The Disney/Fox Deal: Questions and Consequences

Still a total cluster that would require a crack team of highly-paid attorneys to definitively sort out (and thus, Disney doesn't care to do that anytime soon), and still split between Universal (film distribution rights) and Disney (absolutely everything else, including film production rights), respectively, last I checked.

Edited by TrashJack on Sep 22nd 2018 at 9:19:14 AM

There is no need to do anything about the Hulk rights. Universal has only distribution rights for any movie which has "Hulk" in the title, they don't have any rights on the character itself. Marvel actually tricked them there by buying back the character rights and leaving them something which is utterly worthless for universal, because as long as Marvel doesn't use Hulk as title character, they can do whatever they want. And it turned out that Hulk works better if you pair him with another hero anyway. Serves you the problem that the audience is forced to spend the majority of the movie with Bruce Banner, waiting for the Hulk to turn up.

And Namor, well, information are sparse there. I am not quite clear about this particular clusterf… of different rights-holder, but if anyone can free him out of legal limbo, it's the Disney lawyers. There were rumours that they finally managed it two years beforehand, so it is entirely possible that we will get to see Namor past Phase three. But if he doesn't turn up then, well, don't expect him to turn up at all.

Regarding Fox and ABC: As far as I can tell the FOX TV channels are overall still running pretty stable, but ABC, well, not so much. So it would make sense to keep the bigger manager.

The bigger question is what happens to ABC News. Sherwood's rise to fame came as President of ABC News and is very much a news guy, and even during his time as President of Disney/ABC he seemed to be bolstering ABC's news department more than the entertainment side of the network. Peter Rice...isn't much of a news guy and most of his resume is dedicated to entertainment than nonfiction and news programming.

And before anyone brings up Fox News, Rice doesn't oversee that unit (it's part of Fox News Group and is a separate group from the rest of Fox Entertainment) and is not part of the Disney deal along with the Fox network.

I doubt that Disney would ever go Fox news. I have the feeling that they will focus more on the kind of entertainment which is better to digest if you watch it live, though. Sports, game shows aso.

Really sad to be a Comcast investor today. Stock down nearly 7% as of this writing, while Disney and Fox are up nearly 1.3% and 1.4%, respectively.

Disney and Fox seem to have made the right call to let Sky go.

They have, but this would have happened anyway. Comcast's stocks currently go down whenever they want to purchase something, no matter what.

Fox will sell its stake in Sky to Comcast for $15 billion.

This can mean four things:

• Disney is focused on reducing as much debt load as possible from their deal with Fox.
• Disney can live with Comcast's 30% ownership in Hulu, even if Comcast makes their lives a living hell, as long as Disney owns a majority.
• Disney isn't interested in making any asset swaps with Comcast.
• Disney doesn't see Marvel theme park rights in Orlando or the solo Hulk movie rights (both of which Universal owns) as a priority.

Smart move IMO.

And five: Disney actually might not be that interested in Sky after all. They don't exactly put up a fight there.

But yes, smart move. There is no need to go to war about any of this.

Comcast wanted a war thou lol

I think even Comcast is ready to go back in its corner for now. Next fight will happen for market shares. As usual.

Comcast is so transparently trying to screw Disney over even if they lost money is so hilarious if it isn't for the Comcast stockholders being screwed over.

So it looks like Fox is rushing out all these projects out the door (i.e. X-Force, Gambit, a sequel to The Simpsons Movie, among other things) before Disney formally takes over. I wonder how many of these projects will be canned quickly after the takeover?

Gambit.

The X-men/Marvel projects for sure with the exception of Deadpool. Maybe they will release what is done, but not necessarily theatrically.

Lot of Netflix exclusives.

I read some report (from Deadline, I believe) that hints Disney could announce the post-acquisition corporate structure as soon as Monday. Might want to keep an eye out for next week.

While Stacey Snider is expected to be on her way out, Fox film vice chair Emma Watts may join Disney under a new role at Disney-owned Fox, potentially running the film side.

This likely means that Disney will operate Fox like a brand similar to Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures, with Fox Searchlight and Fox as their fifth and sixth brands, with Watts running the Fox brand.

Edited by Mario1995 on Oct 1st 2018 at 12:28:49 PM

This might also calm some people down:

"The one exception is specialty unit Fox Searchlight, which Iger has repeatedly said will remain intact under the leadership of Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley. Searchlight puts Disney — the former owner of Harvey and Bob Weinstein's Miramax — back in the awards game in a major way."

Just to reiterate that point.

Sounds like I was pretty spot on which my prediction article I wrote a while back...there I said that Disney will do a big branding exercise, in which whatever fits in Disney's existing brands (Pixar, Disney Animation Studio, Lucasfilm, Marvel and Walt Disney Pictures) from Fox to Disney (that's mostly relevant for the Marvel properties), Turn Fox Searchlight into one big brand and leave everything else under the Fox umbrella, with the possibility of them maybe establishing some sort of Horror/Sci Fi Brand with the various Fox I Ps. The latter one is exactly the kind of thing Watts might be able to do.

I’d still prefer they let Murdoch keep the Fox name.

I don't care either way...the association is unfortunate, but then, 20th Century Fox has been a thing since...I think it was the 1950s when 20th century and Fox merged, but in any case, the company is decades old. Though if Disney is smart it will remove the "Fox" part from the searchlight label. Just in case.

20th Century Pictures and Fox Film Corporation merged in 1935.

In other news, FOX network head Gary Newman is, as long-rumored, expected to stay at New Fox.

Knew that there was a five in it. Thanks for clarifying.

There is actually still one big question mark regarding the new structure...what will happen with Blue Sky? I still expect Disney to flip it over...they could use the money and they don't really have a use for another animation studio.

Also, I am ready to bet that they will move the Avatar Franchise to Walt Disney Picture and release it under the Disney name.

I agree that Disney probably won't keep Blue Sky as a separate entity after the Fox acquisition is finished. That said, I also don't see them selling it (at least, selling it whole; piecemeal could be a different story), if only because Comcast also doesn't need another 3D animation studio after building up Illumination Entertainment and buying DreamWorks Animation (and probably wouldn't want to put more money in Disney's pockets just to get the hat trick), and no other American film studios are big enough and/or in good enough financial shape to have the cash ready to afford the kind of prices Disney would demand to sell a potential competitor in the field of CGI animation off to one of their existing competitors (for the same reason Fox refused to sell off the Fantastic Four movie rights to Disney/Marvel even after Fant4stic went bust, until Disney buying out Fox made it a moot point).

More likely, I think they'd fold Blue Sky's assets (particularly their rendering hardware and software, as well as some personnel knowledgeable about how to operate them) into Walt Disney Animation, Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, or some combination of the above, move Blue Sky's existing movies into WDA's back catalog (and potentially have WDA and/or Pixar pick up some of Blue Sky's pending projects), and shutter Blue Sky as a studio.

Edited by TrashJack on Oct 1st 2018 at 2:14:33 PM

Maybe, but Paramount might be interested, and there are certainly all the streaming content providers. Netflix, Amazon aso might be interested in owning their own animation studio.

Eh, I hope we get to at least have that Nimona movie before Blue Sky goes kaput... (I keep hearing great things about that comic.)

That being said, I wonder if that movie's development will work out fine based on how the creator, Noelle Stevenson, and her fiancee Molly Knox Ostertag (who also had her book The Witch Boy picked up by Fox Animation) have had a hand in some of Disney's more recent shows (Wander Over Yonder, DuckTales, Tangled: The Series and Big Hero 6: The Series going by her IMDb page for the former and Star vs. the Forces of Evil and the upcoming Owl House for the latter).

Incidentally, I literally didn't know Noelle was on BH6: The Series until now.

That lady's non-stop.