Within three years, though, Marvel Entertainment Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York, and reorganization plans involving Toy Biz were soon proposed. Seeing opportunity in the wash of red ink, Perlmutter - along with Avi Arad, his Toy Biz co-owner and fellow Israeli army veteran - wrested away control of Marvel from owner Ronald Perelman and investor Carl Icahn in 1998 through a Toy Biz merger. With a clear-eyed mission to turn around Marvel's fortunes, Perlmutter and Arad steered hard toward licensing Marvel's characters "to moviemakers, toymakers, video game makers and television producers," as the New York Times reported in 2003. Over the next six years, films featuring Spider-Man, Daredevil and the X-Men grossed more than $2.4 billion worldwide.