Could Pixar do a Marvel superhero animated feature film now that Disney’s buying them?

Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man
Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man

Most of you probably know by now that Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment outright. The deal puts Marvel’s list of comic characters into the stable of Disney’s history, expertise and multimedia infrastructure.

Some additional details have been released at ComingSoon, regarding the specifics of the deal, including a meeting with Pixar’s John Lasseter with Marvel, about a possible team-up between the two creative forces. This is incredible news to me. I’ve been hoping that Pixar, in addition to their amazing family-friendly fare, start doing edgier feature-length films. I’ve been curious about where that could lead in animation.

Here are the updates, according to the site.

UPDATE #1: In a conference call, the companies said that the deals for movies for characters at other studios (Spider-Man, X-Men, etc.) will stay in place under the terms set by Marvel and the other studios.

UPDATE #2: John Lasseter met with Marvel last week about a possible team-up between Marvel and Pixar and got “pretty excited, pretty fast.” They say there’s definitely an opportunity there.

UPDATE #3: The deal with Paramount Pictures to distribute Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers stays in place as well, but Disney would like to self-distribute down the line. “When the time comes we’ll take a closer look at it.” It was actually stated that the deal still included five films, so that is one more film after The Avengers.