Last month, we reported that Disney had been in talks to purchase a good chunk of 21st Century Fox, which had been hoping to unload “most of its properties” so it could focus more on news and sports. This could theoretically make it possible for the Avengers to become big-screen friends with the X-Men and Fantastic Four, but the potential goes a lot further than superhero movies. Thankfully for anyone wary of Disney actually controlling a significant chunk of all media, the talks seemed to have fallen off—at least until now.
According to a new Wall Street Journal report (via Variety), the discussions between Disney and 21st Century Fox are back on, with Comcast also yapping from underneath the table in hopes of getting some scraps. Apparently, Fox is looking to sell off its film and TV studios, the FX family of networks, the National Geographic TV branch, its 30 percent stake in Hulu, and some international TV networks. The estimated value of all of that is somewhere around $48.5 billion, with the movie and TV departments alone valued at about $15 billion.
Considering Disney paid just over $4 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012, this would be a significant cost just to acquire a couple new superhero properties. That means Disney’s vision for this probably skews closer to world domination than it does to just the X-Men, though it’s still possible that nobody will be able to make this deal happen. Also, for the record, none of the companies involved would comment on any of this, so none of it is confirmed.