Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox has helped them corner the market in the film and TV industry. With the merger, Disney removed a prolific rival for box office success from its path, while Fox’s shareholders gained a 25% stake in the new, larger Disney Corporation. As well as a sizeable share of broadcaster Sky and 20th Century Fox’s TV production roster, Disney has acquired rights to quite a few successful film franchises, which include ratings-rivals to its existing blockbusters.
But does this collaboration bode well for the films and the fans? We take a look at a few of the issues associated with such a monopoly.
Market saturation
In removing 20th Century Fox from their path, Disney can claim an even greater market share of a market they already dominated. Such purchases are not made lightly by the corporation. Costly though it was, purchasing the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas proved to be a success, while Marvel has also gone from strength to strength in recent years, what with the popularity of the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy storylines in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Taking control of Fox has landed Disney with a project that Fox has already spent time and money developing. TheAvatar sequels.
Many people are not fans of fantasy or ‘superhero’ genre cinema, yet the BBC reported earlier this week that the corporation that brought us Mickey Mouse is planning four Star Wars movies, eight movies set in the MCU and fourAvatar movies . True, many of us will be giddy with the thought of so many more instalments of these, but many critics will grow bored of the franchises and constant release of new Disney productions. In that case, they’ll begin to pick up on discrepancies or similarities in the projects. Have they taken on too much?
Possibly not. Fox has already been financing Avatar sequels for some time and the first of the new Star Wars movies (in addition to Toy Story 4) are already made and scheduled for release in 2019. However, with rumours of further Indiana Jones movies, new Frozen and Maleficent instalments and much more Pixar in the pipeline, just how many films can one corporation release without conflict between them for viewing figures, ratings and box office share?
Lack of new ideas?
New productions bring with them new ideas and approaches, and you fear that Disney is cashing in too much on genres that are popular (making them money). The day may come when we won’t care anymore about the MCU or Pandora, although it’s harder to argue with the longevity of Star Wars and the consistency of Pixar. Should we not be encouraging more diversity and risk in the production process to generate better end results?
Unfortunately, a popular trope among filmmakers now is adaptation or reimaginings of films that have already been made. This should, in theory, make better movies. Adaptations of books or other formats onto the big screen can offer a whole new perspective and even outperform the original piece. Yet film remakes so seldom capture the zeitgeist that it’s a wonder they are still being churned out in such vast quantities. A great example is The Day the Earth Stood Still, a 2008 remake no-one asked for but that Fox gave us.
But… it’s Disney?!
If Disney has more success, makes better movies that make more money, allowing it to buy other corporations that make movies, surely it will make those corporations’ movies better, right? Conglomerating these projects into such a huge release list is going to be a problem for the corporation because they need to ensure a return on their investment. How they do this may upset us humble viewers. Changing release dates, pushing back projects and abandoning franchises are all likely courses of action to stop a box office pile-up that will ruin their profits – those are the kinds of issue that affect fans directly
That said, productions will continue with their original teams, as Disney know better than to tamper in projects that make them money. Movies released under the Fox or Marvel name should retain their uniqueness. This is important, as Disney tropes crop up all over the place and provide useful free marketing. Online casino is a prime example, where established names like PartyCasino feature an excellent choice of slots and live casino game developers like MicroGaming, who rely on many of these popular themes and characters to produce entertaining content that appeals. A great example of these are the Fairytale Legends and John Hunter & Da Vinci’s Treasure slots, the latter of which appears to feature a long lost relative of Indiana Jones. Disney gives many much-loved film franchises a bright (and long) future of financial stability and a minimum of meddling while inspiring other productions in different sectors.
For fans of Disney’s existing franchises and particularly fans of the fantasy genre, the merger of Disney and Fox has brought opportunities for new success-stories to be released. Disney’s planned roster of films will be searched for by millions as they look for the next release, to find out what their favourite characters will do next. For those of us who prefer other filmmakers, we may have to wait and see what Disney do next. They are not afraid to spend to increase their market share still further.
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