I think Disney understands they're different markets, different creative decisions, the whole deal, kind of like one record label retaining different artists after another label bought them. I would assume they'd keep the lot in West LA, keep a lot of the management in place, and just run it as a wholly-owned subsidiary. On the plus side, I bet the Marvel management (Kevin Feige and the TV people) would love to have all the comic characters under one roof, particularly the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. If the sale goes through, Disney could go back and replace "inhumans" with "mutants" in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." show.
Disney is just a name not what envisioned of his company buying other companies and slapping the disney log on them.. If Walt was alive for one day.. he be in tears most of that day. Disney Co. can't have everything they want .. Streaming is tech fad Which will fade someday..
Walt's been dead since 1966. That was 51 years ago. There's no way he could have predicted the leaps and bounds in technology and trends and people's interests. What Walt did in his time was phenomenal but you can't live in the past forever.
Nobody is big enough to swallow up Disney, at least not in the entertainment sector. You'd have to have Apple or Google money to buy Disney. Apple, Google, possibly Facebook . . . there are quite a few players outside of the studio business who could make a play for 21st Century Fox. Several European and Asian companies might be interested, too (Samsung, Vodafone, China Mobile). Disney isn't the only company with the money and a reason to buy.
Not just them. One of the big media conglomerates could (and has) put an offer in before and they'll surely do it again at some point.
Who's left besides Disney? Warner is the only other player with the pockets. Paramount is in no shape to buy anybody. Comcast maybe, but they don't strike me as needing or wanting a studio.
Comcast, Charter, AT&T. Any one of them would love to have the synergy of the Disney brands, studio, and theme parks all in their hands. Disney will eventually be bought out by someone.
Disney's market cap is $162 billion. AT&T's is $210 billion. AT&T could merge with Disney, but they don't have the cash to buy them. Ditto Comcast ($172 billion). Disney dwarfs Charter ($85 billion market cap), and if anyone's getting bought, it's Charter. To buy Disney you'd need Google's market cap ($720 billion) or Apple's ($897 billion). Apple has $257 billion in cash. They could buy Disney and Charter both if they wanted.
This is what the smart money thinks will happen. Disney buys companies for IPs they can exploit with certain demographics. Apple makes the most sense buying Fox.
But those two rights aren't worth $80-some billion. Fox wanted more than Disney was willing to pay for the studio.
Someone wondered that if Disney buys Fox, will Buzzr, a subchannel that airs game show reruns from the Fremantle library be taken off the air since it is a subchannel on the same primary frequency as FOX Network. Will it? I thought I read that Disney will not own any Fox stations.
Buzzr appears on the sub-channel of whatever station decides to pick it up, not just Fox-owned stations.
Yup, I'm not surprised in the least. Disney knows they can make back what they spend on this just like all the other acquisitions.
Whatever gets us closer to the (inevitable) release of the Star Wars trilogy's theatrical versions... with the Fox fanfare included, hopefully... can only be a good thing!
How do we know George Lucas didn't put a "The original theatrical versions of the Star Wars films can never be re-released, re-distributed, or made in any way publicly available in perpetuity" clause into his contract to sell Lucasfilm?
He didn't, we know that for a fact... Kathleen Kennedy confirmed as much. All the original 35mm camera negative elements are preserved, the original separation master and (non-fade) dye-transfer prints are intact and eminently usable as sources, there's evidence of a pristine scan of at least the 1977 film's theatrical version in existence at Lucasfilm (as seen on the 2004 Empire of Dreams DVD documentary, for example), and money is certainly no barrier to a comprehensive restoration of those films (if needed, which I'm convinced it's not)... noted restoration expert Robert A. Harris has repeatedly offered Lucasfilm his services for such an endeavor. It seems the problem is in Lucasfilm simply not wanting to go against it's former founder's wishes pertaining to the OT's theatrical versions, loyalty not legality in other words. Until that changes, we're stuck with what we have...