On early Friday morning, shareholders of Disney and 21st Century Fox unsurprisingly approved the Mouse House’s $71.3 billion buyout of the film studio and all their assets.
Despite a last-minute bid from Comcast (they own Universal) a few weeks back that ultimately proved pointless apart from maybe making Disney spend more money.
As reported by Variety, the separate meetings happened in New York and took less than 10-15 minutes for the deal to be agreed because who doesn’t like a shit tonne of money and shares in a successful company that continue to make a shit tonne of money.
The merger is set to be completed by the first half of 2019.
My thoughts on this are pretty strong. This is an awful thing for the industry, we’ll be getting fewer films especially Oscar calibre, fewer opportunities for young upcoming writers and directors to get their movie greenlit and the minimum of 5,000 people losing their jobs.
It’s ok though because Fantastic Four and X-Men are coming home.
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| IMAGE VIA MARVEL |
This deal, despite what fanboys thing, isn’t about F4 and X-Men (I doubt Disney actually gives a shit) it’s about the other properties they can use for their upcoming streaming service.
As they want to rival Netflix and having Star Wars series, multiple Marvel series (maybe bringing in Daredevil etc) and then you have The Simpsons, Family Guy and original films.
Additionally, Disney can now re-release the classic trilogy on DVD and Blu-ray.
However, with Pixar, Disney Animation, Disney live-action adaptation of classic animated films, Marvel, Star Wars, Disney live action and I can’t think of anything more.
They’ll be a lot of Fox franchises laying waste and could be up for grabs as I can’t see them having an R-rated section, I know they had in the past, as everyone nowadays especially to “normal people” think Disney make fun, family-friendly films.
Plus if they did less some of these franchises, then they can make some money back.
Plus if they did less some of these franchises, then they can make some money back.
So looking into it, the first franchise I can see leaving will be Matthew Vaughn and his Marv Studios.
In early June, Vaughn set out his plan for future Kingsman films as well as a new series plus a rebooted Kick-Ass and possible Hit-Girl film. With all this and with Millarworld is already at this studio it’ll make sense for Vaughn to join up with the comic book creator at Netflix.
It’ll be the perfect home as Netflix would be looking for a TV series to cover the loss of their Marvel properties will an eight hour-long episode Kingsman series.
Then you have the third of the Eggy trilogy, a Statesman films and the back-to-back film Kingsman: The Great Game focusing on the beginnings of the spy organisation in the 1900s.
Then you have a Patience Lee led Kick-Ass reboot and a solo Hit Girl with either a younger or older Mindy Macready.
Moving onto Alien is an interesting one because while the recent films haven’t been received well, it’s still a franchise that has taken $1.5 billion worldwide at the box office.
Taking this into account there could be a bit of a battle for the Alien franchise with Universal and Warner Bros likely to lead the way. It’s easy to say Blumhouse and New Line Cinema are leading the way in modern day horror and Alien doesn’t need to be a major budgeted film franchise.
Moreover, with the money they could bring into their sister studio I could see Warner Bros/New Line bringing Alien into their horror family.
Elsewhere, another horror/action franchise Predator could be up for sale and (if Alien went to WB) Universal could be a decent home for the property as I can’t see Warner buying something similar to Alien.
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| IMAGE VIA EMPIRE MAGAZINE |
If they don’t go for Predator, then Warner Bros could use any extra AT&T money to bid for Die Hard and reboot the franchise. Just imagine a Ben Affleck led and directed Die Hard franchise. Yet they’ll have a battle on their hands against the other major studios.
Going back to Universal, they'd be the ideal place with Working Title and Focus Features to bring and continue the work with the Agatha Christie films and Kenneth Branagh's Poirot franchise.
After a poorly (putting it nicely) received sequel could Independence Day be up for sale? I honestly can’t see what Disney could do with it, let alone other studios. However, if it is then I can see Sony and Paramount bidding for the property.
It's likely it'll be left alone and Disney won't even have the headache of trying to do something with it.
It's likely it'll be left alone and Disney won't even have the headache of trying to do something with it.
The only other franchise I could see be biddable is Planet of the Apes, it’s doubtful because, with Marvel and Star Wars, Disney have proved they can do PG-13 films with some adult tones. It’s also doubtful due to the superb recent Apes trilogy and I can’t see another Apes film for the next 10-15 years.
Meanwhile, they’ll have to be question marks over the future of Fox Searchlight and with this being the case Netflix should be jumping at the bit to get some of these calibre films to compete with the A24’s and Amazon Studios.
Then again Disney could keep and rebrand it in which I could generally see Kevin Feige stepping away from Marvel to focus on Oscar films. The reason for this is to have a new challenge as he’s proved he can change Hollywood writing the playbook on the shared universe but for doing that for 10 years plus could be getting boring.
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| IMAGE VIA JESSE GRANT/ GETTY IMAGES |
The only reason he’d stay with Marvel now after Avengers 4 is to plan and bring in Fantastic Four and X-Men into the MCU.
Finally, where will the FX shows like Atlanta, American Crime Story, American Horror Story, Legion, Archer etc go? or will Disney create a brand new channel or change the name of FX.
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