"We're not actors, mister! I assume you've heard of the Avengers priority card?"

Disney bought Marvel Studios ten years ago, putting it in charge of the big-screen adventures of Iron Man and his fellow Avengers. Disney's acquisition of the film and TV assets of 21st Century Fox was finalized last month, meaning it's also now in charge of Marvel characters whose big-screen rights were previously owned by Fox, including the Thing and the rest of his supergroup, the Fantastic Four.

Comcast, which owns Universal Pictures, the studio behind the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, attempted to outbid Disney for Fox's assets last year. One day soon Disney may be rich enough to swallow Comcast whole, and if that happens don't be surprised if the March 1983 issue of Marvel Two-in-One makes a synergistic leap from the page to the screen.

a groove that fits like one of Mickey Mouse's gloves

I like Paul Carrack's "I Live by the Groove." But on first listen 11 years ago it instantly made me think of the kind of song that might've played over the opening credits of a Disney-distributed Touchstone Pictures or Hollywood Pictures comedy in the early '90s—with the credits entering and exiting from the left and right sides of the screen—as our hero drives around in his expensive convertible negotiating some sort of multimillion-dollar contract for a client before picking up flowers and Champagne for a hot date with his hot wife. Then his whole world falls apart, albeit hilariously: he arrives home to find the wife cheating on him with the big client in his own bed, of course. 

Most likely starring Jim Belushi or Tim Allen and, playing an early prototype of the "manic pixie dream girl," Penelope Ann Miller as the love interest who gives the male lead a new outlook on life.

untitled

I thought titles couldn't be copyrighted, which would explain why, for instance, the Replacements could name their 1984 album Let It Be despite the Beatles having used it 14 years earlier. But in The Gross: The Hits, the Flops—The Summer That Ate Hollywood (St. Martin's Press, 1999), author Peter Bart makes it clear that titles can be registered and "coveted":

For a couple of weeks, [director Michael] Bay and [screenwriter Jonathan] Hensleigh met to further refine their ideas before meeting with Joe Roth at Disney. They were twenty minutes into their pitch to Roth when he interrupted to say, "This will be the biggest movie of 1998. I'm making it."

Roth even had a title: Armageddon. The only problem, Roth conceded, was that Joel Silver, a producer at Warner Bros., had registered the title a few years earlier. "I'll do some horse-trading with Joel," he promised, noting that Warner Bros. coveted two titles owned by Disney—Conspiracy Theory and Father's Day.

The Robin Williams-Billy Crystal comedy Fathers' Day (fellow punctuation enthusiasts, note the plural, not singular, possessive) was released by Warner Bros. on May 9, 1997, while the Mel Gibson-Julia Roberts action thriller Conspiracy Theory hit theaters on August 8. The former grossed a disappointing $28.5 million; the latter grossed a less disappointing $75.9 million. Armageddon, on the other hand, made $201.5 million the following year. None of these films will be immortalized in the National Film Registry, but if Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson end up recording a new Replacements album titled "Conspiracy Theory Re: Armageddon on Father's Day," I don't think anyone will sue.