Disney Has Acquired Fox And Now Owns The Rights To The X-Men And Fantastic Four

The deal of the century has finally gone through. Disney has acquired 21st Century Fox and now owns the rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four and The Simpsons.

It’s official. Disney now owns the majority of 21st Century Fox which means that they now have the movie rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four which will unite all of Marvel’s comic book properties under one, Mickey Moused-themed roof. This comes after a whole month of reports stating that the two studios were in talks. Today, the deal was announced via a press release which confirms that Disney would acquire 21st Century Fox today for $52.4 billion in stock.

There are many people out there who would be happy by this news, yet I recently wrote an article explaining why such a deal would be a bad thing for comic book movies and the movie industry as a whole. But there’s no use complaining about it now. The deal’s done. The papers have been signed and there’s no going back now. Among the popular entities that Disney now owns included the likes of “X-Men, Avatar, The Simpsons, FX Networks and National Geographic.” There’s no news on whether they also own the rights to the Alien franchise, but I’d assume that it’s also part of the deal.

Disney has also taken over Fox’s 30 percent stake in the Hulu streaming service taking their overall claim of the company to 60 percent. This means they now own Hulu and will most likely turn this into the Disney streaming service we’ve been hearing so much about over the last few months.

“We’re excited about this extraordinary opportunity to significantly increase our portfolio of well-loved franchises and branded content to greatly enhance our growing direct-to-consumer offerings,” said Disney CEO, Bob Iger, in a statement.

Iger was previously going to stay on as CEO until 2019, but he’ll now remain in the position until 2021 to oversee the deal. That might put a dent in his plans to run for President of the United States in 2020. On the bright side, could this mean that they can put the Fox logo back in Star Wars…? Who knows…

What do you think of this deal? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Are you excited about seeing the X-Men and Fantastic Four join the MCU? Let us know in the comments below.