The Walt Disney Company has further enhanced its entertainment empire with the $4 billion acquisition of comic-book company Marvel Entertainment Inc.

Disney will now collect licensing fees from Universal Orlando for all Marvel related theme-park rides including The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk Coaster. Whether this arrangement will continue for any great length of time remains unclear. However, it has been suggested that Disney are unlikely to continue licensing their latest acquisition to Universal, one of their biggest competitors.

As well as the rights to all of Marvel's characters (more than 5000 of them) the acquisition will also see Disney collecting revenue from the ticket sales of Paramount's Iron Man 2 and Thor movies.

At the moment, X-Men is licensed to News Corp,, Spider-Man to Sony Corp., and the Incredible Hulk to General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal Inc.