On December 14, Disney bought Fox. This means a lot of good, as well as a lot of bad.
Disney paid about $52,400,000,000 for 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight, many sport event rights, 30% of Hulu, as well as a lot more. One thing that they didn’t buy from Fox however, was Fox News. The news network will remain under the Rupert Murdoch estate, and will continue to be the conservative, right-wing Republican media outlet we know today.
Let’s look more at what they did buy, and what that means for Nerdds.
Marvel
In the ’90s, Marvel almost went bankrupt, and sold the film rights to many heroes to various film studios. That’s why Spider-Man wasn’t in the MCU until recently, we haven’t gotten any new Hulk solo films, and why X-Men and The Fantastic Four have been so separate (and often bad). But with the new merger, we are going to start seeing some great stuff.
X-Men
The current X-Men story line, including Deadpool and the TV shows, has been going on since 2000, where we first saw Hugh Jackmans Wolverine, and Sir Patrick Stewarts Professor Xavier. Lastly, however, in Logan we saw them both die, so it is clear that whatever comes next (Dark Phoenix) is mostly separate anyway, if you have even been able to keep up with this very confusing continuity.
So if they do a total reboot with Dark Phoenix, they would be able to start inserting the Mutants into the MCU, as opposed to those awful, awful Inhumans. That wouldn’t even effect the other shows Disney bought, The Gifted or Legion, as they aren’t connected in the first place.
“[Legion is] a part of the X-Men universe, but obviously we’re our own Astral Plane, we’re our own world,” Shuler Donner, X-Men Franchise producer said to comicbook.com.
“I’m sorry to break your heart. No [The Gifted isn’t connected to Legion], but thank you for wanting it.”
So these quality X-Men shows could still go on, until Marvel figures out how to get the Mutants involved in the MCU. With TV shows on a shorter production schedule, we could get two or three more seasons in each, to allow a good conclusion of the stories, before cancelling them to avoid confusion. I doubt Disney would continue to produce non-MCU mutant content while having MCU mutant content. I think I know what Phase 5 is going to be!
Of course if they are going to make X-Men MCU, what are they going to do with Deadpool? I think allowing the Merc with a Mouth a good trilogy would be the nice thing to do. That would mean they would produce a huge blockbuster, rated R, non MCU movie from start to finish, but if Disney continues to allow Kevin Feige to do his thing, I doubt he would hurt the fans like that. If anything, he could be faulted for pandering.
(Edit: After Deadpool 2, they announced that the next Deadpool film will be an X-Force film specifically, before they go back to Deadpool 3)
Fantastic Four
Next would be the Fantastic Four that, for whatever reason, has been unable to create a good movie, even though most people understand the characters already. The best Fantastic Four movie ever made was Pixars The Incredibles, so hopefully we can get some of that Disney ruboff to help the next version of FF to be what we know it should be.
Lastly, the Kingsman movies are technically Marvel, but due to their lack of superpowers, that really shouldn’t cause any issues.
Star Wars
There’s really not a lot to this one, except for how A New Hope was originally a Fox distributed movie, and when Disney bought Lucasfilm, they had to share the sales on A New Hope, but now Disney has complete ownership on all the Star Wars movies, 100%.
Other Films
There are obviously a lot of other movies that Fox created that mean anything now, so let’s go through them real quick.
Alien/Predator – Reboot of the whole series? Or allow the renewed Alien franchise to continue?
Avatar – With the new Disney World Pandora Avatar section, it seems like they new about this before they let on.
Home Alone – I could totally see them rebooting this.
TV
Same with shows, there is no way they would cancel the longest running animated show of all time, The Simpsons, but at the very least, would they take Springfield from Universal Studios and put it in Disney World? Or just charge them to keep it?
All of the Seth MacFarlane properties, like Family Guy, American Dad, and The Orville are now under the Disney banner. With The Orville being such an obvious Star Trek parody, will CBS take this time of uncertainty at Disney to stop the show, especially with their own Star Trek show Discovery starting at the same time, with less traction?
Online
Netflix has been kicking butt the past few years, leading the industry with their original content only allowed on their streaming service. Disney announced recently however, that they would be pulling all of their content from Netflix and put it on their own streaming service, Disney+. Hulu would actually make the most sense, because before the merger, it was owned by Fox, Disney, NBC, and Warner Bros, allowing it to have a wide range of content. But after the merger, Disney now owns a majority in the service, and might just buy it out completely from NBC and WB, rebrand it, but keep the subscribers. It would be super easy, and they don’t have to build a new service from scratch.
Rated R
Regarding Deadpool, and the more mature oriented films that Fox was able to produce before, many are afraid that audiences will lose a source of quality adult entertainment. However, Bob Iger (CEO of Disney) has stated he isn’t against making Rated R films, as long as the audiences are aware what’s coming. So perhaps they will create a new branch of Disney, that doesn’t have Disney in the name, to make all of their darker/adultier films, as do with Touchstone Pictures, which is a branch of Disney.
Consequences
Bob Iger was originally planning on leaving the Disney company in the next few years, but to ensure the merger doesn’t fall apart, he stated he will be staying at least until 2021, which is good, they might need his leadership if Congress doesn’t want this to happen.
That’s right. Congress. The largest movie studio buying the third largest movie sounds a lot like a monopoly, which is illegal. There is an entire antitrust subcommittee dedicated to making sure that mega-corporations aren’t being created, to protect consumers from predatory business practices by ensuring that fair competition exists in an open-market economy. These were created in the 1920s when the oil and steel industries were completely owned by Rockefeller and Carnegie respectively.
So technically this deal isn’t official, so you don’t need to expect any projects to be cancelled yet, perhaps only delayed.
(Edit: As of 7/27/18 congress approved of the merger)
What Does Disney Have
So now what all does Disney own? Lets break it down.
Walt Disney Studios
- Walt Disney Pictures
- Pixar
- Lucasfilm
- Star Wars
- Marvel Studios
- Marvel Comics
- Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
- The Muppets Studio
- Sesame Street
- Touchstone
- ABC
- ESPN
- Hulu (Majority)
- A&E
- History Channel
- Lifetime
- Disney Channel
- Freeform
- Discovery Channel
- Dreamworks (films from 2011-2016)
- GoPro (Investor)
- MediaBank (Investor)
Disney used to own the following, but do not anymore
- Miramax Films
- Dimension Films
- Power Rangers
- Ninja Turtles
- Digimon
- Comedy Central
- Dreamworks Television
So at the end of the day, I’m still not sure how I feel about all of this, but it hasn’t been set in stone.
The Nerdd 
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