As Disney swallows Fox, a new era dawns for Hollywood
NEW YORK — After years of tremors, the earthquake that had long been predicted finally shook Hollywood.
Disney’s deal to purchase most of 21st Century Fox ends the era of the “Big Six” major movie studios, toppling one of the industry’s most famed studios and dramatically redrawing the Hollywood map.
Disney’s move — to pay $52.4 billion in stock for Fox assets — has countless reverberations. But by effectively absorbing Fox’s film studio, 20th Century Fox, Disney has rapidly accelerated the industry contraction that many considered inevitable in an era of flat-lining ticket sales and new streaming competitors like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.
The Big Six are now the Big Five — and the mightiest of them all has just been supersized.