User blog:ARTaylor/Disney Approved to Purchase Fox

The Overlords at The Walt Disney Company have made their next step towards world domination. On last Friday morning, the shareholders of 21st Century Fox and The Walt Disney Company have approved the bid for the House of Mouse to take over Fox's assets including 20th Century Fox's movie and television studios. The sale is for a whopping $71.3 billion. The United States Department of Justice has already approved the transaction. Fox CFO John Nallen told shareholders that the merger is expected to be completed in the first half of next year. The deal includes such notable franchises like Avatar, The Simpsons, Alien, Predator, Die Hard, and Ice Age.

This is big news for Marvel fans. Fox has long owned the rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four characters. While Marvel Studios has been able to borrow characters like the Kree, Ego, and Skrulls in exchange for liberties taken with the Children of the Atom, this means that those two worlds can finally rejoin the Avengers as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That would just leave the rights to Namor the Sub-Mariner has outside the MCU. Hulk is owned by NBCUniversal but allowed to be part of MCU films. Sony still owns Spider-Man but has made a deal to co-produce films so that their films can exist in the same universe. Disney released a statement about how the transaction would affect the MCU, "The agreement also provides Disney with the opportunity to reunite the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool with the Marvel family under one roof and create richer, more complex worlds of inter-related characters and stories that audiences have shown they love."