70 billion dollars and what really do they have to show for it?
The purchase gave them an insane amount of debt so they immediately laid off a lot of former fox employees and recently laid off 7000 employees to save them 5 billion.
They also haven’t done much of anything with the Fox catalog.
Most of the new 20th century films were unceremoniously slapped onto Hulu streaming.
- Hellraiser 2022
- Prey
- New Mutants
- No Exit
- Barbarian
- Boston Strangler
- Crater
And more were all put on streaming and forgotten. Some of these movies were pretty good and could have made some money in theaters. I really liked Barbarian myself and Prey got a ton of praise.
What exactly did they get that was worth 70 billion? Avatar? The Simpsons? They could have just licensed those for Disney+ and saved a ton of money. Most of Fox’s properties don’t fit Disney. What are they even going to do with Alien, Predator, and Planet of the Apes? If Prey is any indication they aren’t interested in putting them in theaters.
Before someone says X-Men what the hell have they even done with them? Some lame cameos. I’ll never forgive them for the quicksilver gag in Wandavision. They got beat bad by Fox in the who has the cooler quicksilver so they make him a dick joke. Great.
They aren’t going to do anything with the X-Men anytime soon. The 3rd Deadpool movie seems to be the only thing even cooking and that seems to be more because Ryan Reynolds is pushing it. If you’re an X-Men fan you must be disappointed. Remember when we had an X-Men movie about every year? Say goodbye to those and Alien, Predator, Planet of the Apes.
FX seems to be doing alright but all to adult for Disney so to Hulu it goes. Why did they make a big deal out of Disney+ anyway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have one app? Put it all on Hulu. Why are their two apps with very different interfaces for one company?
Now that Disney is losing money in streaming and with recent flops I think this deal needs to be scrutinized more. Blame Capitalism or streaming mania but I have to say even from a business standpoint it makes no sense at all.
What do you think? Was this the beginning of the end for Disney’s box office dominance? A bad play to kill Netflix? Or is Disney planning something that will take years to bear fruit?
It wasn’t a waste of money to prevent another studio buying them up and using those properties against them. They decimated potential competition, that’s very valuable.
That’s why consolidation like this really needs more anti-trust scrutiny. If Fox was going to be sold, it should never have been Disney that was allowed to buy it. They eliminated a major competitor and took all its resources away from everyone else, only to cut jobs and leave those properties to languish in obscurity. Because no one is allowed to make money in Hollywood except them. That’s not a healthy market.
Yeah, the famous free and unbiased market
Perhaps but there has always been the Big 5 major studios. Right now there is Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Studios, and Sony Pictures. Used to Sony wouldn’t be counted or they would say big 6 but there has normally been 5 major studios. One dies another takes it’s place.
RKO and MGM used to be part of the big 5 back in the day now gone but replaced. I think the same will happen here. Someone will fill the gap. Apple is spending big money for Scorsese and Ridley Scott. Amazon and Netflix are also trying to be players. I don’t think Disney made the dent in competition that they thought they were going to make.
They reacquired a significant amount of critical Marvel IP, they completed ownership of Star Wars (the first film was owned by Fox), they acquired a huge portfolio of lucrative IP (one of things you are complaining about), but most importantly they acquired Star… a huge media presence outside the US, especially in Asia.
Also, don’t forget that the merger only completed in 2019, right before a particular major global event that we only just started coming out of… and which continues to impact the film industry in particular in some very wild ways.
Also Fox Sports International. People often seem to forget that Disney isn’t just a production studio, it’s a media empire, they make the most money from their linear TV networks, especially the sports channels. Also their parks and merch departments make more money than they make directly from movies. The movies they put in the cinema are just tools to get people to buy merch, go to the parks and to get eyes on the ads on the networks.
I think you are expecting changes too soon. X-Men will likely be joining the MCU: Deadpool 3 and Fantastic Four are both upcoming. The MCU is announced though 2027, so the earliest we might see X-Men is 2028.
Disney has future plans to roll Hulu content into Disney. The reason it hasn’t is that Disney does not own Hulu outright: it owns 2/3 of Hulu, and Comcast owns 1/3. In January 2024, both companies have the option to force Disney to buy Comcast’s shares, which will then give Disney 100% ownership.
Mergers are not magic things that make everything change the next day. It takes years. My company merged with another 8 years ago and only in the past year have we lined up our pay schedule and rebranded all our offices. Disney only bought Fox 4 years ago. It might be another decade before everything is finalized.
Sure things take time but look how quickly they moved on Star Wars and Marvel. They made a deal with Sony for Spider-Man and then he’s immediately in Civil War. I just don’t understand the hold up. Also I don’t think Deadpool is going to bridge the gap between Marvel and Fox X-Men. I don’t think Disney world use a R rated comedy for that. I think a lot of people expected Multiverse of madness to bring the X-Men in and when it didn’t happen they were disappointed. Marvel seems to be running out of steam if I were them I’d shove in as many X-Men as I could.
Yes, Marvel and Lucasfilm seem to have been easier acquisitions, good point. And add Pixar to that.
Fox is another story, I believe. 1) it is much larger, just going by the pirchase price. 2) doesn‘t fox also own a lot of distribution, tv channels, and more? Marvel and Lucasfilm never had their own distribution.
Also, to comment on the OP: if you name the purchase price, you should also name the annual revenue and profit of Fox pre-merger. That should put things in perspective.
Yes, they rented a character to use him in a movie and then made that movie. That’s how that works. For Star Wars, they bought it specifically so they could make Star Wars movies, and it still took 3 years.
Neither are the same as buying a major company with multiple TV channels, international broadcasters, and partial stakes in 2 other companies. The merger itself took 1.5 years.
And then after the merger, they still had existing contracts to deal with, FOX films that were still releasing under the old studio name, TV network contracts, etc.
So yeah, Deadpool 3 is coming out 5 years after the merger, which is two years longer than it took them to make a movie after buying Lucasfilm, which was a way way way smaller acquisition. And there they were reciting an existing franchise, while Deadpool appears to be the only FOX franchise they intend to continue. Kind of explains itself.
Oh don’t worry, they’ll be cranking out X-Men movies and shows soon enough. It can take awhile to get projects off the ground with script approval, casting, and preproduction. Once everything is locked in it becomes much easier to oil the machine.
Disney has also always had different studio brands. They release R rated stuff and other types of content that “isn’t Disney” under different studio names, and some you probably never even realized it was Disney.
Edit: there’s also other factors like COVID delays, and now union strikes.
Maybe eventually but it went from an X-Men a year to maybe one in a few years after the current slate of marvel movies.
Disney does have different brands but they aren’t going to put them on Disney Plus so it doesn’t make sense from a strategy perspective. If their goal was to kill Netflix they failed big time.
You have such a narrow view point here bud.
Well explain yourself because Disney has never cared about their more adult movies. They sold their Mirimax catalog back in 2010. Why go spend 70 billion on the Fox catalog? For Hulu? So they can have more studios? It can’t be for just X-Men. When they had the rights to Spder-Man they used him immediately they haven’t even announced or hinted an X-Men movie.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to write and produce and shoot new movies? Thats a lot of movies coming or in development for a studio. Also given that superhero movies are some of the most valuable properties in the world right now. That absolutely makes sense for just the X-Men. And they’re just slowly introducing them to the universe. It’s called story building. They also got along the X-Men from Fox basically having complete rights to all their characters now besides a few universal studios rights and Sony’s film rights.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_20th_Century_Studios_films
I know it takes a long time to make a movie but they haven’t even hinted at an X-Men film. They have a Fantastic 4 movie in the works so it’s not out of the question to have an X-Men movie.
That lame cameo in Wandavision that was a dick joke and Patrick Stewart showing up in Multiverses of Madness is not what I’d call story telling. They could of had a more significant role for quicksilver or have something like Spider-Man was in Civil War. I figured they would pivot off the success of the Fox films and start putting them in their movies but it seems like they want to completely start over. But then why have cameos from the Fox movies that don’t really mean anything?
It seems to me like they bought Fox because it was on sale rather than having a real plan for it.
Because it all makes money and audiences are easily manipulated. Tbh it seems like you just have a chip on your shoulder that no rational explanation for what 20th century is doing under disney will explain or satisfy. So imma be done with this cause you are objectively wrong. And Disney buying 20th century was worth it for the simple fact of less competition and the superhero properties they gained back. They really don’t need shit else to make it worth it given how much money they make on cinema as is .
I don’t think I have a chip in my shoulder at all lol. I don’t have any beef with Disney or fox. I’m just thinking it was a bad investment. Look at it with their past purchases on mind. They bought Star Wars for 4 billion made quick use of it too. Same with Marvel and Pixar. All of these were great deals for Disney. They made their money back in no time. 70 billion is a lot more than 4 billion. It will take a very long time to recoup the money and from my perspective I don’t think it was the right move.
You could put out 5 Avengers movies that make Endgame level money and still not even get close to paying that back. It will take a decade or more to pay that off. It’s been 4 years and they don’t have much to show for it.
The value of an acquisition is almost never about synergy, assets, tech, or the catalog you got out of it.
It’s usually about extinguishing competition and squeezing any remaining juice from your core offerings and products at a higher price.
They still have significant competition from other streamers and a lot of their Fox properties are on Hulu rather than Disney Plus. They are bleeding subscribers and they can’t afford to raise prices too much. I know they are going to raise prices soon but it’s a careful balancing act they can’t afford to make it too pricey.
By acquiring fox they have 60% ownership interest in Hulu. It’s that simple.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/hulu-and-disney-subscriptions-are-going-up-heres-how-much/
I’m sure the timing is coincidence and has nothing to do with Disney controlling the largest market share of streaming services.
Nearly every acquisition is about extinguishing competition and squeezing more juice from your core products. It’s why oil and gas buys green tech to toss it in the bin, it’s why Google buys waze and essentially halts development on it, it’s why Microsoft bought blizzard. They extract any value from what they bought but that is secondary to eliminating a company that they’d have to compete with on price.
https://dealroom.net/blog/biggest-m-a-deals-2022
Every coy news article that pretends there’s some sort of 3d chess going on or some big unknowable synergies is a joke. They’ll give the acquired divisions to some much more competent middle managers to see if there’s any value to extract, but it’s secondary to the main objective. Disney would much rather collaborate with n-1 competitors (Netflix is really it?)
I think MS buying Activision is also a losing play but MS is in a better position to spend that kind of money compared to Disney.
If the strategy was to kill Hulu then why keep it around? Just axe it or sell it and put all your stuff on one app. I also don’t get the Paramount+ and Showtime strategy. If you are trying to beat Netflix by having better content why split it into 2 apps?
Streaming could be a whole other post really. All these companies have bought into having their own app and they are all losing big time. Might be time to reevaluate streaming in general.
Long term they may axe hulu but comcast still has an ownership interest. For now they have subscribers and show contracts that are probably limited to that platform. Let them expire, renew what’s earning, and write off any homegrown content for whatever % of goodwill of the acquisition price it accounts for. Most importantly though - they’ll continue to raise prices unabated.
I can’t predict the future but they’ll probably let hulu stagnate for the next few years and payoff remaining shareholders when its time to snuff it.
Can’t comment on Microsoft and Activision too much, but it will be the same drivers. Microsoft has been pushing game pass aggressively at a loss, and when companies are operating at a loss in a product segment they’re in the extend phase. They’re also very publicly focused on xbox market share. Maybe the next COD game will be gamepass exclusive or something dumb like that, idk.
Streaming could be a whole other post really. All these companies have bought into having their own app and they are all losing big time.
I’d be cautious jumping to that conclusion. Netflix, Disney, and Amazon are all extremely profitable. The news makes it sound like there’s blood in the street but its just that earnings aren’t growing exponentially as fast as before. The smaller ones might be having trouble competing but I haven’t really looked in to it.
We don’t have Hulu in Canada, but Disney+ is by far the best streaming service here. It appears as though it carries a lot of the stuff that’s on hulu in the states.
Yeah they rebrand it as the “Starz” catalogue when it’s a bit too mature for the D+ brand. From my understanding, that branding is actually very popular in Asia and they introduced it to North America through the Canadian D+ offerings.
I agree that D+ is actually the best bang for your buck streaming service, because their catalogue is relatively static since they own all the rights. That catalogue doesn’t really need to be Netflix massive because it’s mostly quality content, while Netflix is still pumping out garbage. Finally the cherry on top is having all the Fox content through the Starz branding.
Avatar, Star Wars, the Simpsons, Alien, Predator, X-Men, Fantastic Four.
The IP alone…
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/20/18273477/disney-fox-merger-deal-details-marvel-x-men
I think that the fox purchase was a long-term play as part of its streaming strategy. It gave them access to a bigger catalogue of movies and shows and kept another competitor from releasing another streaming platform. It also gave them a majority stake in Hulu that they didn’t have before.
They specifically let the live tv content such as Fox News, the fox affiliates, and fox sports and the regional sports networks out of the deal because they weren’t interested in non-ondemand content
We won’t truly know if the fox purchase was a waste of money until we see if the Disney streaming experiment was a failure or not. If it survives the price hikes without losing to many subscribers then it probably won’t be
Do you need access to a bigger catalog if all the streamers are just putting content in the vault to save on residual payments?
Even if it’s in the vault, it’s content that fox isn’t licensing out to competitors that they may have if they were an independent entity
I think Disney Plus is in a lot of trouble. It’s costing Disney a lot of money and hurting their cable channels and box office returns. I wouldn’t call it a failure yet but it’s far from a success.
Not to mention that, despite a strong start with Mandalorian, Loki, Wandavision, etc., so many of the Disney+ originals lately have been not great. It’s really no different from Netflix.
Having the ability to do merchandising with Family Guy and The Simpsons in addition to the catalog offerings is the obvious win. There’s so much stupid branded shit. Fox was always the best about merchandising because they got their lunch stolen by George Lucas on Star Wars.
Probably. Honestly Disney has latched itself to a lot of properties that really don’t fit the Disney image. They’ve also become too big. If it was me, I’d split the company in two. Let Disney/Pixar/Marvel be one company, and ABC/ESPN/ABC/etc into another.
Disney doesn’t really care all that much about box office dominance (except insofar as they want to be number one in everything because capitalism). Streaming is their biggest revenue source by far, with the second biggest being the parks.
No, for real. Disney makes more money from parks than they do from movies. Even with the billion dollar successes from Marvel, movies are still a solid third on their balance sheet.
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True about the parks, but besides Avatar none of Fox’s properties really fit the Disney parks.
What about their animated TV catalogue? I reckon The Simpsons would fit well in a Park. Definitely Futurama too - especially now with the reboot. The Seth MacFarlane projects maybe not so much.
No, but they do fit streaming and TV, which as I mentioned above is their number one money maker by far. Like, to be clear, streaming and TV make 1.5x as much as parks, merchandise and movies combined.
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Both without any real marketing and I’m pretty sure same day streaming. Felt like Disney didn’t care too much about them.
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The Simpsons and Family Guy alone are worth 70 billion. You factor in merchandising and catalog, there are a lot of people who would just sign up to a streaming service just for those shows. The Simpsons is a merchandising juggernaut. There’s billions of dollars in the stupid branded shit - this is also why they bought Star Wars and have basically shrugged off the fact that they botched the trilogy with the immense amount of money they are able to print off of the merchandising.
In Canada they do have the Fox/Hulu library as part of Disney+ because Hulu never launched here - we’re a tangled web of media rights between the telcom conglomerates that own the rights to most of the stuff and keep the market noncompetitive. Most of the rights of Fox stuff was probably owned by Rogers or Bell and therefore not worth launching the service up here. That’s how HBO is. HBO’s content is all licensed by Bell so it’s on their shitty streaming service. Most of us would pay for HBO or MAX or whatever the fuck if it was a standalone service, but we can’t.
I feel like both the Simpsons and family guy had their day in the sun but aren’t the cultural phenomenons they used to be. They would need to sell a lot of bart plushies to make 70 billion and do kids even care about the Simpsons anymore? It’s been over a decade since its heyday.
My guy you’re talking about the studio that sold BB-8 branded oranges. You’d be surprised what people buy.
Fair point but Star Wars was already huge in merchandising before the purchase and Disney has arguably hurt the toy sales with their recent movies and over exposure.
The TV offerings have given an endless amount of merchandising opportunities. The trilogy is not important, because the TV shows have been good. All I really need to say is two words: Baby Yoda.
I say this as I am wearing a Mandalorian t-shirt, looking over at my Lego build of the N1 fighter, thinking about all of the new Star Wars content coming out of the Dave Filoni camp. I think of all the casual fans who clamor for the cute Grogu merch. People like my sister who have no real interest in Star Wars are very into Grogu much the same way folks are into baby Groot.
Prey and Barbarian were good.
