All the updates and implications of 21st Century Fox’s acquisition

The summer’s Fox / Comcast / Disney drama came to a close last week when Comcast finally managed to outbid 21st Century Fox for a controlling stake in European TV and broadband provider Sky for $38.8 billion. And now, having lost that battle, Fox is ceding the remainder of its existing 39 percent ownership to Comcast in a $15 billion deal that would see Comcast gain full control of the UK telecom company, as reported by Variety.

Fox had long been attempting to gain full control of Sky — Fox’s existing 39 percent stake as well as the intended remainder of the company was set to be included as part of the Disney deal — but ran into a competing bid from Comcast, which also tried to one-up the House of Mouse in buying Fox. In the end, it seems the two major corporations will split the prize: Disney managing to outbid Comcast for Fox, and Comcast taking Sky from Fox (and, therefore, Disney).

Comcast has won an auction to acquire UK telecommunications company Sky, bidding $38.8 billion to overtake Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox after a lengthy bidding war this summer. Comcast’s win paves the way for it to acquire Sky and its 23 million European subscribers and entertainment assets. Sky’s shareholders will now need to approve the deal.

Over the course of this year, Comcast and Fox have been locked in a titanic battle over their futures, one that will define the nature of the industry as a whole. Last summer, Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke with Murdoch about an acquisition of Fox and made its first offer in December, and while Comcast made its own overtures this spring. The two made several bids this spring, but after Disney later upped its offer, Comcast dropped its plans to acquire Murdoch’s company.

Earlier this summer, Disney got the approval it needed to move forward with its plans to acquire 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets, allowing it to add franchises like Alien, X-Men, and others to its vast library of holdings. Now there’s an indication that that transfer is underway: Fox is pulling Dark Horse’s license to publish Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics.

Joss Whedon recently spoke with Comic Book Resources about a new comic adaptation of his Dr. Horrible musical, saying that he wanted to do more comics with Dark Horse “because Fox is taking the Buffy license and the Firefly license back.” Dark Horse Comics confirmed the news, saying that they’re “proud of the world we helped to expand and are grateful to Joss Whedon and the creative teams for their incredible work on the series.”

Shareholders have approved Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century’s film and television studios this morning, paving the way for Disney to add Fox’s catalog of networks and intellectual property to its already vast holdings.

Disney will be required to divest itself of Fox’s regional sports networks, because it already owns ESPN. The company also won’t acquire all of Fox’s holdings: the remaining assets — some broadcast networks, including Fox News, Fox Business and Fox Sports, and local TV stations will be spun into a new company called New Fox.

Comcast has formally withdrawn its competing $65 billion bid to acquire 21st Century Fox, ceding the rights to the entertainment company to Disney’s upped $71.3 billion offer. Comcast says it will instead shift all focus to its ongoing efforts to acquire Europe’s Sky instead.

Per an official statement from the company, “Comcast does not intend to pursue further the acquisition of the Twenty-First Century Fox assets and, instead, will focus on our recommended offer for Sky.”

Disney has cleared a key hurdle in its bid to acquire 21st Century Fox: the company has won antitrust approval from the Justice Department, albeit with one condition. The Justice Department required that Disney divest Fox’s regional sports networks, as they would create anti-competitive conflicts due to Disney’s ownership of ESPN, according to Variety. Disney has agreed to the conditions.

In December, Disney announced that it would acquire 21st Century Fox’s media holdings: its television and movie studios (but not its sports and news operations). Talks for the acquisition took place last fall, and were complicated when Comcast made overtures of its own.

Disney has officially upped its offer for the purchase of 21st Century Fox. It’s now offering to purchase the entertainment giant’s film and TV assets at a price of $38 per share, or roughly $71.3 billion, which is a drastic increase from the company’s original $52.4 billion deal that valued Fox at $28 per share.

It’s a direct counter to Comcast, which tried to swoop in earlier this month with a $65 billion, all-cash offer to top Disney’s original bid by offering $35 per share. In addition to the increased price, Disney’s new offer allows 21st Century Fox stockholders to choose to receive their chunk of the sale in the form of either cash or Disney stock now (subject to 50/50 proration), which may undercut the all-cash appeal of Comcast’s offer.

This week, after a federal court greenlit AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner and effectively signaled a shift toward a more merger-friendly environment in the US legal system, Comcast made good on weeks of hints by making an all-cash bid to buy 21st Century Fox for a whopping $65 billion. It‘s a conspicuous challenge to Disney’s stock-based, months-in-the-making offer of $52.4 billion, and while it’s unclear how the debacle will shake out in the end — following Comcast‘s bid, Disney stock actually went up; it‘s also possible that the two giants might split Fox‘s assets — one thing is certain: a horde of Marvel fans are now actively rallying against Comcast’s bid for attempting to keep the Fox-owned X-Men from joining their fellow superheroes in Disney’s MCU.

MCU fans going unreasonably hard in the name of their beloved franchise is nothing particularly new; as with many fandoms over the past decade, that self-powered enthusiasm has grown into a formidable marketing arm of its own. Fans have also been anticipating the potential arrival of the Fox-owned Marvel Comics properties like X-Men and the Fantastic Four to Disney‘s MCU stable for a while; Fox has owned the screen rights to these Marvel Comics properties since the late 1990s, a decade before Disney collected the rest of them with its acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009. The deal Disney made with Sony last year to successfully wrangle the Sony-owned Spider-Man into the Avengers franchise. And yes, it would certainly be fun to see Jean Grey and Storm roll up on one of the Avengers’ existential melees to handily save the day.

Earlier this week, Comcast made a $65 billion offer to acquire most of 21st Century Fox, attempting to derail a Disney-Fox acquisition that was announced last year. Comcast and Disney have both been chasing this deal for months. And although the financial terms for each company are different, they’re looking for the same assets from Fox — which, in turn, is looking to refocus on its core network TV business.

But which parts of Fox are staying independent, and which ones will Comcast or Disney own? And how will the new parts fit into these massive conglomerates’ existing businesses? Here’s what you can look forward to if one of the deals goes through.

After weeks of signaling it would do so, Comcast is making a play at 21st Century Fox’s TV and film assets. Hoping to derail Disney’s pending, stock-based $52.4 billion deal with Fox, Comcast is stepping in with a higher, all-cash offer for $35 per share, which totals approximately $65 billion. The move is likely to trigger an intense battle between Comcast and Disney as 21st Century Fox and the Murdoch empire weigh which is the better option. Fox’s board of directors is scheduled to vote on the Disney deal on July 10th.

"Time is of the essence for your consideration of our proposal,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts wrote in a letter to Fox’s board. Comcast has filed a statement with the SEC in opposition to the Disney/21st Century Fox merger. On Wednesday evening, Fox said “21st Century Fox’s board, in consultation with its outside legal counsel and financial advisors, will carefully review and consider the Comcast proposal.” It hasn’t yet made a decision on whether it will postpone the July 10th meeting.

Comcast really wants to own 21st Century Fox. The company announced today that it’s planning and is in the “advanced stages of preparing” an offer for Fox in the hopes that it’ll reject Disney’s existing bid to acquire the company’s entertainment arm. Comcast says: “Any offer for Fox would be all-cash and at a premium to the value of the current all-share offer from Disney.” This move has been expected and rumored. It doesn’t affect Fox’s news and sports assets, including Fox News and Fox Sports.

Disney offered Fox a $52.4 billion all-stock deal late last year, and shareholders are expected to vote on the offer this summer. Comcast is hoping to sneak in with this all-cash offer ahead of that vote. Fox cut off earlier talks with Comcast over antitrust concerns, suspecting that the deal would never be approved. But now it seems that another major deal — Time Warner and AT&T — might pass through. If that happens, Comcast could potentially acquire parts of Fox without alarming regulators.

Yesterday, Disney filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding its acquisition of 21st Century Fox in December. The document highlights the details of the acquisition, as well as a timeline that shows off how the talks began. It also reveals that Disney wasn’t the only company interested in acquiring Fox — Verizon and Comcast also came calling.

The SEC filing makes for a dry but at times fascinating read. As it unfolded in the press last November and December, it was clear that there were some ups and downs behind the scenes. The document shows how the complicated deal came together, and how both companies agonized not only over what parts to acquire, but how to do so while avoiding regulators.

Disney has acquired 21st Century Fox’s film and TV studios in a landmark $52 billion deal. This means that the door is open for Disney to incorporate the Marvel properties previously controlled by Fox — including X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool — into its Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In its statement, Disney says the agreement will allow it to reunite these characters “with the Marvel family under one roof and create richer, more complex worlds of inter-related characters and stories that audiences have shown they love.” Marvel is already planning to overhaul the MCU after the studio’s “Phase Three” arc. That will finish with a fourth and supposed final Avengers film in 2019, which will end the Infinity War story. “There will be two distinct periods. Everything before Avengers 4 and everything after,” Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, has previously said.

Disney has acquired 21st Century Fox's film and TV studios in a landmark deal worth over $52 billion. The arrangement covers the movie studio 20th Century Fox, the company’s TV production arm 20th Century Fox Television, Fox-owned cable networks (including FX and National Geographic), and the company’s stakes in international networks like Star TV and Sky (which Fox is planning to acquire full ownership of before the sale is completed).

Disney also will gain a majority control of Hulu in the deal, with Fox’s 30 percent stake giving Disney a controlling interest of 60 percent. Comcast and Time Warner will be reduced to minority stakeholders, with 30 percent and 10 percent stakes, respectively. 

In November, word broke that Disney and 21st Century Fox had begun to discuss the possibility of Disney acquiring most of Fox’s film and television assets, but just as quickly, it became clear that those discussions had since ended. Now, it seems as though those talks are back on, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ cites reports of people familiar with the situation who say that the talks are currently active and are gaining momentum, although it’s possible that they could once again fall through. As previously rumored, the talks concern Fox’s movie and television studios, international assets, and some domestic television networks, excluding Fox News and Sports. Rupert Murdoch and his family are reportedly expected to decide whether or not to sell by the end of the year.