Popverse's top stories of the day

• Dune: Prophecy creators promise to bring the "complexity" and "grand scale" of Frank Herbert's books and Denis Villeneuve's movies to TV
• Marvel's TV head says there's "absolutely" a future for Jon Bernthal's Punisher after his Daredevil: Born Again appearance
• Meet the Grim Reaper of The Walking Dead TV show cast, and what goes into killing someone off in the show

Isaac 'Ike' Perlmutter, the former Marvel Entertainment chairman/CEO (and, at one time, majority owner), has cashed out completely with Marvel and its parent company Disney. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Perlmutter has sold off all shares he owned in Disney stock - stock he acquired as part of the 2009 acquisition of Marvel by Disney, when his Marvel stocks converted into Disney stocks.

According to WSJ, Perlmutter had an estimated 25.6 million shares in Disney as of earlier this year - and has sold those shares in the past three months, when the stock was at average $115 per share. That would equate to $2.944 billion dollars, minus fees. (There's always fees.) 

To put that in perspective, Disney bought Marvel in 2009 for $4 billion dollars. Further, 25.6 million Disney shares would equal a 1.3% stake in Disney as a whole.

Perlmutter was laid off as an employee of Disney/Marvel in March 2023, as his job was absorbed by Kevin Feige in his new role as head of not just Marvel Studios, but all Marvel divisions. Perlmutter would later be part of an unsuccessful takeover attempt of the Disney board with activist shareholder Nelson Peltz in April 2024.

Perlmutter came to be involved with Marvel in the late '90s when the toy company he co-owned, Toy Biz, acquired all of Marvel while it was in its second year of bankruptcy filings. He eventually led to the hiring of publisher Bill James and editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, who led a creative overhaul of the company. While the rights to some of its characters were already sold off to Sony and 20th Century Fox, Perlmutter was instrumental in organizing what became the modern Marvel Studios empire under Kevin Feige, but following the acquisition of Marvel by Disney, he came to be at odds with Feige - even at one point working to have Feige fired.

While this is the end of a chapter in the lives of Marvel and Perlmutter, WSJ reports that Perlmutter said he might reacquire DIsney stocks if the stock falls under $75. It is currently at $90.94 per share, off a peak of $122/share in March 2024.