What Was the Point of Disney Buying Fox?

 

Copyright China Daily

That is what many Marvel fans are asking after “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (a pretty good movie, I want to add) suffered a massive 66% drop in the second weekend at the box office. This isn’t how things were supposed to play out. With good reviews, enthusiastic reception from Marvel fans, and a strong opening at the box office (not to mention officially bringing the characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe), this movie was supposed to be overperforming like James Gunn’s “Superman” reboot. Instead, it looks like it will make as much money (if not less) than Fox’s previous “Fan4stic Four” reboot.

What was the point of Disney buying Fox?

I mean, that’s why Disney purchased Fox, right? To bring Deadpool, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four home to the MCU, right? To make them billion-dollar movies? What was the point of spending that kind of money if the new Fantastic Four can’t even make more money than the last terrible release (and this is with ten years of inflation)? This is where I must reiterate what I said when the deal was first announced in 2017: Buying Fox was never about bringing Fantastic Four and X-Men home to the MCU. Disney highlighted that in the announcement because it was easy to convince narrow-minded Marvel fans that this would be in the best interests of the public. And give Disney credit: The argument worked.

Heck, it worked so well that a die-hard Marvel friend of mine simply refused to consider the bigger implications of what the purchase would mean for the industry if the deal were to go through. He just wanted to see Captain America and Wolverine interact (though he shared some concern about whether the next Dealpool would be PG-13). But the reality is that while getting the rights to classic Marvel characters back was certainly a perk (especially since Deadpool was officially a billion-dollar character), the reality is that it was pretty low on Disney’s wish list when they bought the studio. 

The reality is that Disney offered $50 billion for Fox (and then $72 billion thanks to Comcast messing around with them) for more nefarious reasons. By purchasing Fox it gave them classic films to bolster the library for their upcoming Disney+ service. It gave them a controlling share of Hulu, which would force out their competitors from the streaming service. For those who forget, Hulu was once equally owned by all the big studios, ensuring that the platform remained studio agnostic without anyone being able to overrule anyone else in terms of content or functionality. Once Disney bought Fox, they had that power, and it forced the other players to sell their share to Disney and start their own streaming services (how many of you are enjoying paying for seven services instead of two?). 

It also gave Disney leverage at the box office, as they now owned a slew of movies that meant (for the foreseeable future) they would control close to 40% of the movies coming to theaters. It's easier to force the theaters to pay higher percentages of the tickets when you have leverage like that. The biggest thing of all, though, is that it took a competitor off the table. Where there were once five major studios, now there would be four, and Disney would own all of the movies from that vacated fifth slot. Remember all those original properties like “Alita: Battle Angel,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (not to mention “Avatar”)? Those were all movies greenlit under Fox, and if Disney had owned them at the time, who's to say they would have been made at all? If you’re wondering why there are so many reboots and legacy sequels, part of the reason is that Disney is the one who leans most heavily into them, and they own a third of the studios in Hollywood now.

Again: What was the point of Disney buying Fox?

The point of Disney buying Fox was to gain more control of the industry. To take a competitor off the board. They knew that with Fox gone, they would have more power than the other studios did. It meant that they could have a bigger percentage of movies in theaters, the biggest streaming library, and control of all those pesky classic screenings of older movies people liked going to (notice how screenings of Fox movies like “Die Hard” and “The Sound of Music” are much harder to come by now?). 

Yes, I’m sure Disney likely wishes “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” did better at the box office, but it’s not like the (thus far) underperforming film is causing them to lose much sleep. The character's profile will likely rise in the upcoming ‘Avengers’ movies, and merchandise will likely make up for the shortcomings at the box office. In short, we’ll likely get a sequel. But if you are looking at the box office and wondering what the point of Disney spending $72 billion on Fox was if this was going to be the result, just remember this: The purchase was NEVER about the MCU in the first place!

P.S. On a final note, if you are politically minded, that $72 billion went into the pocket of Rupert Murdoch, who has used the money to grow the Fox News empire into the juggernaut it’s become over the past few years. Was that worth it to get Fantastic Four and X-Men back into the MCU?