The Disney-Fox Deal

[Jack-Hammer]

The big story in entertainment and the business world today is the official announcement of Disney acquiring a hefty portion of the assets of 21st Century Fox for a huge price of $52.4 billion. If the deal is approved by various regulators, then the whole thing should be finalized lock, stock and barrel by about this time next year.

Here's what Disney gets out of the deal:

*Fox’s 30 percent stake in Hulu, which coupled with Disney's 30%, will give Disney majority control over the streaming service. Comcast (30 percent) and Time Warner (10 percent) are minority owners.
*The cable channels FX, FXX, FXM and National Geographic.
*Stakes in international TV providers Sky and Star, located in the UK and India respectively.
*22 regional sports networks that have local telecast rights to numerous Major League Baseball, NBA and NHL franchises.
*The 20th Century Fox studio business. The studio produces 36 current TV series ranging from “Modern Family” to “The X-Files” to “This Is Us” to “The Simpsons,” and its film business includes the “X-Men” franchise, James Cameron’s “Avatar” sequels and specialty divisions Fox Searchlght and Fox 2000. Disney will also own the extensive TV and movie libraries from the studio.

Here's what Fox keeps:

*The FOX broadcast network. Federal regulations prohibit one company from outright ownership of more than one broadcast network and Disney already owns ABC.
*28 owned-and-operated local TV stations.
*Cable channels Fox News, Fox Sports 1 and 2, Fox Business and the Big Ten Network.
*The 20th Century Fox studio lot in Los Angeles.

A couple of things have generally been talked about the most concerning the deal.

For one, Disney's stake in Hulu is the first step in the company eventually going into competition with Netlix. Neflix currently has a lot of Disney programming and movies airing on its service, and even more of the content will be Disney owned when/if the deal successfully goes through, and all the content will be pulled to air on Hulu instead.

For another, and this has more to do with fan anticipation than anything else, it will allow Disney to incorporate any and all things X-Men into Marvel's extended cinematic and TV universe. My guess, and that's all it is, is that the whole X-Men franchise will be rebooted in order to streamline everything, especially since Wolverine is dead in Fox's franchise.

Disney has bought up a ton of entertainment real estate over the past 5 years, including Marvel Comics and Star Wars for about $4.5 billion each; someway, somehow, I very much expect Disney to attempt to cross the two over at some point in the next 10 years or so.

 

[SSJPhenom]

This is a huge deal. I'm not just talking about the obvious implications with having the X-Men, Fantastic 4, and Deadpool possibly be incorporated into the MCU. Obviously that is exciting for any bloke what calls himself a comicbook fan. Going beyond that, however, this deal has some major caveats that come along with it.

First, this deal would completely give Disney too much power in Hollywood. If you guys recall, sometime ago, Disney straight up told movie theatres how long their movies would stay in rotation, what times to show their movies, etc. This would give Disney even more power to do things of that nature. Also, and I think this one is huge, this deal will lesson the number of studios for creators to go to in order to get their shows, animations, or movies out there. Think about Fox Searchlight. They put out a number of great independent movies every year. Who's going to put out those movies now? Disney? Disney already has their own independent operation going. So what would happen with things like Fox Searchlight? Also, what would happen with characters like Deadpool and Wolverine. Would Disney try to make them more kid friendly or would they keep them like they are? Questions have to be asked.

The worst thing about this deal, though, is what I read on Forbes. They've already estimated that if this deal goes through Disney will eliminate $2 billion in cost saving measures. Meaning they'd do away with redundancies because Disney already has their own operation and they probably already have a lot of the same departments and positions that Fox has. So those jobs, just gone. People, that's $2 billion in jobs that will disappear. That's a lot of people that are going to be out of jobs. Even if you consider the big execs that make millions a year. Well there's still little ole Sandy in HR that only makes 50,000 a year and she'll get a pink slip and 2 weeks pay. I'm not sure I like that. It will also give Disney everything they need to start their streaming service. Which means we're probably going to lose the Netflix Marvel shows as Disney will want to stream them.

There's a lot to think about is all I'm saying, however, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm over the moon at the prospect of one day, probably sooner than later, having Wolverine punch Hulk in the face in a MCU movie. Can't wait.

 

[Deoxyribonucleic A.C.I.D.]

I wanna talk about the one thing I have knowlegde on and that is of course the Marvel situation. Disney can now make Marvel-based movies for the next 20 years at minimum, with ease, without rebooting the current MCU. Phase 1 to 3 lasted 10 years and now they can make another 3 phases and then milk it to make 3 more. 20 years in total.

List of movies that can happen? Just on top of my head:

Spoiler

X-Men by Marvel
Marvel's Deadpool
New Wolverine
A proper Wolverine Origins
X-Force
New Mutants by Marvel
House of M
Avengers vs X-Men
maybe a movie based on Ultimatum
Phoenix Saga
movie about Emma Frost
movie about Magneto, Wanda and Pietro
F4 trilogy
Galactus as the new Super Cosmos Villain
Dr. Doom in other Marvel things
Spiderman and F4 (long history there)
A whole movie about Skrulls
Hulk vs Wolverine
Wolverine in New Avengers
Secret War

These are like 20 different films. Add there anything Marvel could stll have done without those characters, which add up to about 10 proper films. We have 30 films just from the top of my head. 15 years at least. It's insane!

And it's not just that. Disney now owns literally half of Hollywood, if not more. I mean, who else is there to compete with them? Sony is at an alliance with them. Universal? Warner Brothers? Paramount? Fox is way too much of an asset and Marvel Studios is turning into a giant of its own.

 

[Alex]

I feel this is going to end up like the Invasion. People will think up loads of great scenarios but what will actually happen will be disappointing.

I don't see how Fox couldn't have just sold Disney the X-Men/Fantastic Four and the rest of the Star Wars stuff. They would have got a large chunk of change from that and would have been able to carry on as normal.

Disney now owns about 25% of the film industry. If that doesn't indirectly affect the quality of films coming out I'll be surprised. And as Phenom said a lot of people will probably end up without jobs as Disney probably have the same departments and will only keep a few Fox employees.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

As a big fan of the show, I'm interested to see how they'll handle American Horror Story, a show that relies on pushing the envelope with the dialogue and social commentary, or if they'll keep it around after the eighth season. Snowfall is another favorite of mine, but I just can't imagine the show working out, if the powers that be decide to tone things down.

Hopefully this means we'll finally get a good or memorable Fantastic Four film. There's always room for improvement with X-Men, and this deal pretty much guarantees Marvel will dominate the superhero genre for a long time.

 

[SPX]

It sucks.

Disney is basically becoming the Google of the film industry. They own all of their traditional properties, all the Marvel stuff, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, all the Pixar stuff, and now they own 20th Century Fox's film division.

It makes me feel like an antitrust suit is coming. It is just not good when a single company has this much power in an industry.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

It sucks.

Disney is basically becoming the Google of the film industry. They own all of their traditional properties, all the Marvel stuff, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, all the Pixar stuff, and now they own 20th Century Fox's film division.

It makes me feel like an antitrust suit is coming. It is just not good when a single company has this much power in an industry.

Maybe not, but they will be able to argue they are giving the public what they want... Anti-trust could also have been levelled at the way some rights like Fox's Marvel ones were hoarded/kept over the years... I don't see many more being allowed to be bought... but I think at this level, they'll get through any scrutiny fine.