Any way this ended would have sucked one way or another.
At least this way means I'll still get a 3rd dry Universal park in Orlando by 2023-ish
At least this way means I'll still get a 3rd dry Universal park in Orlando by 2023-ish
Disney/FOX Acquisition Thread
- Thread starter AlexanderMBush
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Disney & Fox. ......Interesting point on CNBC just now....Sky has the rights to many of Disney's movies for a good number of years. Great negotiating point for Comcast if they get controlling interest in SKY. Disney probably willing to deal to get some of those movie rights back if Comcast gets Sky, according to analysts......Fox domestic had more value to Disney than it had for Comcast anyway. and the vice versa Sky has more value to Comcast than it has to Disney................looking for some trading between Disney & Comcast to go on if Comcast ends up with Sky.
:grin::clap:
Very happy that A) Comcast isn't burdening itself with this B) Marvel rights back to Marvel C) This is gonna be OVER
I don't think Comcast would be able to get Sky though unless they'd been able to force Disney to put up a lot of cash for the Fox assets.
At this point, if Disney goes all in for Sky, they'll end up increasing their debt load by around $70 billion or more. Hard to see investors happy about that.
As far as theme parks go, this is mostly probably going to hurt Disney spending going forward I guess depending on the financials for their streaming properties.
Hulu and their new services will require billions in financing just to get off the ground and acquire customers.
As far as Universal goes, they'll lose Simpsons in a decade, but by then they'll probably have new/different franchises (Illumination or Dreamworks related I'd guess since a decade is around 35 animated movies from those 2 and there should be some new IPs that are successful).
I think the competiton between WDW and UOR will become much more cut-throat and zero sum as UOR becomes a 4 dry park destination over the next 12 years or so.
At that point, they'll be fighting for market share as much as focusing on growing the market.
and, if Comcast ends up with Sky, there's always the possibility of some horse trading between Comcast & Disney in relation to Disney movie rights that SKY owns for a good period of time, and rights like Simpson's that Disney will have part ownership for.................and....if Comcast get's SKy, with Disney getting domestic Fox, this is a pro competition/good for competition move. If either would have a acquired both assets, it would create a kind of anti- competition situation, bottom line.
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Yeah, I assume we'll see a trade that starts with Disney's 39% of Sky and Comcast's 30% of Hulu as the basis and then adds other things to even out the value (cash, Disney movie rights in Sky's countries, Simpsons theme park rights etc.).
Geez, you really caused a record scratch sound in my brain typing it that way. I love cats but...
- Feb 15, 2012
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I think the fact The Simpson’s Ride is ancient is a bigger reason the IP would leave Uni parks than Disney clamoring for it.
Yea. Simpsons was always gonna have a shorter shelf life when Blackstone/GE decided to just reskin BTTF instead of invest in a real new ride
I believe Uni has The Simpson's until 2027 or 2028. I don't see them renewing at that point regardless of who owns the IP.
Agreed. We would have had 20 years of Simpsons at that point. Springfield has probably already paid for itself 10x over at this point. I'll be sad to see it go when the time comes, but it'll probably be time after another decade.
Bring back the International Food and Film Festival! I hate having to walk all the way to Comic Strip Cafe for my terrible theme park Chinese Food!
- Jun 21, 2016
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Thanks for the dates Dave. And I agree with you both. That ride is going to be a living hell by 2024ish. No money invested in it, biding time as they know it's gone, etc.
The sooner it goes, the better.
Lol.. that's because it should be "the whole kit and caboodle"
If they had built an actual dark ride when they got the rights, I could see Uni trying to renegotiate the contract. But as-is? Not worth it in the slightest, especially as the Simpsons will (sadly) become more and more irrelevant.
Keep the same ride system, replace it with Rick & Morty. It'll be like BttF returning. Sorta.
Just bring back Futuristic World of Hannah Barbara and stick it in there. haha
Oh well, I guess this is really it. This happened twice in a row for the almost 8 months. This is all fun and games for Comcast knowing they don't have the money and funding to bid for Fox while at the same time acquiring Sky. While this is good news for Disney and Fox, not so much for the local cinemas and journalists.
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I do think that theaters (especially smaller chains) are going to face more problems now that Disney will have consolidated the Marvel movies to a large degree and added Avatar to their group of blockbusters (though we have to see how Avatar does).
As far as other properties goes, the biggest win here for Disney is Star India and getting majority control of Hulu. I'm less concerned here about everything else (FX, National Geographic, Fox's television/movie studio, etc.). I don't know that the rest of those properties is worth the huge premium that the assets are going for, especially given that Disney is being forced to sell the most valuable piece: the Fox RSNs whose content would have been a huge boost for their ESPN streaming service.
Taking a closer look at Fox's movie business, we can assume that Fox Searchlight/Fox 2000 will be safe given that Disney doesn't have a prestige filmmaker at this point (either way they aren't that profitable so it's not a big deal).
That brings us to the meat of the movie business, Fox's biggest franchises: Avatar and Marvel are the only clearly healthy franchises that they have.
Among the rest of their franchises: Aliens, Planet of the Apes, Kingsman, Die Hard, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Night at the Museum, Independence Day, Home Alone, Taken, Maze Runner, Percy Jackson, Ice Age, Rio. If you look at the rest of those franchises, most are nowhere near their "peak" and need to be completely rebooted (which it remains to be seen whether Disney would even choose to do). Kingsman has another movie coming out, but if you look at the rest, most have newer projects unconfirmed or cancelled and the most recent iterations performed poorly.
Avatar is the most valuable of their franchises by far given that it has 4 more movies coming out and no matter how 3-5 do, #2 is likely to pay for all 4 anyway given enough people just checking on #2 as people that have seen #1.
Marvel's future is something of a questionmark. Disney already produces 3 Marvel movies a year..., they certainly won't go up to 6. That means, at most we see 3-4 Marvel movies a year with X-Men/FF replacing heroes whose ~3 solo movies are completed. If that is what happens, that's a big win for Sony and Warner because it means the X-Men/FF are removed as competitors for Sony's Spiderverse and the DCEU.
So while I do think there are valid concerns here, the fact that most of Fox's movie franchises are unhealthy to begin with is something that reduces the overall value. I think if Comcast were the purchaser, they'd pursue trying to "fix" those unhealthy franchises a lot more than Disney would given Disney already has their own massive set of franchises that take up space on the calendar. In a general sense, this just opens up more spaces on the calendar for Universal, Warner, Paramount, and Sony for their blockbusters if only the Avatar films are being kept on Fox's original schedule. That's a win for those 4 studios as they try to introduce new blockbusters.
Yeah, local cinemas and journalists are totally getting screwed a lot more with this deal, because of Disney's already leveraging unethical conditions over the local theaters, and their bullying towards journalists like what happened to the L.A. Times last year. 40% of the BO market share for Disney/Fox merger isn't something the local cinemas are gonna walk away very easily, so I can see dozens of theaters might be dropping out of the deal to avoid being leveraged harshly, but losing lots of money that way too. But seriously, the DOJ under the Trump administration is already shown to be biased in some way. A week after AT&T-TW got approved to be merged, they approved the Disney/Fox deal (which is odd and fast) and declared it to be a victory for our nation's consumers while at the same time, decrying the AT&T-TW deal as harmful to such consumers, even though the merger is vertical and less of an issue than horizontal like Disney/Fox is.
Disney will own 39% of Sky even if Comcast wins the 61% of the asset, meaning they will have a bargaining chip, so that doesn't seem like there's much more room for Comcast to use it from. I don't consider that an unconditional victory for Comcast, even though Sky would profit the company in the long run. Getting Hulu is the biggest victory for Disney, now they're gonna have a chance to launch its own kid-friendly streaming service while putting most of the mature shows in Hulu. I do have to recall the fact the Planet of the Apes is well profitable and well-regarded among fans and critics so I still considered that a blockbuster hit along with Avatar. I would like to add since Disney will be the owner of The Simpsons, Family Guy, Archer, American Dad, and other adult-animated shows, along with Paramount (Beavis & ButtHead and South Park), Sony (Boondocks), and Warner Bros. (e.g. Rick and Morty), this leaves Universal the only major studio not to have any of these kind of genre.
I also doubt Disney might use Fox Searchlight Pictures properly, otherwise, they'd still be using Touchstone Pictures for these type of independent movies instead, let alone R-Rated movies. When Disney produced R-rated movies, it was at the time, where they don't have Marvel and Star Wars movies. Right now, they're currently focusing in animated and blockbuster movies for almost a decade, as they make billions off them, and they might shuffle some of the Fox movies to fit in their time-slot for more of its already-acquired movies. Comcast might use Fox Searchlight Pictures for the U.S. setting, as Focus Features is currently being focused on movies set in the UK, and has produced plenty of diverse movies. USA Network's only saving grace is Mr. Robot, but that's about it, since network nowadays doesn't have a variety of new shows, as much I have with Freeform and FX Networks.
Theme park wise, this will leave American Horror Story in doubt whether they can be used for HHN, and Alien is out of the question too since Disney will own the Alien property, hence the theme park rights itself , and Disney doesn't have an adult-oriented Halloween event like Universal's HHN and Knott's Scary Farm have. The good thing for Universal is that X-Men and F4 are still at Marvel Super Hero Island due to the no-date ending 1994 contract so that's out of the question for WDW, but Disney parks around the world can still use them in the next couple of years once the Disney-FOX deal is done. However, if we expected to see Family Guy and Archer at a Disney park, then there's fat chance they might appear, as their shows doesn't fit well for kid-friendly Disney parks (where such IPs are suitable at Universal, like they have with The Simpsons).
