Disney Acquires 21st Century Fox for $52.4 Billion
December 14, 2017
Disney today announced a massive deal to acquire much of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion in stock. The buyout infuses Disney with a bevy of Fox properties,
including its film and TV studios and much of its non-broadcast
television business, including regional sports networks and cable
networks such as FX, FXX and Nat Geo.
Top franchises like “X-Men,” “Avatar,” “Deadpool,” “Fantastic Four” and
“The Simpsons” will also fall under the Disney's umbrella should the
merger meet regulatory approval in the next 12 to 18 months. And Disney
would also pick up Fox’s stake in the European pay-TV giant Sky — and be
better positioned to win regulatory approval to complete the
acquisition of the 61 percent of the company it does not already own.
Disney's hookup with Fox
will create not just an American behemoth but a global one, with
powerful film and television assets throughout Asia and Europe in
particular.
This is also great news for comic fans. The company was quick to state that the pact “provides Disney with the opportunity to reunite the X-Men, Fantastic 4
and Deadpool with the Marvel family under one roof and create a richer,
more complex world of inter-related characters and stories that
audiences have shown their love for. In other words, that means that
Wolverine and Iron Man could soon be teaming up to save the world from
alien invaders looking for new worlds to exploit, Nazi scientists
shaking off the after-effects of a long cryogenic freeze, or whatever
fresh planetary threat that Kevin Feige, dean of all thing MCU, can make up
The deal does one more thing for Disney too. It unifies the Star Wars
universe. The company owns the rights to almost all of the Jedi films
thanks to its 2012 purchase of Lucas Film, but Fox, which produced the
1977 original picture, retains rights to the first chapter in the
series. Now, Disney gets its paws on that film, which Iger said, “opens
new opportunities” for the franchise.
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