Comcast swooped in with a whopping $65 billion cash offer for Fox on Wednesday, pulling the rug out from under Disney for a moment and setting themselves up for a bidding war. If you’re a consumer, most of this is likely not good news, and the amount of money is insane, but it is still going to happen for one side or the other — or a rumored third party that could swoop in with another bid.
There are a lot of pieces at play with the Fox deal, far from the Marvel properties that get the focus. And actually, it’s because of that fact that Marvel might still end up at Disney even if Comcast gets their way. According to a CNBC report, the folks on Wall Street are plotting and gambling on what will happen, pushing the idea that Disney and Comcast could split Fox between the two of them:
One Wall Street analyst even offered the possibility of Comcast and Disney dividing the Fox assets.
“We would expect Disney to at least match Comcast by adding cash, and Comcast to appease [Rupert] Murdoch’s tax concerns by offering stock, and some back and forth raising the deal bid,” B. Riley analyst Barton Crockett said in a note to clients Wednesday. “Barring a third entrant (Internet/tech is possible), we would see the most sensible outcome as splitting the baby, with Comcast getting Sky (which we see as its main goal) and Disney getting most of the rest.”
This is nowhere near certain, of course. For all we know at this point, all three companies will eat each other and end up being bought by Carvel Ice Cream company — finally making our Cookiepuss shared universe dreams a reality.
What this type of news does represent is that this purchase will go on for a long time. It also means we’ll have plenty of time to dig through the rest of the offerings, like Comcast possibly becoming the sole owner of Hulu and setting the stage for another showdown, this time with Netflix:
“We think Hulu is a great business and has great prospects, and think we can and should own it and expect to do so,” said Comcast CFO Michael Cavanagh. “It would create value for us to have it, and we would love to have it.” He added: “We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Hulu to try and build it into a robust competitor.”
But as Deadline adds, Hulu is a small price to pay for Comcast, and they’d give up a controlling interest in the platform — ditching Fox’s 30% stake — to get regulators to approve their purchase. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. It does seem like continuing to work and churn out mutant films was a smart idea for Fox. We might end up getting two more X-Men films before this is all over.