By: Alyssa Blackstone

Creating attractions around intellectual property (“IP”) has always been lucrative to theme parks. It’s no wonder that the biggest theme parks in the United States – Disney and Universal – center their entire parks around movies and characters that they already own. Why pay another company for a license when you can build attractions from intellectual property you already own? We see this all the time with Disney; their movies and films have widespread appeal so they can bank on people visiting their park for a ride based on Frozen. Sometimes theme park’s reach for even older IP, as is the case with Universal. Universal recently announced an addition to their Florida resort called “Epic Universe”, which will feature an area themed around old universal monsters such as Frankenstein and Dracula. Even though these films are nearly a century old, Universal still owns the copyright for these films and characters and they are still widely recognizable.

However, sometimes that’s still not enough. Sometimes these companies want IP from franchises and films that they don’t own.

This is where licensing IP comes in. An IP license is an agreement in which party A can authorize party B to use A’s IP. Party A keeps the ownership of the IP, but B is allowed to use it in whichever way the parties agreed upon, usually for some amount of money or yearly payments.

Theme parks licensing IP from other companies started as early as the 1980s. Before Disney could even think about buying the Star Wars franchise, they wanted Star Wars IP in their California park. They signed a licensing deal with LucasFilms – the owner of the Star Wars franchise – to allow Disney to use LucasFilm properties in Disneyland. Disney offered Lucas $1 million per attraction per park per year. This allowed Disney to open rides like Star Tours in 1988, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1995. Disney paid the annual fee to use those properties in their parks until they bought LucasFilms for $4 Billion in 2012. Now they can use Star Wars in their parks to their heart’s content, and have built many rides and attractions using the worlds, characters, and ideas from the popular sci-fi franchise.

One would think owning a company would be the end of it; you buy a film studio and you get access to all of their IP to use in your theme park as you please. Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple, as is the case with Marvel’s theme park use.

You might wonder why Disney hasn’t jumped on the opportunity to shovel Marvel characters and attractions in their parks since acquiring the studio in 2009. Simple, they can’t.

After filing for bankruptcy in 1996, Marvel began licensing their characters to various companies to try and make a financial comeback. One license was an agreement between Marvel and MCA, Inc., a company that would later be reincorporated as Universal Studios, Inc. This agreement was specifically for the use of Marvel characters – like The Avengers – and the Marvel name in theme parks, namely Universal Studios Florida’s Islands of Adventure slated to open in 1999.

This agreement gives Universal Studios exclusive rights to use the name “Marvel” in regard to attraction name or marketing in the entire United States. The agreement also stipulates that east of the Mississippi River, no other theme park can use characters that are being used in the Universal Studios Florida Park. In this case, use includes using a specific character or any other character in the same “family”. This means if Universal is using a character from the Avengers family, like Iron Man, no other Avenger character can be used in any theme park east of the Mississippi. This licensing agreement is also granted to Universal essentially in perpetuity; the terms of the agreement continue as long as a Marvel park is open at any Universal Theme Park. Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was even born, Disney’s biggest theme park rival had snatched up exclusive rights to many of Marvel’s most popular characters.

These agreements completely block Disney from having any Avenger’s themed attractions in their Florida park, or even using “Marvel” in their California ones. Disney has gotten around this agreement a little – by calling their Marvel-themed area “Avengers Campus” instead of using the word “Marvel”, or by using the non-Avengers affiliated Guardians of the Galaxy for an attraction in their Florida park. Disney is also allowed to have characters like Loki on treats in their shopping area, as that isn’t considered a theme park even though it is attached to one. However the Universal agreement limits what Disney is allowed to do, even when they own the rights to intellectual property related to Marvel films (such as having to remove a Marvel-themed wrap for their monorail, as “riding through” Epcot park constitutes an attraction in the eyes of the law).

Disney made another huge purchase in the 2010s: the acquisition of 21^st Century Fox in 2019. This gave them access to a whole host of new IP, including the iconic Fox adult animated sitcom The Simpsons. Currently, Universal Studios has an area of their California park dedicated to The Simpsons complete with merchandise, attractions, and restaurants. However, this agreement that allows Universal to use The Simpsons IP in their parks is allegedly ending in 2028. The question will be what will happen to that area of the park when the time limit is up?

Disney could renew the license, earning money from Universal. They could block Universal from a renewal, forcing their competitor to spend time and money tearing down The Simpsons-themed “Springfield, U.S.A.” area and rebuilding something new. Or, Disney may want to forgo renewal to Universal in order to use The Simpsons in their own parks. Disney has full control of The Simpsons IP, and thus full control of what will become of their future presence in theme parks.

#themeparks #IPlicenses #marvel