I hadn’t realized this was a possibility until a friend was talking to me about it earlier in the week. I guess Disney (Marvel) is in talks to purchase it and I presume to regain the rights to things like the X-Men and Fantastic 4 (plus the ability to say ‘mutant’ I guess). I think Sony is also talking about buying it (so they could put it in the Spiderman universe I guess, though how that will work with the current MCU Spiderman I have no idea).
What would you like to see?
Honestly no one. Media companies are too big as it is and should be broken up. This would just make a problem even worse.
The problem of Marvel not having the rights or ability to use their own characters in their movies? 
FYI, Comcast (which owns NBC Universal) is also thinking about buying it.
I would be fine if Fox sold some rights back to Disney/Marvel (along with the three original Star Wars), but Disney owning a huge chunk of the market is bad for competition. Also, if Disney owned X-Men to begin with, do you really think we would’ve gotten Logan and Deadpool?
Both of those were distributed by Fox.
I assumed the point was that neither Logan nor Deadpool would have passed Disney properties family friendly muster.
I don’t think Disney is that strict on the family friendly policy, so they might have been OK with the Deadpool movie. (Logan, on the other hand, was pretty clean.)
I’m not talking about that specific issue. My concern is broader. It’s not good that about five companies control everything we hear and see. The freedom of the internet helps mitigate that control some but the Trump FCC is about to kill Net Neutrality which could remove even that check on it. It isn’t healthy as a society. Media companies should be broken up not allowed to get bigger.
Yes, if X-Men had been rolled into the MCU to begin with, we never would have seen those.
How many companies would be optimal? I can see this both ways. Smaller companies would, I guess in theory, give more options on what we see. However, since they are using the same calculations on what will or won’t sell, it doesn’t mean we’d get a lot of better content. Larger companies, on the other hand, can, in theory, be able to capitalize better for larger budgets and, perhaps, take chances that smaller ones wouldn’t or couldn’t.
I agree that killing Net Neutrality is a mistake and an issue, but seems beyond the scope of this discussion. Also, there are other, emerging (and some mature) film and content producers outside of the US. So, it’s not true that it’s just 5 companies controlling all the content. It’s been the case that US film production has been the gold standard, so to speak, but I think this has been shifting. One major issue I have is ALL of the US film production companies seem bound and determined to follow or cater to China’s (CCP’s) censorship and content parameters so that they can get into that sweet, sweet Chinese market. I’m more worried about that trend than 21th Century Fox being bought by one of the big US companies.
True, but we probably wouldn’t have seen the *crappy *X-men films, either.
And now the Hollywood studios are getting competition from the Silicon Valley studios (Netflix, Amazon, Google and Apple). For example, Shonda Rhimes, who is responsible for several successful series on ABC, just signed a deal to move to Netflix. But these players are more in the television space than the movies, and the movies they’re producing aren’t the giant blockbusters.
Really, in a century or so, everything made or sold or imported into the USA will be owned and controlled by one private corporation; with the freedom to include or disinclude anything they decide the consumers must take, be it GMOs or pornography, and to control what the consumers wish before the consumers know it. Dissenters will phone to articulate their views which are very important to us and be soothed by an infinite loop.
Not merely the Marxian Iron Law of progressive monopoly, but the fruition of political democracy. It’s consumer friendly, gives you your heart’s desire as fast as possible, and is the acme of comfort.
21th Century Fox seemingly on the sales block. Who would you like to see buy it?
Twenty-oneth Century Fox? Twenty-firth Century Fox?
I’m not sure what the ideal is but in 1983 there were 50 and in 2012 there were 6. This merger would make one less. Here is a sightly dated info graphic laying it out. Where it shows GE you could replace with Comcast. As far as why it’s bad: these companies drive our national conversion. They determine what we think is and isn’t important. They can report news or quash it. The less voices, the easier it is to control what is and isn’t known. Look how Disney is bullying the LA Times for it writing a story about their company. It’s chilling and will get worse.
Another proposed merger is AT&T’s plan to buy Time Warner. AT&T already owns DirecTV, and along with its UVerse cable customers, is the largest television provider in the country (more customers than Comcast). And of course, they’re one of the largest mobile phone operators, and many people watch stuff only on their phones. So if the merger occurs, that company will own HBO, CNN, TBS, DC Comics, Warner Bros Studios and more.
Just think of the potential synergy with the coming end of net neutrality…
I agree that media companies are too big. The solution to that is not having it bought by another media company. I would like to see myself buying the company, I don’t own any other media companies and I really like to see myself having enough money to buy this one.
I’d just like to see Turner buy their catalogue.