There are multiple reports 21st Century Fox is negotiating selling its movie studio to Disney, which could be great news for Marvel fans.
Disney owns the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which includes the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy films, but it doesn't own all properties connected to Marvel Comics.
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Fox owns movie rights to two major franchises - Fantastic Four and X-Men - while Sony owns movie rights to Spider-Man, although recently penned a deal to allow the character to appear in MCU films. Fox also owns Deapool, the hit X-Men spin-off.
If the deal goes through and Disney buys Fox movies, we could see Wolverine and The Thing fighting alongside - or against - the likes of Iron Man, Star-Lord and Dr Strange.
"For Fox, the willingness to engage in sale talks with Disney stems from a growing belief among its senior management that scale in media is of immediate importance and there is not a path to gain that scale in entertainment through acquisition," reports CNBC.
"The company is said to believe that a more tightly focused group of properties around news and sports could compete more effectively in the current marketplace.
"For Disney, the opportunity to take control of another movie studio and significant TV production assets as it readies a direct-to-consumer entertainment streaming offering is attractive... Disney recently announced it will pull all of its movies from the Netflix platform and will establish two direct-to-consumer offerings: one for sports and one including its key franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel."
The deal would be huge, beyond the changes it could bring to Marvel movies. An analyst told Variety it "would dramatically transform the content landscape".
Meanwhile, the most recent MCU film - Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok - is proving an enormous hit both critically and at the international box office.
Newshub.
