70 billion dollars and what really do they have to show for it?
The purchase gave them an insane amount of debt so they immediately laid off a lot of former fox employees and recently laid off 7000 employees to save them 5 billion.
They also haven't done much of anything with the Fox catalog.
Most of the new 20th century films were unceremoniously slapped onto Hulu streaming.
- Hellraiser 2022
- Prey
- New Mutants
- No Exit
- Barbarian
- Boston Strangler
- Crater
And more were all put on streaming and forgotten. Some of these movies were pretty good and could have made some money in theaters. I really liked Barbarian myself and Prey got a ton of praise.
What exactly did they get that was worth 70 billion? Avatar? The Simpsons? They could have just licensed those for Disney+ and saved a ton of money. Most of Fox's properties don't fit Disney. What are they even going to do with Alien, Predator, and Planet of the Apes? If Prey is any indication they aren't interested in putting them in theaters.
Before someone says X-Men what the hell have they even done with them? Some lame cameos. I'll never forgive them for the quicksilver gag in Wandavision. They got beat bad by Fox in the who has the cooler quicksilver so they make him a dick joke. Great.
They aren't going to do anything with the X-Men anytime soon. The 3rd Deadpool movie seems to be the only thing even cooking and that seems to be more because Ryan Reynolds is pushing it. If you're an X-Men fan you must be disappointed. Remember when we had an X-Men movie about every year? Say goodbye to those and Alien, Predator, Planet of the Apes.
FX seems to be doing alright but all to adult for Disney so to Hulu it goes. Why did they make a big deal out of Disney+ anyway? Wouldn't it make more sense to have one app? Put it all on Hulu. Why are their two apps with very different interfaces for one company?
Now that Disney is losing money in streaming and with recent flops I think this deal needs to be scrutinized more. Blame Capitalism or streaming mania but I have to say even from a business standpoint it makes no sense at all.
What do you think? Was this the beginning of the end for Disney's box office dominance? A bad play to kill Netflix? Or is Disney planning something that will take years to bear fruit?
The value of an acquisition is almost never about synergy, assets, tech, or the catalog you got out of it.
It's usually about extinguishing competition and squeezing any remaining juice from your core offerings and products at a higher price.
They still have significant competition from other streamers and a lot of their Fox properties are on Hulu rather than Disney Plus. They are bleeding subscribers and they can't afford to raise prices too much. I know they are going to raise prices soon but it's a careful balancing act they can't afford to make it too pricey.
By acquiring fox they have 60% ownership interest in Hulu. It's that simple.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/hulu-and-disney-subscriptions-are-going-up-heres-how-much/
I'm sure the timing is coincidence and has nothing to do with Disney controlling the largest market share of streaming services.
Nearly every acquisition is about extinguishing competition and squeezing more juice from your core products. It's why oil and gas buys green tech to toss it in the bin, it's why Google buys waze and essentially halts development on it, it's why Microsoft bought blizzard. They extract any value from what they bought but that is secondary to eliminating a company that they'd have to compete with on price.
https://dealroom.net/blog/biggest-m-a-deals-2022
Every coy news article that pretends there's some sort of 3d chess going on or some big unknowable synergies is a joke. They'll give the acquired divisions to some much more competent middle managers to see if there's any value to extract, but it's secondary to the main objective. Disney would much rather collaborate with n-1 competitors (Netflix is really it?)
I think MS buying Activision is also a losing play but MS is in a better position to spend that kind of money compared to Disney.
If the strategy was to kill Hulu then why keep it around? Just axe it or sell it and put all your stuff on one app. I also don't get the Paramount+ and Showtime strategy. If you are trying to beat Netflix by having better content why split it into 2 apps?
Streaming could be a whole other post really. All these companies have bought into having their own app and they are all losing big time. Might be time to reevaluate streaming in general.
Long term they may axe hulu but comcast still has an ownership interest. For now they have subscribers and show contracts that are probably limited to that platform. Let them expire, renew what's earning, and write off any homegrown content for whatever % of goodwill of the acquisition price it accounts for. Most importantly though - they'll continue to raise prices unabated.
I can't predict the future but they'll probably let hulu stagnate for the next few years and payoff remaining shareholders when its time to snuff it.
Can't comment on Microsoft and Activision too much, but it will be the same drivers. Microsoft has been pushing game pass aggressively at a loss, and when companies are operating at a loss in a product segment they're in the extend phase. They're also very publicly focused on xbox market share. Maybe the next COD game will be gamepass exclusive or something dumb like that, idk.
Streaming could be a whole other post really. All these companies have bought into having their own app and they are all losing big time.
I'd be cautious jumping to that conclusion. Netflix, Disney, and Amazon are all extremely profitable. The news makes it sound like there's blood in the street but its just that earnings aren't growing exponentially as fast as before. The smaller ones might be having trouble competing but I haven't really looked in to it.
Oh don't worry, they'll be cranking out X-Men movies and shows soon enough. It can take awhile to get projects off the ground with script approval, casting, and preproduction. Once everything is locked in it becomes much easier to oil the machine.
Disney has also always had different studio brands. They release R rated stuff and other types of content that "isn't Disney" under different studio names, and some you probably never even realized it was Disney.
Edit: there's also other factors like COVID delays, and now union strikes.
Maybe eventually but it went from an X-Men a year to maybe one in a few years after the current slate of marvel movies.
Disney does have different brands but they aren't going to put them on Disney Plus so it doesn't make sense from a strategy perspective. If their goal was to kill Netflix they failed big time.
I think you are expecting changes too soon. X-Men will likely be joining the MCU: Deadpool 3 and Fantastic Four are both upcoming. The MCU is announced though 2027, so the earliest we might see X-Men is 2028.
Disney has future plans to roll Hulu content into Disney. The reason it hasn’t is that Disney does not own Hulu outright: it owns 2/3 of Hulu, and Comcast owns 1/3. In January 2024, both companies have the option to force Disney to buy Comcast’s shares, which will then give Disney 100% ownership.
Mergers are not magic things that make everything change the next day. It takes years. My company merged with another 8 years ago and only in the past year have we lined up our pay schedule and rebranded all our offices. Disney only bought Fox 4 years ago. It might be another decade before everything is finalized.
Sure things take time but look how quickly they moved on Star Wars and Marvel. They made a deal with Sony for Spider-Man and then he's immediately in Civil War. I just don't understand the hold up. Also I don't think Deadpool is going to bridge the gap between Marvel and Fox X-Men. I don't think Disney world use a R rated comedy for that. I think a lot of people expected Multiverse of madness to bring the X-Men in and when it didn't happen they were disappointed. Marvel seems to be running out of steam if I were them I'd shove in as many X-Men as I could.
Yes, they rented a character to use him in a movie and then made that movie. That’s how that works. For Star Wars, they bought it specifically so they could make Star Wars movies, and it still took 3 years.
Neither are the same as buying a major company with multiple TV channels, international broadcasters, and partial stakes in 2 other companies. The merger itself took 1.5 years.
And then after the merger, they still had existing contracts to deal with, FOX films that were still releasing under the old studio name, TV network contracts, etc.
So yeah, Deadpool 3 is coming out 5 years after the merger, which is two years longer than it took them to make a movie after buying Lucasfilm, which was a way way way smaller acquisition. And there they were reciting an existing franchise, while Deadpool appears to be the only FOX franchise they intend to continue. Kind of explains itself.
Avatar, Star Wars, the Simpsons, Alien, Predator, X-Men, Fantastic Four.
The IP alone...
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/20/18273477/disney-fox-merger-deal-details-marvel-x-men
We don't have Hulu in Canada, but Disney+ is by far the best streaming service here. It appears as though it carries a lot of the stuff that's on hulu in the states.
Yeah they rebrand it as the "Starz" catalogue when it's a bit too mature for the D+ brand. From my understanding, that branding is actually very popular in Asia and they introduced it to North America through the Canadian D+ offerings.
I agree that D+ is actually the best bang for your buck streaming service, because their catalogue is relatively static since they own all the rights. That catalogue doesn't really need to be Netflix massive because it's mostly quality content, while Netflix is still pumping out garbage. Finally the cherry on top is having all the Fox content through the Starz branding.
Both without any real marketing and I'm pretty sure same day streaming. Felt like Disney didn't care too much about them.
The Simpsons and Family Guy alone are worth 70 billion. You factor in merchandising and catalog, there are a lot of people who would just sign up to a streaming service just for those shows. The Simpsons is a merchandising juggernaut. There's billions of dollars in the stupid branded shit - this is also why they bought Star Wars and have basically shrugged off the fact that they botched the trilogy with the immense amount of money they are able to print off of the merchandising.
In Canada they do have the Fox/Hulu library as part of Disney+ because Hulu never launched here - we're a tangled web of media rights between the telcom conglomerates that own the rights to most of the stuff and keep the market noncompetitive. Most of the rights of Fox stuff was probably owned by Rogers or Bell and therefore not worth launching the service up here. That's how HBO is. HBO's content is all licensed by Bell so it's on their shitty streaming service. Most of us would pay for HBO or MAX or whatever the fuck if it was a standalone service, but we can't.
I feel like both the Simpsons and family guy had their day in the sun but aren't the cultural phenomenons they used to be. They would need to sell a lot of bart plushies to make 70 billion and do kids even care about the Simpsons anymore? It's been over a decade since its heyday.
My guy you're talking about the studio that sold BB-8 branded oranges. You'd be surprised what people buy.
Fair point but Star Wars was already huge in merchandising before the purchase and Disney has arguably hurt the toy sales with their recent movies and over exposure.
The TV offerings have given an endless amount of merchandising opportunities. The trilogy is not important, because the TV shows have been good. All I really need to say is two words: Baby Yoda.
I say this as I am wearing a Mandalorian t-shirt, looking over at my Lego build of the N1 fighter, thinking about all of the new Star Wars content coming out of the Dave Filoni camp. I think of all the casual fans who clamor for the cute Grogu merch. People like my sister who have no real interest in Star Wars are very into Grogu much the same way folks are into baby Groot.
