Disney has agreed to buy out 20th Century Fox
from its parent company, 21st Century Fox (formerly News
International), and chief executive Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch has been looking to
offload 20th Century Fox to focus instead on his sports and news
brands in the United States.
The deal is one of the largest entertainment mergers in history,
worth over $68 billion (once debts are taken into account). It sees Disney take
control of the vast back catalogue, current film slate and future greenlit film projects from Fox and numerous (but not all) TV properties. These include franchises ranging from Alien, Planet of the Apes and Avatar
to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Simpsons.
Particularly of value to Disney will be the re-merging of
properties. As a result of this merger, Star
Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (aka “the original one”) is now reunited with
the rest of the Star Wars franchise
for perpetuity. Previously Fox had permanent ownership of the film (in a deal
done with George Lucas to finance budget overruns on The Empire Strikes Back in 1979). More interesting is that the deal
also reunites all the characters licensed by Marvel to 20th Century
Fox back in the late 1990s, including the X-Men
and Deadpool franchises and the
upcoming X-Force and Dark Phoenix movies. It also gives
Disney distribution rights to the Fantastic
Four franchise, although production rights remain with a third party
(although without Disney’s cooperation they wouldn’t be able to release any
more movies, so this is likely not a major issue). Whether the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters will now be integrated into the upcoming
Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with rumours circling that Phase
Four will be a clean-slate reboot, which needs to be confirmed) remains to be
seen, but it’s known that Marvel Studios exec Kevin Feige has been particularly
eager to get his hands on the X-Men
and Fantastic Four roster of
villains.
One of the big winners out of this will be Disney’s new
streaming service, planned to launch in 2019. This streaming service will now,
presumably, have access to 20th Century Fox’s entire back-library of
films and TV shows (at least as those licenses with other distributors such
Netflix and Amazon expire). In addition, Disney will acquire Fox’s share in
online streaming service Hulu, giving them control over the operation. It may
even be that Hulu will be transformed into the new Disney streaming service
(which will likely have a Disney-branded children’s stream and
differently-branded adult service), allowing Disney to build on a successful
base rather than starting everything from scratch. Disney’s animation wing will
also be strengthened by the addition of The
Simpsons, as well as getting an adult-oriented slew of animation
programming including Family Guy and
Archer.
The deal includes not just 20th Century Fox but
also the FX Network Group, National Geographic and Fox’s stake in Sky TV in the
UK. Fox’s total buy-out of Sky is more likely to succeed now, with Disney seen
as a less controversial choice by the UK government. The Fox Broadcasting
Company, Fox Television Studios, the Fox News Channel, the Fox Business Network
and Fox Sports are excluded and will form their own new, independent company.
3 comments:
Maybe now we'll finally get a Blu-ray boxed set of Star Wars IV-VI
Basically Disney is entertainment Pacman. It rolls around gobbling up all of the production/film/entertainment companies and in another decade it's going to end up becoming a real life version of Weyland-Yutani but with comic books instead of interstellar spaceships.
I'm not sure this is that good of a deal for fans. I know a lot of fans are just waiting for Marvel Studios to put the X-Men alongside the Avengers but the movies are doing fine on their own. Also, putting the X-Men in a Marvel means it is going to be a MARVEL movie and that means they are going to follow the Marvel formula. Don't expect another movie like Logan if that happens.
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