When Disney bought 21st Century Fox, or just Fox, almost four years ago, the party went for a whopping 71 billion dollars. For comparison, Microsoft “only” paid just over 10% as much for Bethesda ($7.5 billion) and Microsoft’s upcoming, huge acquisition of Activision Blizzard is predicted to land at just under $69 billion.
This of course entails a huge risk, and a new report now shows that, among other things, Covid-19 has made it significantly more difficult for Disney to earn back the money for the buyout. Currently, Disney is estimated to have earned just under 37 percent ($26 billion) of the total, and is therefore $45 billion behind. This is believed to be because one of Disney’s main reasons for buying Fox was to strengthen their brand with the adult, blockbuster-hungry cinema audience with, among other things, the new Planet of the Apes movies. However, the problems began to pile up with Corona and the fact that the purchasing power, adult audience at that time rated cinema films and instead chose streaming services for watching movies.
It is true that Avatar: The Way of the Water has brought in just over two billion dollars on its own, but out of a total of 45 billion, that is only 4.5 percent. Analysts predict that Disney will therefore invest extra heavily in blockbusters from now on – probably at the expense of smaller brands. On that horizon, we have films such as Avatar 3, 4 and 5, Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins and Gareth Edwards’ (Rogue One) True Love to look forward to.
Thanks Screen rant.
