#What Media Mergers Mean For Movie Lovers

More studious business-y types can likely educate you far better than I can on the nitty-gritty as it relates to media consolidation. But for the purposes of Hollywood (and this article), I’m going to focus on two relatively recent, massive merges that, in my view, have largely shaped the business as we know it now. The first one — and the one that paved the way for others to follow, took place on October 22, 2016. That was the day it was announced that AT&T had offered to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion, with a big ol’ B. Though the deal had to go through an antitrust lawsuit, it was eventually approved by regulatory bodies, and WarnerMedia was born.

The big thing here is that AT&T, a tech/telecom company, was now in control of huge, legacy brands such as Warner Bros., HBO, and DC, among many others. It wasn’t one Hollywood studio merging with another. This was a telecom company getting into the content business in a big way. Not to mention that earning regulatory approval has paved the way for other major deals that would come later. Interestingly enough, AT&T, after just a few years, decided to largely get out of the media business, opting to sell WarnerMedia to Discovery, which will form yet another, completely different massive media conglomerate. But this deal laid the ground for the Disney/Fox merger, which was an even bigger deal in the public eye, for various reasons.

Rumblings began kicking up in December 2017 that Disney was looking to purchase the majority of 21st Century Fox’s media assets. As many of you may have noticed, superheroes are a big deal in the pop culture landscape. In particular, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated the box office for more than a decade now. Unfortunately, Fox controlled the rights to the “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four” franchises. For that reason, this deal became of major interest to those who might not have otherwise paid attention to business dealings of this sort.

In the end, after much back and forth, it was announced in June 2018 that Disney and Fox had agreed to a massive $71.3 billion deal. The deal, which was approved in March 2019, put Disney in control of more franchises and legacy IP than one could possibly imagine. “Avatar,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Alien,” “Predator,” “Home Alone,” “Die Hard,” the list goes on. This, more than anything else, was a bid to fight Netflix in the emerging and ever-evolving streaming wars.