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News FOX selling out to Disney?

Fantastic Four hasn't been a big seller for a while, but I have to believe if Marvel had the rights to do a film they would be putting a lot more weight behind them, putting A-list talent on the books, making them more central to storylines that might be adapted for future films, etc. Right now though, investing that talent and focus on a property they don't have film rights to doesn't make sense when you consider their paltry funny book profits against Disney's film interests.
 
As I already said, if it were just about Marvel, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. My problem is with Disney's evident quest to monopolize the entire entertainment landscape -- to own everything, not just Marvel but Star Wars and the Muppets and Aliens and Predator and Avatar and whatever else they can get their rapacious four-fingered gloves on. Monopolies are bad. Monopolies are to business what fascism is to politics -- a centralization of power for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. No one entity is entitled to control everything. Disney is too huge already. And it's not the only corporation that is. It's a symptom of the larger societal problem that's concentrated more and more wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer billionaires, which is bad for everyone else.

I realize I'm a bit late to the game on this, but respectfully I disagree with your assessment of Disney desiring to "monopolize the entire entertainment landscape". Disney isn't trying to do that. They don't normally buy out major competitors or make mega deals. The biggest acquisition Disney has made was Capital Cities/ABC back in 1995 for $19 billion. The next biggest was Pixar for less than $8 billion back in 2006. Compared to other mass media mergers, Disney's acquisitions have been more of a medium-sized nature and usually strategic targets rather than buying for the sake of buying or seeking a monopoly. Not only that Disney has sold IPs at times: several former Saban properties, DIC, and Miramax. If Disney were to successfully acquire a large part of Fox, they would probably sell off the parts that didn't fit their model if those parts were worth selling. I could easily see Disney using the Aliens and Predators franchises as leverage to acquire full rights to Spider-Man or distribution rights for the Incredible Hulk.

I can't say I'm the biggest fan of Disney buying most of Fox (or Comcast buying it, but I'm not a big enemy of it, either). The mass media business has become so competitive that basically a company either has to make acquisitions every few years or prepare to sell out/merge. For "Disneyflix" to be successful, it needs more content, period. For Disney to stay successful, they need more content, both through making new IPs and acquisitions. The way things are do stink in a way, but this is how they are and there's little that can be done to make things better. At least, we can look forward to some potentially cool crossovers if this does happen eventually.
 
Princess Leia is technically a Disney princess, if they wanted to go that way. Imagine a Mulan/Leia teamup.

Is she? I mean, she was a princess in the original films, but in the Disney-made films, she's a general. Unless you count her cameo in Rogue One. Sure, Disney now owns the original films, but they didn't make them.

For that matter, was she a hereditary princess or an elected one like Padme? I mean, nobody's ever referred to Bail Organa as a king or a prince, as far as I know.

Of course, I realize I'm just splitting hairs for the hell of it. "Disney Princess" is a marketing franchise, so if the corporation wanted to include Leia under that brand, they have an excuse to do so. But it looks to me like Disney prefers using the Forces of Destiny banner to market SW characters to girls, which works better for me, since modern SW has lots of excellent female characters who aren't princesses, technically or otherwise.
 
Apparently, according to the original contracts if Fox sells their movie division...Disney and Marvel will automatically get the film rights to X-Men and anything else they sold to Fox back.

So no matter what happens here, since FOX is selling off their Movie Division...Disney wins.
 
As I probably mentioned before, I'd be fine with Marvel Studios getting the Fantastic Four back, but I think I like the way Fox is handling the X-Men franchise. The movies are hit-and-miss, but the series has enough merit that I'd like it to continue as it is. And both Legion and The Gifted on TV are pretty interesting -- I'd hate to see them prematurely dropped because of a change of ownership the way The Spectacular Spider-Man and (I think) The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes were.
 
As I probably mentioned before, I'd be fine with Marvel Studios getting the Fantastic Four back, but I think I like the way Fox is handling the X-Men franchise. The movies are hit-and-miss, but the series has enough merit that I'd like it to continue as it is. And both Legion and The Gifted on TV are pretty interesting -- I'd hate to see them prematurely dropped because of a change of ownership the way The Spectacular Spider-Man and (I think) The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes were.

I'd like to see X-Men movies and TV shows where they exist in a world that also contains magic and aliens and stuff. Give us a new context.
 
Fantastic Four hasn't been a big seller for a while,
The previous iteration under Hickman (and later Fraction) was able to support two monthlies. It's just that by the time of James Robinson upper management had already decided to stop publishing the book and was winding the franchise down. If you count them with all the Inhuman books being published now, the FF and related books would probably have been enough to support an entire Marvel editorial group.
 
I'd like to see X-Men movies and TV shows where they exist in a world that also contains magic and aliens and stuff. Give us a new context.

Fox's next X-Men movie (possibly a duology) is a new, more faithful adaptation of the Dark Phoenix storyline, with Jessica Chastain as Empress Lilandra of the Shi'ar. So the aliens are coming.

As for magic, when many mutant abilities are already indistinguishable from magic, what would it really add?
 
The Constantin Film Fantastic Four rights situation is still very confusing. We don't know what their agreement with Fox says, or what agreements Fox has with Marvel independent of Constantin, from the 1999 rights extension. We could end up with a Hulk situation where Marvel owns the production rights but Fox still has distribution rights.
 
Fox's next X-Men movie (possibly a duology) is a new, more faithful adaptation of the Dark Phoenix storyline, with Jessica Chastain as Empress Lilandra of the Shi'ar. So the aliens are coming.

As for magic, when many mutant abilities are already indistinguishable from magic, what would it really add?

Chastain said she isn't Lilandra. There's a theory she's playing Neranke and they're using Skrulls instead of the Shi'Ar for some reason.

Why magic? Because why not.
 
If they're using Skrulls It can be taken only as a big middle finger to Disney. Might be reason enough.
 
The rumor mill suggests that talks have resumed and are gaining momentum.

https://mcuexchange.com/breaking-disney-fox-deal-gaining-momentum-imminent/

I hope this happens. We need MCU people to work on X-Men, at least the main X-Men stuff. Then they would try to tell good stories and take advantage of more of the source material/characters instead of just finding one famous actor to make the whole damn universe revolve around while having pretty much the same guy crap out scripts every few years like FOX does. I doubt that Disney can get the FF back because of Constantin, but just having the X-Men would be great.
 
Screw Disney.

Also I was hoping the X-men film rights would never return back to Marvel. They are better without their heavy hitters. I doubt they would have pushed the Avengers characters and developed them so well if they had access to Spider-man and Wolverine from the very start.

Wolverine would have been in every freaking MCU movie mugging the camera.
Yep. Looks like Xmen will be another franchise I have to stop watching. Oh well. Logan was a good way for it all to end and I always have them all on Blu-ray if I get in the mood.
 
So if Marvel got back the X-Men, and the FF which characters would they not have access to? With the Sony deal could they still do their own versions characters like Venom and Black Cat,or would those characters be out of bounds since Sony is giving them their own movies?
 
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