Disney and Fox’s merger is officially complete

Walt Disneychairman and CEO Bob Iger and mogul Rupert Murdoch. (Photo Credit: The Walt Disney Company)

The Walt Disney Co. has closed its $71.3 billion acquisition of large parts of 21st Century Fox, expanding its global reach and content portfolio ahead of the planned launch of its own video streaming service. The massive Disney-Fox merger has become official at 12.02am Eastern Time on Wednesday (March 20).

Assets changing hands in the deal include: Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox 2000 Pictures, Fox Family, and Fox Animation; Fox’s television creative units, Twentieth Century Fox Television, FX Productions, and Fox21; FX Networks; National Geographic Partners; Fox Networks Group International; Star India; and Fox’s interests in Hulu, Tata Sky, and Endemol Shine Group.

The assets that Murdoch keeps provide a leaner, more focused entity built around the Fox broadcast network, Fox News Channel and Fox Sports. That company will live on as the Fox Corporation (FOXA).

(Photo: Screenshot from Twitter)

历时一年多之久，迪士尼对21世纪福克斯的713亿美元收购交易终于正式完成！21世纪福克斯官方今日宣布迪士尼已完成对其收购交易的分配，收购已于美东时间3月20日凌晨12点02分正式生效。

迪士尼正式收购的内容包括：21世纪福克斯旗下的20世纪福克斯影业、20世纪福克斯电视公司、FX有线电视网与国家地理，以及福克斯30%的Hulu股份、39%的欧洲电视巨头Sky股份、Star印度等。

而21世纪福克斯将分拆出福克斯广播公司、福克斯电视台、福克斯新闻频道、福克斯商业网络、FS1、FS2、福克斯体育频道、西班牙频道和十大联盟电视网，由这些资产组成为新的福克斯公司。

扩充内容和IP库

Enriching Disney's content kingdom

File photo

By accomplishing this mega-deal, the Magic Kingdom of Disney is able to add 20th Century Fox alongside labels like Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm. While Spider-Man still resides with Sony, Disney now adds Deadpool, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four to its bench of Marvel characters.

Fox's most problematic son Deadpool has wasted no time in potentially making his new owners worry about what they've got themselves in to. On Twitter, actor Ryan Reynolds posted a pic of himself as Deadpool wearing Mickey Mouse ears while waving out the back of a school bus which read 'Disney'.

(Photo: Screenshot from Twitter)

此次迪士尼对福克斯的历史性收购，使得“X战警能不能大战复仇者，死侍能不能见到蜘蛛侠”，变成了漫威迷们最关心的事情。随后，《死侍》系列的扮演者瑞安-雷诺兹在社交媒体上晒出一张头戴米老鼠帽子的“死侍”，庆祝加盟迪士尼的第一天。

In addition to popular superhero characters, Disney will gain control of some of the largest franchises in movies, including "Avatar," ''Alien" and "The Planet of the Apes." Fox's television studios also net Disney the likes of "Modern Family," ''This Is Us" and "The Simpsons" The ownership of these well-established IPs contains unpredictable potential in merchandising and other forms of further development.

而对迪士尼来说，除了这些广受欢迎的超级英雄IP，福克斯拥有的《辛普森一家》《猩球崛起》《异形》《冰河世纪》《阿凡达》等重量级IP，也拥有着巨大的想象力。这种想象力不仅体现在电影作品本身上，还包括后续的版权运营及开发，这部分的收益是非常可观的。

New banner of the Disney website

Furthermore, Fox Searchlight, the regularOscar contender behind films such as "12 Years a Slave," ''The Shapeof Water" and "The Favourite," could yield Disney something it'snever had before: a best picture winner at the Academy Awards.

此外，福克斯探照灯还是常规的奥斯卡有力竞争者，名下的作品有：“为奴十二年”，“水形物语”和“宠儿”等，这足以填补迪士尼的一大空白：奥斯卡最佳影片获奖者。

为Disney+的构建提供充分的内容，对抗流媒体巨头

Disney CEO Bob Iger stressed that Disney is "playing the long game," as studios gradually evolve their distribution models and revenue streams around more direct-to-consumer relationships, their own streaming service called Disney+ would be the company's "biggest priority" for 2019. It is set to compete with other video streaming subscription services such as Netflix, Apple and Amazon, and will complement Hulu, which Disney now has a 60% ownership stake in.

Disney is ending its streaming deal with Netflix so it can launch its own subscription platform as the exclusive streaming home for Disney movies, TV shows and other original programming.

Girding for this battle with Netflix, Apple and Amazon, Disney needs more content for its coming streaming platform, Disney+, and it wants control of its content across platforms. The takeover of 21st Century Fox is understood as a strategic aid to this point.

相比开发时间更长的电影项目，布局流媒体平台也是迪士尼将自身拥有IP最大化利用的重要一步。迪士尼CEO艾格在2018年就透露，2019年将会把重点放在布局流媒体上。收购福克斯让迪士尼对现有流媒体平台hulu的持股达到了60%，并为即将要重磅推出的自家流媒体平台Disney+扩充了大量的独家内容，有助于与当下势头正猛的流媒体巨头奈飞等进行对抗。

虽然目前迪士尼在流媒体上的内容还远不如奈飞丰富，但迪士尼已经要终止和奈飞的协议，以保证名下所拥有的内容和IP只能在自家的流媒体平台上播出。2019年迪士尼将在流媒体领域与奈飞等巨头发生怎样的交锋，令人期待。

潜在的问题

Potential Challenges

The question of how or if Disney will inherit Fox's edginess matters because Fox has long built itself on big bets and technological gambits. It was the first studio built for sound. It was nearly bankrupted by the big-budget Elizabeth Taylor epic "Cleopatra."

(Photo: VCG)

"We were a studio of risk and innovation," says Rothman, who also founded Fox Searchlight. "It was a very daring place, creatively. That's what the movies should be." But will the more button-down Disney have the stomach for such movies? "Deadpool" creator Robert Liefeld, for example, has said Fox's plansfor an X-Force movie have been tabled, a "victim of the merger."

两大巨头的合并虽然带来了可观的机遇，但同时也存在着问题与挑战。首先，关于迪士尼如何或者是否会保留福克斯原有的大胆风格其实就很重要。福克斯长期以来一直致力于生产大投入的项目，热衷于在技术层面上实现创新性开发。伊丽莎白·泰勒的史诗级影片“埃及艳后”曾一度让福克斯接近破产。

“我们是一个崇尚冒险和创新的制片厂，”福克斯探照灯的创立者罗斯曼说。“这是一个非常大胆和具有创造力的地方，这就是电影该有的样子。”但相对保守求稳的迪士尼是否会对这样的影片感兴趣呢？例如，“死侍”的创作者罗伯特·利弗尔德就曾表示福克斯的X-Force电影计划已被搁浅，这就是“合并的受害者”。

"It's sad when any historical empirelike that comes to end," says Michael Troyan, a well-respected film historian."You can record in other places but when you're on a lot like Fox, you feel the gravitas, you feel the history."

"It's a sad day for students of film history and I think it's potentially a sad day for audiences too," said Tom Rothman, former chairman of Fox and the current chief of Sony Pictures."There will just be less diversity in the marketplace."

Fewer studios could potentially mean fewer movies. That's a concern for both consumers and theater owners.

“任何一个像福克斯一样的历史性帝国的落幕都是令人悲伤的，”备受尊敬的电影历史学家迈克尔·特罗扬说，“你可以在其他地方录制，但当你身处福克斯的时候，你会感受到庄严，你会感受到历史。”

“对于任何一个学习电影史的学生来说，这是悲伤的一天，我认为这对观众来说可能也是如此，”福克斯前董事长兼索尼电影公司现任首席执行官汤姆·罗斯曼说，“这意味着电影市场的多样性将会减少。”电影制片厂的减少可能意味着大电影项目数量的减少，这对消费者和影院来说都是一个问题。

(Sources: AP, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, CNN, CNET, Digital Spy, 刺猬公社，壹娱观察; compiled by He Jieqiong)