People are actually excited about the Disney/Fox deal?

I get being excited about the idea that Fantastic 4, Silver Surfer, X-Men, and all those villains would go to the MCU. That sounds good to me too, I'd rather X-Men and Deadpool stay separate though, since X-Men works better when they're the only ones with superpowers IMO. Why be afraid and prejudice of Cyclops but not Thor, Cap, or Captain Marvel? If it was just the Marvel stuff I'd be fine with the merger, but the idea that Disney would now own The Simpsons, Futurama, Always Sunny, Fox, FX, part of Hulu, etc just seems gross to me. I don't watch it anymore, but them owning The Simpsons just seems wrong. When Disney bought Marvel then Star Wars I used to joke that Nintendo would be next... now I'm pretty sure Disney will own Nintendo between now and 2025.

I saw articles on websites and Youtubers (likes ComicsExplained) loving that this was happening, but I think that's being shortsighted. Disney would own 2 out 4 big broadcast channels (ABC & Fox) and I believe one article said together they'd make up 40% of the US box office. Seeing Silver Surfer and others interact with the MCU heroes sounds cool, but not at the cost of such a severe reduction in competition... I think a lot of people with our "nerdy interests" might not be seeing the bigger picture.

I think most ppl would agree with you, myself included. A few articles and some Youtubers being excited doesn't represent much.

You got the terms of the proposed deal a bit wrong. Fox would be selling their movie and TV production business and several channels (FX, FXX), but keeping Fox Broadcasting, Fox News and Fox Sports.

To hell with the MCU, now we can finally get that Indiana Jones / Romancing the Stone crossover we've all been clamoring for.

People don't care about competition as long as it doesn't negatively impact them in an immediate, noticeable way. I agree with you, but just saying...

I've read different things about what could happen with Fox (the channel). I've read that Disney could take the channel if the FCC allows it, elsewhere I've seen that Disney could cherrypick and take any Fox owned show they want. I didn't say anything about Fox News or Fox Sports, I don't really care what happens to them personally.

I'm hoping that the eventual anti-Trust suit gives different studios different members of the Avengers.

Just what we need, more media consolidation of both networks and creative content. I've long wished that Fox would just let Marvel (Disney) use their characters in movies again. But this sure as hell isn't the way to do that.

I'm not a big fan because I don't think Disney would put out movies like Logan or Rise/Dawn/War apes movies. They're getting a monopoly on the market and I don't think it's a good thing. It's cool that they get the rights to the original Star Wars movies and the rest of the Marvel lineup, but it gets cancelled out by all of the TV and other movies they would take over.

I agree that the X-Men is mostly best kept separate. But Wolverine and Spider-Man together is just too fucking cute.

The prejudice thing works fine because with the X-Men it's still a mutation. Flies in the face of stuff they've been doing with Inhumans in the TV stuff, but fuck it, if they can tell those stories with the X-Men in the MCU and treat it with the same sort of care and confidence (i.e. none of that black leather bullshit) that they did everything else, then hell fucking yes.

Never much cared for how Bryan Singer handled those movies. It's telling that the best X-Men-ass X-Men movies were Logan and Deadpool (with a special shout-out to First Class).

Are you telling me you're not looking forward to The Simpsons being in Kingdom Hearts 3?

Why be afraid and prejudice of Cyclops but not Thor, Cap, or Captain Marvel?

The dealbreaker was that people were born with mutations and weren't expected/obligated to do anything with that power. Also some of the mutations people were getting when they hit puberty were very violent and couldn't be controlled, and as a result mutantkind as a whole was persecuted. I'm always reminded of this comic:

Gallery

Also it was originally supposed to be an allegory for, y'know. Racism.

It's still hugely inconsistent that the inhumans were always given a pass, but at some point if you try to apply logic to the marvel universe then all you're going to get is a headache.

I think I've only ever liked two superhero Fox movies in the decades they've been doing them(That's First Class and Logan), so I couldn't be more happy about those rights going back to people that have made like 10 movies I enjoyed in a decade. Would've been nice if they hadn't kept fucking the mutants in their own merch up to this point though, we could've had a pretty different marvel vs capcom infinite roster if so.

I couldn't tell you about US broadcasting channels, though. As a person on a different continent I don't exactly sit down and watch those different channels, I mostly just watch their programming that they're licensing to local channels.

@sweep: I think having people that are born as chemical disasters aren't really a good allegory for any kind of real world prejudice. There's not a minority group in the world that can shoot lasers out of their eyes.

For me personally, this sucks. I'm going to lose work, damnit.

That we know of

I'm not sure I understand why fans of the properties should be concerned over bad business practices.

Talking business this is not unexpected, since business is good for Disney so why not buy, buy, buy. Stuff can then later be sold off again or in the worst case gets buried forever. New competition and properties will hopefully arise.

The lesson: Don't get attached to fiction. Go look at new smaller stuff with a clear end and ruin yourself on the big long running stuff. Read or better yet, write your own MCU fanfiction and make up your own canon so you can never enjoy anyone else's ever again!

Disney getting all the marvel movie rights iant bad but this sounds like a nightmare to industry competition.

I mean, its not like I think Disney is any better or worse as a company than Fox in regards to media. Big companies gonna do what they do. I guess my biggest worry is that they will tone down the out there violence and mature themes from things like Deadpool and Logan, but I would have to imagine they realize those did well and people like them so they will just keep it compartmentalized without the Mouse brand on it.

Xmen could probably stand a retooling at this point. Fantastic Four certainly can. Spiderman was a lost franchise for me, but Homecoming has me excited again for stories of my youth. After Infinity War, there's plenty of ground to tread.

Disney is reconciling all the mistakes Marvel made with licensing in the 90s. I'm a believer in the MCU having all their IP and the freedom to do what they will with it. Sony and Fox deals are all about that and you can tell that Disney wants them bad if they're willing to basically buy out the entire film division just to get them back.

I think Marvel would do fine after Robert Downey Jr. and the others who have been doing this gig for a decade want out, by just making solid movies. But I really don't think it would hurt if the next wave of adaptations were names like the X-Men and the Fantastic 4.

This is the first i'm hearing of it and im not too thrilled. Logan and Deadpool were the best two comic book movies in ages and although I enjoy stuff like Thor: Ragnarok it just doesnt leave much of an impression. This is kind of an aside but also think the Marvel TV shows have gotten worse now that everything is intertwined. (the defenders was terrible)

Yes, Disney. Do what must be done. Take The Simpsons back behind the shed. Take it out of its misery. Move into preservation mode. Into celebration mode. Halt continued production. And most importantly... Put it in Kingdom Hearts.

Real talk, though, this isn't great. I wouldn't mind a move to just bring in Fox-licensed Marvel characters but, as others have said, this is excessive. And that's putting it lightly.

It's not about being a fan, it's about seeing a lack of competition due to billion dollar companies coming together and getting even bigger. I'm sure they''ll be plenty of competition on TV, but with movies being so expensive to make, I doubt we'll see it there. There's only about a handful of big movie studios and now two of them might become one. The video game equivalent would be if one of the big 3 in gaming, lets say Sony, bought Ubisoft, then 2K years later, and is now in talks of buying Nintendo, so then it would just be Playstation, Xbox and PC (the latter of two are both kinda Microsoft). Fanfiction isn't going to help you there either. It's not that limited in the movie world, since there are more than 3 big companies there, but as much crap as Fox gets, they make better stuff than Paramount and Universal to me. Obviously Warner Bros has been shaky lately. It's not like this is some serious, world ending news, but it does have a lot of major downsides with a few possible positives.

I am a big fan of massive billion dollar corporations joining forces to crush us all

If James Gun is exited then I'm exited.

@deathstriker: I'd normally agree with you, however with most of their acquisitions Disney has pretty much let the studios run themselves, and do what they do. It's not like Pixar fans suddenly went "there is no more Pixar in our Pixar movies" after Disney bought them. Same with Marvel, and Star Wars. Their is a level of corporate oversight going on, and more marketing and things of that nature. But when it comes down to the pure movie quality, the fans of those brands have never been more engaged or happy with the products they have.

Granted Disney could easily change that, but why would they? It's working. It's why I don't see them overly changing the tone or direction of the Fox stuff if they acquired them. I could see some sort of consolidation of properties in the MCU for example, but I don't think it would mean the end for Legion, which is it's own stand alone thing produced by FX. If anything it feels like Disney strategy isn't to corner the market and just produce their thing, it's more they want to own the entire market. All of it. In all of it's diversified glory. There is something scary about that I guess, but I mean how is that much different than the way giants like Google and Facebook control the internet markets? Provided they don't get in the way of the content people love, and if all they are doing is throwing money at those sectors, it should be a win win for all parties.

He is a Marvel/Disney employee and it is exciting on the Marvel side of things, but buying huge franchises like The Simpsons, Avatar, Alien, etc isn't from a competition standpoint.

This concern is justified.

On the other hand I'm personally extremely excited for this deal to go through only because I'm a Disney shareholder who has been making the company a larger part of my portfolio when their shares started to drag. I don't give two shits about the comic book media explosion from Marvel (stopped caring after Iron Man 2) but boy do they rake in the cash along with Stars Wars. If Disney isn't making the original content that is grabbing eyeballs everywhere then they sure as hell will buy the content that does.

You're seeing the result of that with this FOX deal as Disney looks to pad out their upcoming streaming service. As more and more TV and movie studios come to grips with the transition to internet subscription business models it will be engaging content that will keep them alive in the long run.

Although Pixar continues to be the only studio under Disney that puts out movies I personally want to go out and see, their track record of big hits have started to not stand out so much as before (at least for me) since Disney started mandating that for every X number of original movies there has to be X number of sequels.

Marvel and Lucas Films are better examples of Disney's micromanaging style as you can see from the number of directors they cycle through due to creative conflicts. Their method of movie making haven't stopped the Disney money-printing presses but a few years from now when comic book/Star Wars fatigue starts to settle in I could see this type of micromanagement being a liability.

The talk about Disney acquiring all of the regional sports networks that Fox owns is the most troubling part of the whole deal to me. I not super excited about only being able to watch Pistons games once every ten years when they're re-released for a limited time on special edition blu-ray.

@oldenglishc: FOX plans on keeping their news and sports segments. Disney along with Comcast and Verizon were looking at FOX's TV and movie businesses along with their stakes in SKY and Star India. Murdochs are favoring Disney at the moment.

That is a fair counterpoint, however I'd argue if anyone has the track record that shows they adapt or react to changing markets, it's Disney. Sequel fatigue I think is something that can't just be put on Disney as a whole, because while they certainly profit off of it, it's what audiences want. And to a lesser degree, it's what they always wanted. It's not like spin offs and reboots were invented by Disney. Look at the sitcom market even 20-30 years ago, loaded with spin offs and reboots. And even now shows like Full House and Roseanne come full circle and audience desire to go back returns. I'm not saying any of us have to like it, but people do. That is all that matters.

But in regards to Disney, they are a company that has existed and been making movies and rebooting the same fairy tales whether it was animated or live action for eons. You can sit there and argue that they stifle their directors and creators creatively, but then there are countless examples of them doing the exact opposite. Their track record recently with Marvel shows that, even with sequels they are still letting creators come in and do their things. Thor Ragnarok and Spider Man are great examples of that. Obviously there are still dire stories, like Edgar Wright with Ant Man or what happened with the two directors on Solo. But clearly someone at Disney has an understanding for market demands and shifts, because you usually see every couple of years some hit coming out of one of the named studios that Disney owns that is entirely what that audience wanted/is a reaction to what they've been asking for, but still surprises people.

Not sure if you're being serious or not. It's either you're on the wind up or you don't know what "allegory" means. There's no flying cars and aliens don't openly roam the planet & yet lots of science fiction which is allegorical stories about real life. The idea of a group of people being attacked, despised, ostracised, and all because of something they were born with, that they didn't choose, that's the allegory for racism. Not the specific nature of the mutations. It's not a particularly subtle allegory but it's 1960s comic books man, that shit was fun but entirely throw away (seriously, get a free trial for Marvel Unlimited & read the first few issues of X-Men), you're not going to get subtlety there.

Anyway, as a pathetic manbaby who really doesn't watch many movies these days that aren't Marvel films, I'm totally fine with this. There's a lot of serious concerns about the issue of competition, especially ownership of TV networks, but it's also a US problem and I'm not in America so that part doesn't fuss me very much. Disney ramping up the unnecessary sequels on Pixar films really irked me, and you have something like Fox Searchlight which continually funds what I guess you could regard as prestige films, award fodder that doesn't bring home the cash like a summer blockbuster, but the world would be a poorer place without the likes of Black Swan, The Last King of Scotland, Sunshine, Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel, so you'd have to hope Disney will just give those people the continued freedom to keep doing what they do.

Disney would also apparently pick up a big stake in Hulu which I guess could become their dedicated streaming platform rather than actually launching a specific Disney thing to compete with Amazon & Netflix. I dunno, it's totally healthy to be insanely sceptical of companies potentially being a monopoly or monoposy, but at the same time, for example the spreading of all the shit you'd want to watch over 3 or 4 separate streaming services is a total ballache for consumers. "This month do I want to watch Stranger Things & The Grand Tour or do I drop one of them so I can binge watch WWE Network/UFC Fight Pass/New Japan World/Hulu/Crunchy Roll/god there are so many streaming services now/etc?" is not actually great. Everything being in one place has a huge upside. Of course, that lack of competition also means they are free to price gouge so man, no easy answers. So long as the regulators ensure they can't own both ABC & Fox it's not a totally horrible thing, and there are definite upsides on the superhero front, but I'm not sure it's really full of major positives either.

Look at those snappers, Ralph! This would be great lol.

Disney getting more control over our entertainment is never something I'd celebrate, I don't care if an Avengers/X-men crossover never happens on screen. Whenever it happens in the comics it's underwhelming anyway. Disney makes some good movies but competition is good for the consumer, I don't want them to be in charge of all the movies that come out...

@colourful_hippie: There's some rumblings going around.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-acquiring-fox-regional-sports-networks-huge-espn-190231427.html

I just read it as a synonym for "metaphor", so I'm sorry if that's not the actual definition. Like yeah, being ostracized for what you were born with can be compared to racism. But being afraid of jews or black people or whatever is irrational. Being afraid of people that have a random chance of turning into living bombs when they hit puberty is not. So if you write a story where say, someone revealing they're a mutant is treated as them coming out as gay("Have you tried not being a mutant?", which I think was X-Men 3), that doesn't work for me because no gay person has ever grown bone claws from their knuckles or exploded someone's head with their mind. The bigots are right to be afraid of people that turn into monsters, while real life bigots have no valid reason to be afraid of the minority groups. The message of the story doesn't work when you compare it to what it's supposed to be a metaphor for. That's why I'm not a big fan of it.

An allegory has a narrative, a metaphor is a word or phrase being used to represent an idea. But other than that they're pretty similar. Anyway, yeah, it's not going to work if you push it as far as it will go, because having a race of mutants that don't have fantastical powers and couldn't fight crime doesn't make a good/fun comic book. But if you take the overarching allegory of a minority group being oppressed, it's being presented in a way that's relateable to a lot of people and forcing them to engage with those ideas, perhaps in a way they hadn't considered before. I think ultimately that's a net positive and it's worth the slight bridge in logic.

I doubt the Deadpool movie or its sequel would’ve happened under the watchful gaze of Mickey Mouse. The Marvel movies are fun, but they are very formulaic and risk averse. I think Fox has done well with the X-Men and I think the X-Men work best when they’re separate from the rest of Marvel, even in the comics.

I do think they need more villains instead of constantly relying on Loki and the spectre of Thanos, and there are many good villains in Fantastic 4 and X-Men.

@deathstriker said:

I think Disney is using the X-Men angle to help sell this merger with fans, but no one pays $68 billion for just the rights to the X-Men. Disney wants to start their own streaming service, and they need content to fill that streaming service up. Futurama, Simpsons, IASIP, etc. are all there to fill up content.

I would have been happy if Marvel was just buying the X-Men rights, because I think they would finally do it right. (Maybe Cyclops could finally get the attention he deserves as the leader of the X-Men and not a punching bag for the writers.) However, Disney has ~30% of the box office last year, and Fox had something like ~15% of the box office. This would put Disney at nearly 45% of all movie ticket sales. I know it doesn't really work like that, but Disney would still control a massive portion of the box office. With all they have been doing with movie theaters and newspapers regarding the latest Star Wars movie, it just seems like too much power in the hands of one company.

So, despite being a massive X-Men fan for 30 years and confident that Marvel would create the movies I would want to see, I would rather that this deal not go through. It would make Disney too powerful.

It's actually not an X-Men Avengers crossover I'm excited for. It's for shit like the baddies that have ended up stuck in "exclusive" deals.

Oh, and maybe they could make a half-way competent Fantastic Four film, that'd be cool. The first comic I ever read was a tiny trade paperback of my dad's which contained Fantastic 4 1 through 4. So I have a nostalgic attachment to those characters.

Oh shit, thanks for the heads up! I hope that doesn't go through because those parts of the sports business sound like they're slowing dying not growing.

I don't like the idea of entertainment consolidating down into one or two mega corps. One or two business having that kind of control over the culture scares me. Regardless of how I might feel about a FF Avengers cross over.

I hope they kick Ridley to the curb and greenlight Aliens vs. Pirates!

Yup...I guess it happened.

How many years away are we from they U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division going in and breaking Disney up into parts? I think Disney even knows that they are creating a problem, but for the time being and with the law permitting them are going for it.

Hooray for Entertainment corp. I just can't wait till all industries are owned by one or two multinational conglomerates. That'll be just swell.

being sarcastic if you can't tell.

It seems like a lot of it is this...

Whoa, the Fantastic 4 are going to be in MCU!!!!!!!! Now we can finally have a good Fantastic 4 movie!!!!

...and jokes about Kingdom Hearts III.

The less in the hands of that dirty rat Murdoch the better imo