10 Things We Learned About Cinema In 2017
1. But Disney Has.
The biggest story to come out of Hollywood in 2017 was undoubtedly Disney's potentially landscape-changing acquisition of the majority of 21st Century Fox for an eye-watering $52.4bn, making it one of the biggest business deals ever. This was huge news for a number of reasons, not least the fact that the Mouse House now literally owned a huge portion of the global entertainment industry. Remember when Disney taking over the world was just a joke?
From a purely cinematic viewpoint, this was gigantic. Disney already owns Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, three of the most profitable studios in history, and both Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Animation Studios regularly make huge money at the box office with their output. This deal genuinely makes domination of the entire industry seem feasibly within their reach. Especially when you consider the properties that they picked up in the Fox deal.
The original theatrical editions of Star Wars, the entire X-Men universe, the Fantastic Four, the Alien and Predator franchises, Die Hard, Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Blue Sky Studios, the majority share in Hulu, the awards-friendly Fox Searchlight Pictures and much, much more were acquired as part of the deal.
It may take at least a couple of years for the merger to officially go through, but when it does whatever Disney decides to do with its abundance of new toys has the power to change the movie business forever.