So there has been a lot of confusion and worries about The Walt Disney Company and Fox merging and today I thought to try and make sense of it in the best way I can. This merger was announced last year and lots of us have been wanting to know what this means for the companies as well as the impact it will have on the world. At present, nothing has been confirmed as this merger is awaiting approval from the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division following a different merger involving Warner Bros. and AT&T that they denied. But here's what will happen should it be approved:
History
Now Disney are no strangers to purchasing companies as they have previously purchased other big companies (though not as big as Fox). This followed the departure of Michael Eisner who was the Chairman and CEO of Disney for a while, but took the company down a dark path and wanted to make sequels and prequels to Pixar films without their involvement. So with his departure, Bob Iger who had previously been head of ABC Television (which Disney owns) and the Chief Operating Officer for Disney, took over and quickly dealt with Pixar by acquiring the company for $7.4 billion and making two of their employees Ed Catmull and John Lasseter as heads of all Disney Animation which included Walt Disney Animation Studios (who create the animated classics), DisneyToon Studios (who create animated direct to home media and occasional theatrical films) and Pixar. Around the same time, Iger also managed to get the rights to Oswald the Rabbit back from Universal by giving them one of ABC Sports' sportscasters in exchange. Next they would buy Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion which gave Disney the distribution rights to the Marvel Cinematic Universe TV shows and films as well as some of the cartoons. A result of this gave the president of Marvel Entertainment Kevin Feige some more creative power and worked alongside Stan Lee to gain the rights to many of their characters back. Next up would be LucasFilm which Disney acquired for $4 billion also which would be run by Kathleen Kennedy while George Lucas would still remain as creative consultant and gave Disney the rights to Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Plans for future films in both franchises were underway with Star Wars getting a new trilogy of films as well as a complete revamp of the timeline and Indiana Jones getting more films as well. Though because of this, LucasArts were dissolved and games they were developing at the time such as Star Wars 1313 were cancelled. The last company before Fox that Disney would buy next was Maker Studios which Disney bought for $500 million and they help produce many of the biggest channels on YouTube such as Markipler, Jacksepticeye, PewDiePie (who has since left the company for personal reasons) and Epic Rap Battles of History. All of this now brings us to the present where Disney plans to purchase Fox.
The Deal
So the planned price of the deal is $52.4 billion (way more than the other companies) and in the deal, Marvel will get the rights to X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool back with Kevin Feige planning to include them in the MCU probably in Phase 4. Also Disney would get the distribution rights to the very first Star Wars film which Fox had permanent distribution rights for (the others would be reverted to Disney in 2020) and Disney would also get the Fox distributed DreamWorks Animation films which Disney can use to get the rights to solo Hulk films from Universal back (as Universal have the right to refusal in that regard). Blue Sky Studios (who create the Rio and Ice Age films) would become Disney's fourth animation studio and will likely have the same treatment as the other three animation studios. Disney will also be acquiring all of Fox's film and television studios, some of their sport channels, the Nat Geo stuff and Sky (which is a european based digital television service who also specialise in mobile phones, landlines and broadband). They also get the film and television libraries from said companies and this will include the distribution rights. They also get the rights to the first two Power Rangers films as well as Digimon: The Movie and Avatar. Anything to do with News and some sports will be spun off in its own company separate from Disney which will be run by the head of Fox Rupert Murdoch.
So in conclusion, its a major thing for Disney and it would make them more powerful than any other company in the world. It is quite worrying, but the hopes I have are that Disney keep the Fox label on such things like the Simpsons and Family Guy while establishing themselves as a major competitor to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Video. Its got its positives and negatives, but hopefully it will all work out in the end. Though it does make me wonder who will be next.
No comments:
Post a Comment