It’s pretty reasonable to agree that Marvel has come a long way throughout the decades, especially when you consider that the famous comic book company had actually filed for bankruptcy way back in 1996. The company eventually merged with ToyBiz two years later in 1998, and from then on Marvel continued to fight its way to the top. By 2009, Disney finally acquired Marvel for a staggering $4 billion. As it turns out, however, Disney wasn’t the only entity interested in purchasing Marvel. In fact, late pop icon Michael Jackson apparently attempted to buy Marvel before having his attempt “shut down.”
In a new interview with Michael Jackson’s nephew, Taj Jackson, he explained to Popcorned Planet that the entertainment icon was very seriously interested in acquiring Marvel in the 1990’s. As he stated:
“He wanted to [buy Marvel] with Stan Lee, and they had been talking and discussing that. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. They were shut down from doing that,” Jackson told Popcorned Planet. “I don’t know the reasons why, but they were adamantly in the process of doing that.”
As it turns out, however, Michael Jackson had an incredibly large interest in Spider-Man. Taj believes that Michael Jackson’s desire to play Peter Parker helped influence his quest to try and buy out Marvel.
“Besides Spider-Man, he was a huge Marvel fan. He knew all the characters. So it was not only Spider-Man [he wanted to buy]. But yeah, he probably wanted to be Spider-Man [laughs].”
What’s more, Taj Jackson did insist that Michael Jackson “would love” to have at least seen what’s become of Marvel today.
“He would be so excited about it,” Jackson said. “He was such a movie buff in that way that I think he would have thought this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, all these characters coming together.”
Michael Jackson eventually died at age 50 in 2009, but nevertheless it would have been interesting to see his own thoughts on Marvel today. After all, they’ve done quite a stellar job at reintroducing so many classic and obscure characters as well as cinematically connecting them together.