20th Century Fox and Fox Television will join the Disney family
Today’s massive deal between the Walt Disney Company and 21st Century Fox, in which Disney acquired most of Fox’s film and television production and distribution businesses for $52.4 billion, will have countless far-reaching implications for the media and entertainment industries. The most obvious one is that — as long as the acquisition doesn’t hit any regulatory roadblocks — Disney will take control of the rights to two of the biggest back catalogs in entertainment: 20th Century Fox for films, and 20th Century Fox Television for TV shows.
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As one of the “Big Six” Hollywood studios, Fox has been around for a long, long time. The film studio was founded in 1935 as 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation; the company spun up a TV division called TCF Television Productions in 1949. Over the decades, Fox has produced dozens of box office hits and long-running TV shows — and now, Disney will own them all, adding to its acquisitions of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012.
Comics fans have focused on the deal allowing Disney to bring a few leftover Marvel characters and Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (including the 20th Century Fox fanfare) into the fold. But an acquisition like this also involves tons of film and television properties, ranging from billion-dollar franchises to things you’ve never heard of.
Note that in the film segment, the deal includes Fox’s movie-making apparatus as well as its distribution business. On the TV side, 21st Century Fox will retain ownership of the Fox broadcast network, Fox News and the cable sports network Fox Sports 1. But the way the TV industry works, production studios regularly make shows that air on other networks, so Fox-produced shows could still appear on channels that Disney didn’t own. And Disney would control the rights to what it will really care about down the line: streaming distribution.
Yes, Disney’s acquisition would give the company full ownership of the Marvel characters under Fox’s banner — Deadpool, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. The companies have shared the screen rights for two additional Marvel characters: Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, whose comic book origins lie in both the Avengers and X-Men series.
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This means that, say, the X-Men could join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And once the current phase of those films concludes with the 2019 follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War, the company would be able to bring in new villains like Doctor Doom and Galactus.
Shifting to a different universe of genre film, the deal would give Disney the one piece of the Star Wars puzzle that it didn’t acquire when it bought Lucasfilm. Fox’s original arrangement with George Lucas included the exclusive distribution rights to the first Star Wars film (which was later renamed Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope) in perpetuity.
With the rights secured, there’s a chance that Disney could put together a modern home video release of A New Hope — the original theatrical cut from 1977, not the special editions with Lucas’ much-maligned alterations, which is currently the only option. Purists can download the unofficial “Despecialized Edition” of the original Star Wars trilogy, but a fan edit, amazing as it might be, just isn’t the same as being able to walk into a store and buy a Blu-ray copy.
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There’s also the matter of the 20th Century Fox fanfare, which accompanied the first six Star Wars films. The movies under Disney — 2015’s The Force Awakens, 2016’s Rogue One and The Last Jedi this week — open with a silent Lucasfilm logo. It remains to be seen whether Disney will bring back Fox’s iconic percussion-and-brass theme for future Star Wars films.
Fox has built up an impressive movie library over more than 80 years. Looking to the future, the Avatar franchise may be the crown jewel in Disney’s acquisition of the Fox film studio. The original film, which was released in 2009, is the highest-grossing movie of all time with $2.79 billion in worldwide box office receipts. Four sequels are in development, with release dates scheduled from 2021 through 2025.
This summer, Fox concluded its successful Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy with the well-received War for the Planet of the Apes. Other 2017 entries in major Fox franchises include Alien: Covenant and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The fourth Predator movie, The Predator, is coming in 2018. And last year, Fox released a sequel to Independence Day two decades after its debut.
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Looking into Fox’s back catalog, there are a number of other well-known franchises that Disney stands to acquire, including Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Die Hard, Home Alone, Night at the Museum. And on the animation front, 20th Century Fox Animation owns Blue Sky Studios — the production house behind the Ice Age and Rio franchises — as well as the live-action/CGI hybrid series Alvin and the Chipmunks.
The deal comes with more than tentpole blockbusters, of course. Disney would also acquire Fox Searchlight Pictures, the indie-focused arm of 20th Century Fox, which has won three Best Picture Oscars in the past decade. (Believe it or not, no Disney film has ever taken the top prize at the Academy Awards.)
Acquiring Fox’s television studios will give Disney a major boost to its TV production capabilities. Disney hasn’t been as successful as Fox on the programming front lately, and one of its most beloved and reliable creators — Shonda Rhimes, the woman behind Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal — left ABC Studios for Netflix earlier this year.
One of ABC’s longest-running hits, Modern Family, is actually produced by 20th Century Fox Television, and one of its newest, Speechless, is a co-production between Fox and ABC. Other popular network shows from Fox include This Is Us, which airs on NBC, and Empire, which appears on Fox. That channel also broadcasts Fox-produced shows such as the revival of The X-Files and The Gifted, a live-action series based on the X-Men.
20th Century Fox Television has a subsidiary, Fox 21 Television Studios, that primarily makes programming for cable channels. Fox 21 has a hand in Showtime’s Homeland and FX’s American Horror Story, among many other shows. Disney would also acquire FX Networks in this deal, including the channels FX, FXX and FXM as well as the studio FX Productions. That company makes Fox’s second X-Men show, Legion, along with acclaimed series such as The Americans and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The other subsidiary of 20th Century Fox Television is Fox Television Animation, which, of course, makes animated TV series such as The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers. The firm’s library includes American Dad! and King of the Hill, but not Futurama — Syfy bought the rights to the 31st-century cartoon from Fox earlier this year.
