Marvel Enterprises (MVL) discusses its agreement with Paramount Pictures (quotes from conf call)

Below are some comments from Marvel Enterprises (ticker: MVL) from its April 28, 2005 conference call with investors, regarding it intention to produce
its own films, to be distributed by Paramount Pictures and funded by a
$525 million credit facility made available by Merrill Lynch.

The idea…is to gain more control of our future, start building a library, get the full impact of our licensing business… by licensing films that might be left on the table…

We are good for each other. They need the Marvel brand and it’s the kind of the thing that we were looking for…there is new vibrant, exciting management in Paramount and we feel that this is a long-term partnership…

….Fantastic Four is our 12th movie, so we developed all of the experience over the years in developing the product. The talent pool available to us, our relationship, it’s all about the talent in making movies - the script, the actors, the directors. And we have excellent connections in this community.

Marvel is not taking a risk. The only collateral for this facility are the characters themselves….All expenses leading to making a movie become cost of the production and again part of the non-course facility…the movies will vary from as low as a $45, $50 million movie to top-of-the-line $180 million movie.…

The titles that are in these facilities, some of them you are familiar with, like Captain America, Nick Fury, and the Avengers.

(Quotes are from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)