Was Disney's Fox purchase a huge waste of money?
Was Disney's Fox purchase a huge waste of money?
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?
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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.