Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox • Hacker News Board

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#241

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

papercrane wrote: post #207

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't Netflix make the worst move possible? They developed a heap of MARVEL original content, that Netflix funded, which now Disney is able to pull from them.

I would hope that Netflix negotiated a licensing agreement that prevented Disney from just pulling their rights to the shows they funded.

Current reports are that Netflix's contract rights to the Marvel original shows is set to expire in 2019, just in time for Disney's still unnamed service to launch. (…and possibly one of the reasons it isn't launching until 2019.)

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#242

Post by jacksmith21006 » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

Predicted by Matt Groening

https://goo.gl/images/pPPy6o

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#243

Post by longerthoughts » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

pdog wrote: post #150

jakozaur wrote: post #24

Sane antitrust regulations should kill this deal. It is bad for everybody other than shareholders of those two companies. In particular bad for customers, other companies and employees: https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172555... https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are...

Neither of the two articles even mention the Disney-21st Century Fox deal. What specifically about this deal should be of concern for antitrust regulators?

For one, it would give the resulting entity a majority stake in Hulu and control over a lot of content that they could potentially yank from the likes of Netflix. It's also the default position of regulators that horizontal mergers are bad for competition, so I'd expect a fight regardless of the ultimate basis [1].

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#244

Post by Spivak » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #193

roryisok wrote: post #110

fingers crossed for firefly season 2

This is a monkey paw thing where you get it, but it's the bland by-the-numbers Disney version carefully built by committee to avoid offending the largest number of people and just revisits all of the same ideas from the first season.

I really don't get why people are upset about this. A company trying to make money by going for mass appeal. For shame.

Until someone shows that an unsafe movie can be popular it's going to continue just how it's been since Gilgamesh.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#245

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

roryisok wrote: post #110

fingers crossed for firefly season 2

IIRC, Fox sold Firefly to Universal for Serenity.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#246

Post by nickik » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 6:03 PM UTC

hypersoar wrote: post #111

nickik wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its simply false that market freedom always leads to consolidation. There is a very complex interplay between transaction cost, information problems, scaling economics and so on. You are just throwing out populist phrases because they sound good. The solution is not to declare some kind of neo-progressive trust busting but locking at individual industries and figuring out why they are consolidating and if it will be…

So, I'm curious: why not engage in some neo-progressive trust busting?

Because the whole point of a market is that it acts as a process to discover the most efficient way to do something in a complex system.

Every individual market has huge amounts of complexity by itself and competes for the same resources as many other market creating huge amounts of complex dependencies.

If in these system a particular structure emerges, there is reason to think that it is actually pretty efficient compared to most alternatives.

Just willingly going around trust-busting because 'cooperation are evil' or some other popular phrase is a terrible idea most of the time it will hurt more then it does good.

If you want to do something useful make sure the citizens have rights and that there is a good legal system to arbitrate the interaction of people, companies, non-profits, clubs and so on.

Real change happens because a change in the rules of the system, not in a temporary heroic political trust-busting campaign to score political points.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#247

Post by longerthoughts » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

bighi wrote: post #126

DanCarvajal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because that's what antitrust laws are for. Lack of competition is bad for consumers, bad for the economy, bad for everything... except for the owners of the monopoly.

The argument they'll most likely make is that the merger will encourage competition by allowing them to compete with Netflix, Amazon, etc. in an evolving landscape that they're trying to keep up with (i.e. "if you don't let us do this, those guys are going to take over the world"). Similar arguments have been made for the AT&T/Time Warner merger and we'll see if it carries any weight when they face of with the DOJ in March. Not a perfect proxy given that one is horizontal and the other vertical, but may be a helpful indicator nonetheless.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#248

Post by frooxie » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #211

I hope everyone likes the Fantastic Four, because we're probably going to get a few years of Fantastic Four Marvel Cinematic Universe movies out of this deal.

I really like the original Lee/Kirby comics (and Byrne's run in a similar style), and I'd love to see movies that were true to the best parts of those comics. The only good FF movie we've gotten so far was called The Incredibles, but there's no reason why the real FF movies couldn't be at least as good and successful.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#249

Post by kylehotchkiss » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #195

Disney missed an opportunity to improve the world by shutting down Fox News or changing its editorial viewpoint to be more in line with their own and retiring th Murdoch’s completely from the news propaganda game.

I was feeling the same

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#250

Post by roryisok » Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #244

jandrese wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a monkey paw thing where you get it, but it's the bland by-the-numbers Disney version carefully built by committee to avoid offending the largest number of people and just revisits all of the same ideas from the first season.

I really don't get why people are upset about this. A company trying to make money by going for mass appeal. For shame . Until someone shows that an unsafe movie can be popular it's going to continue just how it's been since Gilgamesh.

Logan, guardians of the galaxy and Deadpool fairly soundly proved that unsafe movies can be popular. But at Disney it's about maximizing profits. If you can get all of the family to go see a movie rather than just anyone over 16, you're making more money.