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?
I don’t think I have a chip in my shoulder at all lol. I don’t have any beef with Disney or fox. I’m just thinking it was a bad investment. Look at it with their past purchases on mind. They bought Star Wars for 4 billion made quick use of it too. Same with Marvel and Pixar. All of these were great deals for Disney. They made their money back in no time. 70 billion is a lot more than 4 billion. It will take a very long time to recoup the money and from my perspective I don’t think it was the right move.
You could put out 5 Avengers movies that make Endgame level money and still not even get close to paying that back. It will take a decade or more to pay that off. It’s been 4 years and they don’t have much to show for it.
The rights they acquired through this purchase are easily worth that money alone. An investment does not have to immediately make a return. They acquired the rights to decades upon decades of films TV shows TV channels. I don’t even think you understand the scale of how much they got in that deal. And there is plenty other things that they are working on that they are getting returns from. Just because you don’t see it on the surface doesn’t mean it ain’t happening. God damn it aint hard. You’re looking at a super tiny sample size with just superhero movies being the hinge case for why they did it. They got so much more than I think you realize.
Sure they got a lot of stuff in the Fox archive I’m just not sure it was 70 billion worth. Amazon bought MGM for much less. Disney also sold their Mirimax catalog years ago for less than a billion. Having a big back catalog is nice but not if it comes with an insane amount of debt. They could have made a deal with Fox for their catalog and their IPs for less money but they bought all their studios too and then fired a bunch of people. Only movie Searchlight put out this year was a flaming hot Cheeto movie.
You’re also not part of the team that decided how much the deal was worth.