What The Disney/Fox Studios Merger Means For You

Anastasia is officially a Disney Princess. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has followed through on his desire to sell off the film and TV studios owned by News Corporation, and the Walt Disney Company has picked them up. Can’t wait to see Xenomorphs walking around Disneyland!

Disney CEO Bob Iger, previously planning to step down in 2019, will now remain chairman until at least 2021 to oversee the chaos. The buyout is in motion, but it has yet to be approved (which shouldn’t be a problem with the current administration). Disney now owns the following:

• Xenomorphs (as established earlier), Terminators, the planet Pandora, and Kevin McAllister
• The X-Men and the home video rights to those Star Wars movies they didn’t own before (the most crucial part of the deal)
• The Simpson family, C. Montgomery Burns, Milhouse Van Houten, Groundskeeper Willie, Sideshow Bob, that controversial Apu character, and Gabbo
• Every other Animation Domination character including Peter Griffin, Hayley Smith, Bob Belcher, Hank Hill, Philip J. Fry’s dog Seymour Asses, and Allen Gregory
• Every joke Family Guy has ever made (inaccurately) about Walt being an anti-semite, as well as a disturbing cutaway where Walt orders a crying Minnie Mouse to strip in front of him
• All five Ice Age movies (or are there six?)
• All FX Originals, including Always Sunny and all those things with Louis CK in them they can’t show anymore
• Hulu, since Disney owned 30% and Fox owned 30%
• The film rights to Deadpool

So about that last one. You’re probably seriously worried about the future of Deadpool movies, as it’s not the kind of thing one would assume Disney would want to attach to their PG-13 Marvel brand (at the least, it’s not the kind of thing they would start). Iger has already spoken out about this; he said he’ll leave him alone. “[Deadpool] clearly has been and will be Marvel-branded. But we think there might be an opportunity for a Marvel-R brand for something like Deadpool. As long as we let the audiences know what’s coming, we think we can manage that fine.”

Disney will not own the Fox network, nor FS1, Fox News or any other channel that begins with “F”. Antitrust regulations in place prevent them from owning more than one major TV network or doubling their cable network presence overnight. As for what that means for Fox’s programming, that decision will be in Disney’s wheelhouse, but we think Iger is smart enough not to rock the boat too much. He isn’t a meddler.

Because of his lack of meddling, it is most likely that 20th Century Fox Film Corporation will continue to operate much like it has been, with the only real indication of Mouse ownership being officially Marvel-approved X-Men movies (and, possibly, the world’s first GOOD Fantastic Four flick).