According to “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards, Iger was patient in his wooing of Perlmutter. The hard-nosed Israeli-American considered Iger’s overtures, but he was initially reluctant to go through with the sale. It wasn’t until Iger cagily invited Perlmutter and his wife to the prestigious (and now erstwhile) Manhattan eatery the Post House for a no-business-talk dinner that Perlmutter began to show signs of doing the deal.
David Maisel, then one of Marvel Entertainment’s top executives, began negotiating the terms of a sale with Disney’s Executive Vice President Kevin A. Mayer and COO/CFO Thomas O. Staggs. Knowing precisely which details Mayer and Staggs would red flag, Maisal addressed these issues with Iger directly. On the cusp of entering formal negotiations, Maisal told Iger:
“We don’t have the rights for Spider-Man. We don’t have the rights for X-Men and Fantastic Four. We don’t have theme parks east of the Mississippi, so you can’t use the Marvel characters in your biggest theme park in Orlando. We have four movies left on our Paramount distribution deal, so you can’t get your hands into those movies unless you buy them out.”
Maisal then answered each caveat:
“If we had the rights to Spider-Man, the price would be a billion dollars more. And it’d be higher if we had X-Men. And all the characters we have, we have a universe that doesn’t require those. Theme parks east of the Mississippi, yeah, but you have them everywhere else.”
The deal seemed totally doable, but Perlmutter was still resistant. So Iger turned to Disney’s largest individual shareholder for assistance.