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Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

thewaltdisneycompany.com

151–160 of 362 posts

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#151
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Stratechery has been shilling for the industry for quite a while now, on most major corporate issues.

> Stratechery has been shilling for the industry "Shilling" implies, perhaps to the point of requiring, monetary compensation for publishing certain views. The only people I know who pay for Stratchery use it to invest in start-ups. Maybe there is something shady going on. But reducing any argument you disagree with to shilling isn't productive discussion.

> But reducing any argument you disagree with to shilling isn't productive discussion.

Neither is referencing that site on issues.

Disney has tried streaming before and failed, not because Netflix had locked them out of content, but because their service sucked.

You can draw a parallell to Steam and all competing game market platforms for PC, they all had just as much opportunity, and a lot of them lock content only to their own platform, yet they're all worse.

I don't disagree with the fact that large competing platforms are good for keeping the market competitive, but that buying and locking in content instead of providing a better service is the wrong way of going about it, when you can't compete on service.

And as for Stratechery, I don't have access to their books, I can only read a pattern into their recent history of posts on the industry, and it's not good.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#153

Maybe there will be a consolidation and some crappy repetitive movies will go away? I think these businesses are overvalued. What happens when consumers get sick of the super hero genre? EDIT: for whoever down-voted - that wasn't a sarcastic question. Honest question of what happens when the main products lose popularity? If there is a downturn in interest in that, will they get their $50B back?

> crappy repetitive movies will go away

looks at list of upcoming Marvel movies

In seriousness though, I think there is 0 harm in multiple studios releasing competing movies. It should mean more variety and it’s not like you have to watch them all.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the top line of the press release: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/walt-disney-company-acquire...

The US network is being spun off. But for instance they will own Sky - the biggest commercial broadcaster in Europe, and the UK's second biggest ISP...

In addition to this, Sky Sports is pretty much the only game in town in the UK when it comes to sports. Sky hold an insane amount of power in football, to the point where if they want a game to be played at a different time/day the fixture will change. The sheer amount of money in the Premier League today is down to Sky.

This is a linear market that I think Disney will be really interested in. It's an area where Netflix haven't entered (to my knowledge), and it's an area that no one can seem to do well.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#155
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you do. According to wired, [0] Disney paid Lucas Arts $4.5B, which half was cash. In 2016, [1] The Force Awakens made $1.54B globally. Maybe it's more now. Lets say that the last Jedi manages the same success? Well, they made their money back and the new rumored trilogy. That's profit. When you can put Spiderman and the X-men in the same universe as the Avengers and do the next 20 or 30 super hero movies where o…

Your math is impeccable. But I do wonder if someone is considering the possibility that people will get tired of superhero movies in the relatively near future and the whole concept will seem dated.

It really doesn't matter because right now the MCU is a money printing machine and the lack of certain characters is a big pain point for some of the most dedicated fans, so they still have quite a bit of stream left.

Movies continue to make money for years after they are released.

I think it makes sense for them.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#156
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like having a single proprietary browser as the standard for browsing the web is a minor concern. Can you imagine if nowadays anybody who's not using IE/Edge was a 2nd class citizen on the web, not able to access most content? Remember the days of flash? For one thing it would've hurt massively the development of non-MS smartphones. Nowadays Chrome seems to be the new IE but at least they're a bit m…

> Nowadays Chrome seems to be the new IE but at least they're a bit more open overall. eeeeeh "Google Chrome is required to run the new Google Earth. Please try this link in Chrome. Learn more." "Launching the new Allo Web, only available in Chrome." "Launching Google Inbox Beta, only available in Chrome." Granted, Allo and Inbox and the new YouTube design are now available in Firefox, but with artificial performance…

Let's not forget when Google forced Mobile IE to switch to the WAP site for Google Maps even though maps.google.co.uk worked perfectly, then blocked Microsoft's YouTube app and refused to help create one that worked properly just to punish Windows Phone users for picking the wrong platform.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it's crazy how much stuff Disney can pull off Netflix, I don't know if they will, because it's in their interest to have some stuff accessible over more than one place, but they own ABC (Lost, Castle, Firefly, etc), ESPN, Marvel, LucasArts, now Fox and their assets, not to mention they distribute on behalf of many publishers (Dreamworks for example), they would probably clear more than half of Netflix's content if…

Almost seems like Netflix knew what they were doing when they started funding a bunch of original content. I remember when people thought they were being silly.

Exactly. Imagine where Netflix would be without it's original content at this point.

Initially, I thought it was just a kind of frustration. For the cost to acquire rights to shows, you could just create your own original content that you own outright, and they did just that.

But now I see that even if the cost of acquiring other series were dirt cheap, the negotiating posture of companies offering the content to Netflix could change at any moment.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#158

So, will the Fox fanfare return to all Star Wars films, past and present, from now on?

The Uber Nerd in me says the purchase was to secure rights to Star Wars: ANH and the fanfare.

This will also open up the doors for a complete unedited despecialized edition of the original trilogy, not some bad laserdisc scan.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#159
post #132
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People didn't like this comment, but I think it's fair enough, at least from a capitalist perspective. The company is doing what it's supposed to do and the system is working as it should. (This is one of the reasons why I oppose capitalism)

Kind of. Depends on what part of capitalism you're referring to. Because monopolies greatly reduce or limit competition, and competition is the big force that makes capitalism work properly. Capitalism without competition is no different from Communism or a lot of other systems in which one party rules supreme.

I've always held that the extremes of corporate power look a lot more like feudalism than anything else.

The main difference being that corporations divide up the different experiences of life, where fiefdoms divided the land. In the end we have absolute rulers in their own private domains who only have to pay a small tribute and lip service to the nation they are nominally aligned with.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it's crazy how much stuff Disney can pull off Netflix, I don't know if they will, because it's in their interest to have some stuff accessible over more than one place, but they own ABC (Lost, Castle, Firefly, etc), ESPN, Marvel, LucasArts, now Fox and their assets, not to mention they distribute on behalf of many publishers (Dreamworks for example), they would probably clear more than half of Netflix's content if…

Isnt lucasarts the game studio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Clone_Wars_(200... is on netflix right now. I think it was made by lucas arts.
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