able to fit in much paying work. Didn’t matter. Nobody was offering me work in those days anyway. I think I made $18,000 that year.

I needed a gig.

I met Michael Lynton for lunch somewhere near the Disney offices, which were just off of Park Avenue in the fifties. It was an interview, more or less.

Lynton was the head of marketing for Disney’s consumer products division (the other two being the film and parks divisions). I don’t recall his exact title, but he was a major cheese in the House of the Mouse.

Turned out that Lynton, too, had been interested in acquiring Marvel. He’d tried to talk Disney’s upper management into it, and when that proved to be a no-go, he’d considered making an attempt on his own.

Read More