Disney and Fox Studios are said to be closing in on a deal that could be announced as early as next week.
The update once again comes from CNBC who first broke the story about Disney wanting to buy Fox Studios, which includes the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Wolverine, Galactus, Silver Surfer, Annihilus, Shi’ar, Brood (and more).
According to the report, insiders are stating talks have progressed and a deal could be announced as early as next week, and that the deal is worth upwards of $60 billion. For a comparison, Star Wars and Marvel that Disney recently purchased were valued at $4 billion each.
We can also guess that the Justice Department would have to approve the sale (they recently filed against AT&T purchasing Warner Bros).
It’s said Fox would sell their movie and television production assets and keep its news, sports and broadcast networks.
Regarding the X-Men and related Fox characters in the Marvel Universe, head of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige has said there are no plans, but we can probably speculate that he isn’t allowed to say anything due to the nature of the talks and it having not gone through yet.
If Disney does end up purchasing Fox and gets the X-Men, two possibly ways the X-Men could be introduced could be that simply the X-Men have “always existed” and that Marvel’s Phase 4 introduces them in the MCU. Another possibly way is that Disney could always keep the X-Men universe “separate,” but connect them to the MCU through the multiverse, which is actually being featured in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
“Those characters are experts in the quantum realm,” Evangeline Lilly told Vanity Fair. “In Ant-Man and the Wasp, they are trying everything in their power to safely enter the quantum realm and return back from it because they have evidence from the first film that Scott Lang was able to do that. If he can do it, why can’t we? If we do succeed in Ant-Man and the Wasp, then that does open a whole entire new multi-verse to enter into and play around in. I’m not the story creator, so I can’t tell you what they’re going to do with that. But I definitely see the potential there.”
It also remains to be seen if Disney will keep with the adult R-rated aspect of Deadpool and Wolverine. Both Ryan Reynolds (notice use of word “fudge” below) and Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld are opposed to Disney and have taken to social media to voice their thoughts.
If this is true, I wonder how the fudge it would affect Deadpool? https://t.co/66RNUDU80S
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) November 6, 2017
