Why Disney Bought Marvel

Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times has an interesting take on why Disney paid $4 billion this week for Marvel Entertainment and its stable of 5,000 comic book characters. (Here's the NY Times story on the deal.)

Goldstein writes:

For Disney, this latest purchase is a way to take all of the unbranded -- meaning risky, obscure or experimental -- material out of its wheelhouse. The studio is now a giant collection of familiar, easily accessible brands -- Marvel, Pixar, [Steven] Spielberg and [Jerry] Bruckheimer -- all under one large, even more familiar umbrella brand: Disney. It is a sprawling company that will probably someday look a lot more like Procter & Gamble than a movie studio.

...[W]hat the Marvel deal really means is that Disney is radically restructuring its creative aspirations. Once a company that drew inspiration from within, it is now paying top dollar to buy mature businesses -- first Pixar and now Marvel -- to feed its merchandising assembly lines.

What do you think?