brodie999
Active Member
Agreed. Deals can't resume closing while the government is shut down. Hopefully, with the Dems making a 3 week bill to reopen it, Disney will finally be able to finalise the Fox acquisition, probably in mid-February.
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News Disney and Fox come to terms -- announcement soon; huge IP acquisition
- Thread starter ohioguy
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bartholomr4
Well-Known Member
Disney and Fox already have US government approval, which is now overseen by a Judge, based on the agreed upon terms. Judges are not part of the shutdown so there would be no impact on the date of the closing.
bartholomr4
Well-Known Member
Disney has 90 days after the deal closes to sell the RSN’s. They have to report the results to the DOJ and the supervising Judge, but any government closure will not get in the way of either thing happening (1 the closing and 2 the sale of the RSN’s). Disney could decide to take the RSN’s public and spin them off, and that would take a lot of work with the SEC..... such a spin off could be delayed, as it does rely on SEC resources which are affected by the shut-down. That delay would require agreement with the DOJ and the Judge, which they may already have received, but again not affecting Disney closing the deal and acquiring the key assets.
brodie999
Active Member
All right, enough arguing. We don't know what's gonna happen in the next few years. But hopefully, if Disney buys another media company(which would be their fifth in a row), they'd be able to navigate the laws and work out any antitrust issues just like they did when they bought Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox. I'd be blown away and have my heart melted if Disney bought Sony just to get the Web-Head fully back just like they did with the X-Men and FF as part of the Fox deal.
Disney will not be allowed to buy any other movie studio for antitrust grounds. In fact if Spiderman were not a Marvel Character they would not be allowed to buy those movie rights back. Disney will now have to look at other assests such as themeparks to grow or maybe a company like Feld Entertainment who put on all the traveling Disney and Marvel Arena Shows.
Uhh... source?
As a consumer and movie fan, the Disney Fox merger is horrible. Giving one company approximately 40% of the box office gross is crazy and bad for theaters and ticket prices. If you don't care about the theaters and only look at home Entertainment then there are still only going to be a few providers. AT&T/WB, Comcast NBC Universal, Amazon, Netflix, Disney and maybe a merged CBS/Viacom/Lionsgate. Sony pictures is too small to survive and should be purchased by either Amazon, Netflix or even Alphabet.
AnotherDayAnotherDollar
Well-Known Member
People look at the numbers on BOM and think that's the do all end all for movie studios "monopoly". I've been over monopoly laws in the US in this forum. A merger between DisFox and 2nd place WB would indeed be allowed as per the law. I'm not sure about other countries, but the fact that BO wasn't an issue ANYWHERE should tell you that's not as huge a concern as the internet makes it out to be. Youtube, Netflix, Prime etc are all viable alternatives to movie theater and Bird Box was watched by 45 million people or some huge number. There are plenty of variables to consider.
That said I think a future Disney acquisition - outside of possible amendments to existing contracts and Hulu equity - will probably be some videogame publishers/developers. That's not in the near term though, they'll balance their sheets first.
It's been stated many times: gross box office is not what anti-trust divisions look at. Note that none of the roadblocks anti-division units in various countries set up had anything to do with the entertainment studios that they owned.
Nor should they. If all of Disney movies next year bomb and all of Sony's are megahits, then next year Sony can have 80% of gross box office while Disney has 10%.
Before Fox, Disney with all of its studios only put out a 10 movies. Fox put out 15. There were nearly 200 hundred movies release in 2018 that made at least a million dollars at the BO (almost 300 if you count every single movie Box Office Mojo tracked). So, Disney+Fox only had 12% of major released movies.
That ain't close to a monopoly.
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The Walt Disney Company Announces Extension of Exchange Offers and Consent Solicitations for 21st Century Fox America, Inc. Notes
https://www.apnews.com/9b4b2da1ba6d4fb28161dbcf8b20d3d8
Hmmm not sure if this is good or bad news. I dont think anything has changed?
https://www.apnews.com/9b4b2da1ba6d4fb28161dbcf8b20d3d8
Hmmm not sure if this is good or bad news. I dont think anything has changed?
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bartholomr4
Well-Known Member
It is really no news... It has to do with Disney replacing 21CF debt / bonds with its own. They have extended this at least 6 times already and the only thing of note, is they did not move the date very far..... If the merger is going to close in March, as is now the heavy rumor, then not sure why they wouldn’t have extended this into March too.... Can’t do the exchange of debt until the merger day.....
Lafayettecalboy
Member
I wrote this elsewhere but I will write it here again:
Because the most common anger about the Disney-Fox merger is the job loss. I want Disney/Fox find a possible way for all of the employees to not lose their jobs but to keep them?
Because the most common anger about the Disney-Fox merger is the job loss. I want Disney/Fox find a possible way for all of the employees to not lose their jobs but to keep them?
that would not be possible.
I do not like seeing people lose their jobs. However some will as a result of this merger. On the other hand, Disney will employ more people than the combined units of Fox and Disney than they do now. Disney Fox will be creating new content and shows for Disney+ and Hulu and that will require more people. Also as all their international broadcasting increases it will require even more. Times change, jobs change but the one constant is that Disney will continue to grow and employ well over 200,000 people. They probably will have over 300,000 by 2029.
Jobs would have been lost no matter who bought Fox. The layoffs might have actually been worse had Comcast bought them. As their was more crossover of job responsibilities. Disney is the better option through and through and the Fox board new that hence why they were so set on selling to Disney. Not even Comcasts 65 billion offer could sway them as they knew Disney would pay more. The value from the marriage of the marvel assets alone is something the shareholders will be aware off.
An X-Men MCU movie is $800-1 billion easy. Avengers vs X-Men 1 billion dollars easy. Fantastic Four under Feige $700-800 million easy. So many of Fox's assets are just a perfect match for Disney. And the Fox board new this. The amount of value this merger will unlock is insane. My only worry is how much power and influence the Murdochs will have on the Disney board. And I worry what will happen once Iger leaves.
An X-Men MCU movie is $800-1 billion easy. Avengers vs X-Men 1 billion dollars easy. Fantastic Four under Feige $700-800 million easy. So many of Fox's assets are just a perfect match for Disney. And the Fox board new this. The amount of value this merger will unlock is insane. My only worry is how much power and influence the Murdochs will have on the Disney board. And I worry what will happen once Iger leaves.
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BrianLo
Well-Known Member
Disney is pretty much the only company keeping the theatrical window alive. The more clout they have the better for theatre owners.
Now for actual consumers is another debate. But something we do not talk about is the near strangle-hold Netflix has on the streaming market. This merger is all about introducing another viable alternative to the streaming market, so from that perspective it's a loss on one end to consumers and a gain to another.
I do understand there was a real fear to the production side of things to only have 5 major studio players instead of the longer standing 6. If this year has taught us anything it is that Netflix is essentially the major 7th film studio these days. They have 14 Academy Award nominations this year, which I believe ranks them third. Job creation as a result for the industry should still be healthy, even though Fox shrinks, we are seeing a rising tide in streaming platforms (Amazon/Netflix/Hulu/Disney/?Apple) and therefore strong job creation. If Amazon or Apple really takes off we'll probably be sitting with 7-8 majors in the coming years.
its weird how people seem ok with Netflix having a monopoly on streaming. Its always the "but everything should be in one place". and "No one wants to pay for more than one streaming service" arguments. No one is forcing you to sub to multiple services. You can easily sub and resub to services on the fly as required. Hopefully this doesn't change in the near future. Tho I could see minimum contracts being introduced to stop people unsubbing after a week.
As for the number of studio shrinking. Netflix and Amazon I think will fill the gap left behind from Fox quite easily. Netflix joined the MPAA recently thats huge. And Amazon will continue to see growth over the next year as they invest more in OG content just as Netflix is. Even tho its sad to lose an OG studio like Fox others will arise to take its place without issue.
As for the number of studio shrinking. Netflix and Amazon I think will fill the gap left behind from Fox quite easily. Netflix joined the MPAA recently thats huge. And Amazon will continue to see growth over the next year as they invest more in OG content just as Netflix is. Even tho its sad to lose an OG studio like Fox others will arise to take its place without issue.
Quinnmac000
Well-Known Member
Right now retention is a huge issue. Even Netflix has stated they cancelled Marvel shows not because they are expensive but due to the fact the only gained churners (people who subscribed one month to watch the new season and then cancelled). What do you think is gonna happen to prevent churn? They are going to do longer time commitments to look in prices which in the end to get multiple services will cost more. At least for the ones that won't be free. (Comcast will be free to paytv subscribers to include AT&T, Charter, etc while Viacom's will be supported by ads solely)
I don't like the monopoly on streaming but I don't like the future of everyone having their own streaming service because whats gonna happen is they will start to lock people in to prevent churn or start bundling which will just be streaming cable on demand 2.0.