Out Foxed?
When it was announced late last year that Disney was in talks to buy the entertainment divisions of Fox, I was ecstatic. This was due mainly to Disney's success with Marvel. As a fan of comic books and comic based movies, this could be a major win for Marvel.
Years ago while facing bankruptcy, Marvel sold off a lot of their film rights to their movies. Fox bought up the X-Men and Fantastic 4 properties. So with this deal on the table, it means that characters like Wolverine, Deadpool, Galactus, Doctor Doom, Kang the Conqueror, Marvel's first family and the Mutants could all be reunited with their super friends.
This would mean that Marvel takes one more giant step toward uniting all of their heroes under one house as DC has done through their parent company, Warner Brothers Studios.
There would still be a couple of outliers such as Spider-Man and friends who are still technically stuck at Sony Pictures. Sony seems hellbent on devaluing the brand through projects like Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel, and now by making a Tom Hardy led Venom movie where the villain plays a hero.
Sony is also looking to make a Black Cat and Silver Sable movie, a Morbius the Living Vampire movie, and other films that will hopefully bomb so that they come to the table with Disney and Marvel looking to sell. Rumors have circulated that Sony may be wanting to get out of the movie business since they have been bleeding money in the past few years as reported by Tom Huddleston at Fortune.
The Hulk has been stuck under the thumb of Universal Pictures who owns the distribution rights to the franchise. This basically means that there will be no standalone Hulk film any time soon.
Current Hulk star, Mark Ruffalo put Universal on blast for this last year after the D23 Expo when he told a reporter from Variety, “I want to just make one thing perfectly clear today: A standalone ‘Hulk’ movie will never happen,” Ruffalo continued, “Universal has the rights, and for some reason, they don’t know how to play well with Marvel. And they don’t want to make money.”
So with Disney's bid on the table, it looks as if the Avengers are close to being fully assembled with their pals who have been stuck at Fox. But now Comcast, who owns Universal Pictures have stepped in to make an offer to Fox. While this muddies the waters a bit and challenges the house of the mouse, on July 10th, the shareholders at Fox will vote on the two offers. However, Disney is reportedly preparing a counter offer in anticipation of their initial offer being rejected.
While it will take some time for the dust to settle on this deal, it looks as though we are pretty far from a done deal. However, I don't think I am alone in hoping that for the sake of quality entertainment and the future of Marvel, Disney can and should attempt to outbid Comcast.
For more info on "The State of the Deal" check out the article "The Fox/Disney Deal Is A Lot More Likely After AT&T/Warner" by Thomas Bacon at Screen Rant.