With the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger seemingly on the horizon, an older deal is being discussed again. In this case, "older deal" refers to one of the biggest acquisitions in entertainment history: Disney's merger with Fox. Given the scale of the deal between David Ellison and David Zaslav's entertainment giants, the 2019 acquisition is being brought up as an example of what can go wrong in megamergers. Case in point, TheWrap published a report on the state of the industry as it prepares for the sale of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The article explores the worry around Hollywood over a potential diminished film output from WBD, and presents an interesting possibility on why the Disney-Fox merger was arguably not met with as much opposition as WBD's is presently encountering. Though Paramount CEO David Ellison is said to be committed to the theatrical model, an executive of a major theater chain who spoke to TheWrap cast doubt on there not being some sort of disruption to Warner Bros. Discovery's usually prolific movie slate:
"Disney promised that they wouldn't cut back on the number of movies 20th Century was putting out, and then they did. And yeah, we see that now, and there’s a lot of frustration, but no one said anything at the time."
The decline in projects was, indeed, drastic. As shown in the report, 20th Century Fox released 16 films in 2017, and 15 in 2018, before experiencing a drastic slowdown after being absorbed by Disney, releasing only two films in 2024, and five in 2025.
Asked why there seemed to be little pushback from theater owners during the Fox-Disney merger, the unnamed executive theorized it was because they either "trusted Disney or were afraid of Disney." This may sound odd to some, but there was a reason behind those two possibilities.
As mentioned by TheWrap, at the time of the merger, Disney was arguably the most powerful company in Hollywood. Just in the 2018-2019 period, the studio had multiple massive hits, including Black Panther ($1.3 billion), Avengers: Infinity War ($2 billion), Incredibles 2 ($1.2 billion), and Captain Marvel ($1.1 billion). Disney seemed to be—to put it plainly—dominating the industry at the time, hence the theory of theater owners being both trusting and afraid of the company.
Of course, keep in mind this is speculation on the executive's part. However, it's still important to consider, given that it comes from an individual with firsthand experience of the environment in the theater industry during the Disney-Fox merger.
The perception of Disney at the time of the acquisition is quite different from what it is now. Things have changed in recent years for the company, as mutliple properties have failed to find an audience. Perhaps the biggest shift for the media giant has been the diminishing success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A lot of the projects that once allowed Disney to be on top of the entertainment industry when it purchased 20th Century Fox were Marvel titles.
In recent years, though, the franchise has experienced a considerable decline, with projects like The Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts struggling to meet expectations. Putting the debate of superhero fatigue aside, it's interesting to see how quickly audience interests can shift from one thing to another in a relatively short amount of time.