Disney Company lays off infamous Marvel exec Ike Perlmutter
Isaac Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment who has retired for three decades, has been ousted, the Walt Disney Company has confirmed to the New York Times.
The resignation comes as Disney is generally downsizing and austerity to cope with the macroeconomic moment — but for many, it’s long overdue, after years of Perlmutter’s attempted cutthroat business dealings and conspicuous political activism.
Most recently, Perlmutter unsuccessfully pleaded with Disney execs and board members to place his personal friend and acquaintance activist investor Nelson Peltz on the Disney board. But this kind of aggressive deal brokerage has defined Perlmutter’s involvement with Marvel since its inception.
Perlmutter entered the Marvel cosmos in the early 1990s, when his recently acquired company Toy Biz obtained the licenses for Marvel characters. This put Toy Biz in a position to partially take over Marvel Entertainment, and when the latter’s bankruptcy turned into a battle for ownership in the late 1990s, Perlmutter and fellow Toy Biz exec Avi Arad emerged victorious and Toy Biz merged and Marvel Entertainment to Marvel Enterprises.
Perlmutter rose to CEO of Marvel Entertainment in 2005, a title he retained even as he sold the company to Disney in 2009, just as Marvel Entertainment’s film production subsidiary, Marvel Studios, was ramping up its own franchise. Perlmutter reportedly micro-managed Marvel Studios demanding both cost-cutting and fidelity, leading to clashes with MCU chief executive Kevin Feige.
In fact, in 2015, Disney exec Bob Iger got wind of Perlmutter trying to get Feige fired, and he quickly reorganized Marvel Studios under Walt Disney Studios so that Perlmutter would no longer be in control of the division. Perlmutter was further removed from any creative power over Marvel holding companies in 2019, when an organizational shake-up killed Marvel Television (home to all of Marvel’s non-Disney Plus TV series, such as Daredevil And Agents of SHIELD) under the Marvel Studios umbrella, and appointed Marvel Entertainment’s president Dan Buckley as reporting only to Kevin Feige on “creative and editorial publishing.”
As of today, Buckley remains president of Marvel Entertainment, reporting solely to Kevin Feige.
“Mr. Perlmutter’s zeal for corporate austerity in the service of profit is well known in the entertainment world,” notes the New York Times. “In one particularly vivid example, he plucked paperclips from trash cans at Marvel offices for reuse. still talking about the time he suggested serving chips at a movie premiere to save on catering costs. To closely monitor activity in Marvel offices, Mr. Perlmutter installed at least 20 cameras at one point. Disney installed them several years ago ripped out.
Perlmutter’s political leanings are also well known and dirty. Between Perlmutter and his wife Laura, they donated the better part of a million dollars to funds related to the election of former President Donald Trump, and Perlmutter is a regular at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. 2018, ProPublica reported findings that Perlmutter, his personal physician Bruce Moskowitz, and Moskowitz’s squash partner — none of whom had ever served in the U.S. government or military — had been given unofficial free rein by Mr. Trump to head of the Veterans Affairs Department.
For a reclusive CEO, Perlmutter is also notorious among some Marvel Comics fans, often cited as a decades-long backstop against diversification in the Marvel superhero ranks, particularly in terms of LGBTQ+ representation, even for characters who are creators. and fans have tried. recognized as queer for decades.