Movie Theaters Were Already in Trouble. With Disney's Fox Deal, It's Double (bloomberg.com)

Disney's acquisition of Fox's film studio will unite some of the most lucrative movie franchises, from Disney's Star Wars and Marvel series to Fox's X-Men and Avatar. With control of more blockbusters, not only does Disney gain more leverage over theater chains such as AMC and Carmike Cinemas, it also wins more films it could distribute exclusively on its upcoming online service -- cutting out cinema operators entirely. From a report: "Disney is becoming the Wal-Mart of Hollywood: huge and dominant," says Barton Crockett, a media analyst at B. Riley FBR. "That's going to have a big influence up and down the supply chain." Together, Disney and Fox accounted for 40 percent of ticket sales in 2016 in the U.S. and Canada, a level of market concentration that could draw scrutiny from Washington. If the deal goes through, theater owners could get squeezed. Usually a film's box-office revenue is split evenly between exhibitors and the studio. But Disney previously has gotten theaters to hand over a larger share -- sometimes more than 60 percent -- on its biggest, most popular films, such as the Star Wars series. Now it could try the same tactic with Fox's Avatar, which has four sequels in the works. "While the future of movie exhibition looks increasingly dim, a Disney-Fox merger will elevate its level of pain," says Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG LLC. Cinema chains have already suffered this year from a string of box-office bombs, including Warner Bros' King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and online video services such as Netflix are keeping more moviegoers at home.

Comments

Guess who isn't doing their job!

[Gravis Zero]

Yep, it's still the Federal Trade Commission!

Re:Guess who isn't doing their job!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it's still the Federal Trade Commission!

Guess who are the idiots that voted for this administration ?
Stupid asshole voted for conmen and criminals, and those conmen and criminals are doing their jobs just right.

Re:Guess who isn't doing their job!

[Anonymous Coward]

As magusxxx pointed out down below:

When Iron Giant came out my local multiplex showed it only one day a week at about 10-11am on Saturday. That's it. All the employees including management said the same thing, "If we don't do this then Disney won't give us their next big animated release."

This deal doesn't change much. Disney have been too large for a long time now.
For a functional capitalism you don't just need competition, you need so many competitors that the customer always can take their business elsewhere.
If you can count the competitors on your hands then they can get away by being equally bad.
For competition to work you need so many actors that they can't keep track of each other.
You need a situation where there is always someone who doesn't want to play ball.

By the time someone takes more than 10% of the market and you can name all the major players by the top of your head it is already too late.
The market should have been regulated before it came to that.

Re:Guess who isn't doing their job!

[geoskd]

Please. This was going to happen no matter what administration was in.

Just like the dismantling of net neutrality was going to happen under a democrat?

Both parties are beholden to the large donors, there is no doubt about that, but republicans are proud of their heritage of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Trickle down economics doesn't work, and yet they insist on continuing these broken policies every time they are in office. Net neutrality and mega-corporation mergers are just symptoms of the larger problem.

The republican party sold themselves to the voters as the party of fiscal conservancy, and yet they just voted to increase the budget deficit by $150B per year, and *give* more than half of that money to the wealthiest people. That is not fiscal conservancy, that is maxing out your credit cards to buy luxury items and pretending the bill will never come due. If republicans were really about fiscal conservancy, they would cut the military budget down to the same levels as the rest of the world. The US spends more money on the military than the next highest 8 countries combined. The republicans could have cut defense spending by that $150B per year, and given that money to the rich and been heros, instead they insist that those who must foot the bill are the poorest Americans (by cutting their health care), and all of our children (by racking up a huge deficit). If ever there was proof that the tea-party was bullshit, every single tea party congressperson voted for this thing. Your personal share of the bill for this tax cut will be $7,500. Add that on top of the existing debt, and every single american owes close to $75,000. Someday that bill will come due, just like it did in Greece and Spain. Remember that the next time you go out to vote for one of these guys.

Does Dolby Atmos reproduce a tiny violin well?

[SeaFox]

With control of more blockbusters, not only does Disney gain more leverage over theater chains such as AMC and Carmike Cinemas...

I'm shedding so many tears for those multi-million dollar theater chains.

Re:Does Dolby Atmos reproduce a tiny violin well?

[Paradise Pete]

Or, ya know, he was making a joke. Not all jokes are scientifically accurate.

Surprised they lasted this long.

[SuricouRaven]

The only reason I think cinemas exist at all is for people who want to watch new releases rather than wait for them to come out on disc.

The cinema used to offer something no other place could: A gigantic screen, supremely clear images, and an audio system that'd give you powerful volume from the chair-rumbling explosions to the chirping giggles of children. Then home cinema technology advanced. What does a cinema offer now that you cannot get just by having a big screen TV (or, as we call them now, a TV) and some half-decent speakers? You can't go for the social experience. Comfort of other viewers mandates watching in silence, so you might as well watch alone.

All they can offer now is the time to drive out there, a captive audience to show trailers and advertising, the crying child behind you, the tall man in front, and the fat person who tries to squeeze past you mid-film to get to the toilets.

Re:Surprised they lasted this long.

[mccalli]

Devil's advocate time. They also offer a place to concentrate on watching the film, not wondering whether you should do the washing up or checking social media. They offer a change of scenery - simply getting out of the house can be good. They offer an event, a bit of...well....theatre. They give an audience too - watching films in a cinema is different to watching them at home, particularly comedies or popcorn-munching dumb action films. It's a different atmosphere.

I like going to the cinema. Smaller cinemas I really wish would work on their sound more but I enjoy going, I enjoy sitting and knowing that I'n going to be watching a film - not doing something else, not talking or being expected to talk through the story. Just a difference, a break for a few hours in an environment where someone else is going to take care of it for you.

I know people will now reply with tales of horror with uncaring audiences who are talking on their phones during the film or that time the projection was out of focus or misaligned (happened to me on a 3D viewing - horrible) or...or.....Yes. I know. They're imperfect. But, in my experience at least, for the vast majority of the time those things don't happen and I get the experience I'm looking for. I enjoy it.

Monopoly

[JBMcB]

Current movie studios:

Disney/Fox
Warner Bros.
Universal
Columbia
Paramount
Lionsgate
MGM
Amblin
Weinstein

And a few dozen smaller studios, as well as the foreign studios (Toei, Canal, Gaumont, Pathe)

So is Disney using their, erm, not-really-monopoly power to keep other movies from being made? No? Then why would the FTC step in?

You don't live in the South or Mid-West

[rsilvergun]

do you? And what forced people to shop at Wal-Mart was 40 years of declining wages. They leveraged the low prices to try and maintain their standard of living long enough to see their children on their own so they could free up that money to again, just barely hold on. Those prices were low because Wal-Mart is a predatory business in a largely unregulated economy.

Basically, you're making a lot of choices that others don't have an assuming because you personally have them that everybody else does. If people could just do anything anyone else does without regard to birthplace we'd all be billionaires.