Disney buys most of Fox's studios and cable TV channels for $52 billion

Disney will buy up large chunks of Rupert Murdoch's Fox media empire for $52 billion. The list of what it won't take is shorter: the Fox News cable channel, broadcast networks and Fox Sports. Disney is expected to bulking up for their forthcoming streaming service.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

Costs money though.
Is Disney free?

 

[Hadron]

Well neither Fox nor Disney movies are free, so there's no change there. But it will mean that Marvel studios will be able to use characters that Fox had rights on, since both will now be owned by Disney. That will probably be the most visible change for some people.

Assuming it goes ahead (i.e. competition authorities ok it) it will have an impact in the UK, where Murdoch and his News Corp were the biggest problems for Fox's desire to buy the rest of Sky.

The question is, what's Murdoch's game plan? It's not his style to retreat, so he presumably has something undisclosed up his sleeve.

 

[Unforgiven]

Great, instead of two companies making terrible reboots over and over there will be only one.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

Holy Shots!
Rupert Murdoch is still in the game!
I thought he'd just retire and count his money!

 

[Hadron]

Conceivably that's what he's doing, but I'm not going to assume that this early. This is someone who enjoys power and influence, and although he's holding on to his newspapers and the Fox News comedy channel if this deal is the end of it he will have less of both afterwards, which makes me very suspicious.

 

[Rob]

Too bad they're not buying and dissolving the Fox News outlet!