Presently, Fox Studios is set to be purchased by Disney which includes the X-Men, Deadpool and Fantastic Four properties, in addition to Avatar, 20th Century Fox Television, FX Productions and more.
The Disney and Fox deal is still 12-18 months out, but an issue that has come up is that Fox Studios shareholders need to approve the deal. The Murdochs are said to want the Disney deal (as they would get jobs at Disney), but they are not the majority stockholders, so if another bid came about, shareholders could still turn down Disney.
Enter Comcast.
In the Wall Street Journal’s report on the matter, it’s actually noted that Comcast already offered Fox Studios a much higher bid, but they thought the deal wouldn’t be able to go through because of anti-trust reasons, so talks ended.
Now mirroring CNBC’s report, the WSJ reports that Comcast has renewed interested in Fox Studios because Comcast is feeling confident that they could avoid litigation from the government about anti-trust issues if the AT&T and Time Warner deal goes through.
It’s said Comcast’s interest is pending Fox’s release of a details on the Disney merger, which will become known ahead of a shareholder vote on the deal.
CNBC did note in their report that Disney has plans in place if Comcast does go with a higher bid (which we can guess would be matching the deal or going even higher), so just how this plays out all remains to be seen.
