The Disney/Fox Aquisition And What It Means For The Parks?

[roomraider]

Kind of surprised there wasn't a thread on this already but unless you've been living under a rock these last few weeks you probably heard Disney were in talks to aquire Fox from the Murdoch lot. https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/14/16735502/disney-fox-deal-film-tv-studio-acquisition

This is massive for a number of reasons and the news has been covered in detail elsewhere on the web. There has been a lot of talk about what this means for films like the Avengers as Disney and Marvel now have the rights back for characters such as the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool. (Its a bit odd that Deadpool 2 will now a Disney film.)

But how will this affect the parks in long run do you think? In the short term i can't see much changing but Disney now has a bucket load of IP's they can use for parks.
Some of the IP's they now own include Ice Age, Alien, Predator, Home Alone, Planet Of The Apes, Die Hard, Family guy and National Geographic.
Now not all of these are suited to theme parks but there's some good source material in there.

A few interesting side effects.
- Universal now have another land at an Orlando park based on an IP Disney own as they just aquired The Simpsons
- Disney just bought all the Star Wars films under one roof.
- Disney now own the rights to Avatar just after opening a land based on Avatar at Animal Kingdom. which they licenced off fox
- Malaysia now technically has a Disney Park under construction as 20th Century Fox World in Kuala Lumpur is now oened by Disney

 

[davidm]

Won't mean much short term (or even medium term, like 5-10 years) for the parks I would think - maybe X-Men characters in the non-Florida parks to tie in with X-Men in the Marvel Cine-Universe.

 

[Edward M]

Well, It would be nice to get an Alien ride in the space that is Stitch's Great Escape since that was the original idea before ExtraTERRORestrial Encounter. However, that has approximately a 0% chance of happening. I agree with @davidm that we won't see any results of this purchase for a while. Just remember that Disney bought Star Wars in 2012, and it took 7-8 years to get a land for it. And that was a pre-established universe with nearly guaranteed profits. With any Fox programming, it likely needs to be proven as a Disney franchise. The only thing I could have seen going into the parks rather soon would be Simpsons, but, with Universal's Springfield lands, it's likely a very complicated matter Disney doesn't want to get into immediately.

I would expect for Fox programs to begin planning or possibly be announced into the parks after the early 2020s' Marvel land opens at DCA and HKDL. So that would mean a late 2020s opening is most likely.

More than anything, I'm dreading when Deadpool shows up in Avenger 5: Blue Lasers Destroy Planet.