Woah! Disney may be buying 20th Century Fox which could finally bring the X-Men, Fantastic Four and MCU series together

November 6th, 2017 by Marc Comments

This is pretty damned big news…

Reports are suggesting that Disney may be in talks to buy 20th Century Fox’s TV and film branches, leaving behind a media company that will focus on news and sports alone.

Why is this exciting? Well, you know why… because, if it went through, it could see the MCU and the X-Men and Fantastic Four movies finally falling in line, in to one massive cinematic universe.

But…

Don’t get too excited yet as, while there is apparently truth to the rumours, “the talks have taken place over the last few weeks and there is no certainty they will lead to a deal. The two sides are not currently talking at this very moment, but given the on again, off again nature of the talks, they could be revisited.”

The nitty gritty of the deal would be: “For Fox, the willingness to engage in sale talks with Disney stems from a growing belief among its senior management that scale in media is of immediate importance and there is not a path to gain that scale in entertainment through acquisition. The company is said to believe that a more tightly focused group of properties around news and sports could compete more effectively in the current marketplace.”

Disney’s buying of the movie and TV company would of course be advantageous and would see their dominance of the entertainment industry grow even more – wait, would that mean we could get the 20th Century Fox Fanfare back at the beginning of Star Wars?! Sorry, I digress.

Anyway, as per the report on CNBC :

For Disney, the opportunity to take control of another movie studio and significant TV production assets as it readies a direct-to-consumer entertainment streaming offering is attractive as is Fox’s significant exposure to international markets, such as the U.K., Germany and Italy — both through its networks and 39 percent ownership of Sky. Disney recently announced it will pull all of its movies from the Netflix platform and will establish two direct-to-consumer offerings: one for sports and one including its key franchises such as “Star Wars” and Marvel.

The company could not own two broadcast networks and would therefore not buy the Fox broadcast network. It would not buy Fox’s sports programming assets in the belief that combining them with ESPN could be seen as anti-competitive from an antitrust standpoint and it would not buy the Fox News or Business channel. Disney would also not purchase Fox’s local broadcasting affiliates, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

So there you have it, for a long time we’ve been reporting that something might be on the horizon that could see the X-Men and MCU universes finally meeting… and this could be it.

Just, you know, don’t hold your breath.

What do you all think? Let us know.

 

Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….