Very few of Disney's were "smaller and less astute." Disney bought the rights to Peter Pan from Paramount Pictures in 1938. At the time, Disney was a small fra

Very few of Disney's were "smaller and less astute." Disney bought the rights to Peter Pan from Paramount Pictures in 1938. At the time, Disney was a small fraction of the size of Paramount Pictures. The original author of Bambi sold the motion picture rights to his film in 1936 for $1000 USD to a film producer...Disney was not the purchaser. Disney bought those rights from the producer for an undisclosed amount. Disney bought the rights to Dumbo for $1000 plus royalties on the book sales. (At the time Dumbo was a very simple, very short story intended as promotional content for a new type of book called a "roll-a-book". It sold very few copies, and would have been a historical footnote if not for the unexpected success of the film.) Disney bought the rights to Winnie the Pooh and paid royalties to the Milne family for decades, before shelling out $350 million to buy the entire rights in 2001. (Disney originally paid $1000 for the merchandising rights to the merchandising rights holder, it's not clear how much they paid for the film rights but given that the Pooh books were a huge commercial success, estimates are somewhere between $100k and $1million in 195x dollars.)