Shareholders approve Disney-Fox merger, bringing X-Men and Fantastic Four into the MCU

It’s official: Walt Disney Corp’s purchase of many of FOX Entertainment’s assets has been approved by shareholders of both companies. For a mere $71.3 billion in cash and stocks, Disney gains control of the 20th Century Fox movie studio (along with its subsidiaries), Fox’s 30 percent share of the streaming service Hulu and 39 percent of Europe’s Sky TV. That includes the movie rights to the X-Men, Deadpool and Fantastic Four franchises. Disney also owns Marvel Studios, so in theory, characters from all of these franchises can now appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The deal could not have come a better time for the MCU, which is currently reaching the climax of a decade-long buildup to Avengers: Infinity War. The infusion of new characters from franchises like X-Men should give Disney new direction. The Fox purchase returns nearly all of Marvel’s characters to Disney’s control, the lone exception being Spider-Man and the characters that go along with him. Sony still has the movie rights to all that, although Disney has a deal in place with the company to “share” the character, which is how they can make stuff like Spider-Man: Homecoming. Movies like Venom, which stars Tom Hardy as Spider-Man’s longtime nemesis, are still separate.

It’s also exciting to see the Fantastic Four under Disney’s control, if for no other reason than because we might finally get a decent Fantastic Four movie. The Fantastic Four were stalwart allies of the Avengers in the Marvel comics, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up in those movies, as well. Disney also now has control of many of the Fantastic Four’s supporting characters, which opens up possibilities for Marvel Studios. For example, it was rumored that Marvel wanted to use the Skrulls as Loki’s invading army in the first Avengers movie, but they were part of the Fantastic Four universe, so they used the Chitauri. That kind of thing is no longer a problem.

Disney now controls some of the largest media properties in fandom, included Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Avatar and more. Disney also now owns a majority stock in Hulu at 60%, although it might be competing with itself there, since Disney intends to launch its own branded streaming service in the fall of 2019. Basically, the company is now even more stupid powerful than it was before.

Media companies are consolidating all over. This news comes not long after AT&T purchased Time Warner, which owns HBO, among several other networks. The future is looking more and more monolithic.

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h/t SyFy Wire, CNN