When the Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment LLC in 2009, many comic book fans worried that their favorite characters might be forced to change. What if a "Disneyfied" Tony Stark had to give up drinking after the merger? David Galluzzi, chief counsel of subsidiary Marvel Studios Inc., says such fan concerns turned out to be unwarranted. Disney executives are smart, he says, and for the most part they left Marvel’s creative team alone. But once he was knee-deep in negotiations, Galluzzi, too, began to fear the unknown. Not least among his concerns was whether he’d have a job at the end of the two-month process. "There was very little sleep during that period," he says. "It was only after the merger paperwork was completed that we got to see the great leadership and resources that Disney could bring to bear and how they would strengthen Marvel."
Marvel’s entertainment division, based in New York, is dedicated to making television productions and feature films such as the recent blockbuster The Avengers . Galluzzi, a Harvard Law School alumnus, oversees all of its business and legal affairs. The now chief lawyer spent four years doing corporate transactional and securities work at Paul Hastings (then Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker). He made the leap in-house to Marvel, a client of the firm, in 2005.
