While the excitement of the potential Disney/Fox deal means the possibility of new Marvel/X-Men underoos to choose from, there are huge questions that still need to be answered. Generally speaking, the major studios have never done a great job with handling their archive of classic cinema (though Warner Bros. has done great work with their Warner Archive), but 20th Century Fox has decently handled those pictures. But what will happen after the acquisition? Disney famously locks up old movies in their vault, placing them on long-running moratoriums. With home video revenues dwindling even further, what will become of Fox’s classic movies? Will Disney continue to invest in restoring older titles? Or simply dump everything that currently exists onto their eventual streaming platform and leave it at that?
When it comes to day-to-day movie business, does Disney gobbling up Fox mean their output will double? Or does the mouse house mostly view this as a brand opportunity, with no plans to expand much beyond their handful of blockbusters each year? This is something that concerns director James Mangold, who worries that one major studio absorbed by another could lead to less choice.
“If they’re actually changing their mandate, if what they’re supposed to do alters, that would be sad to me because it just means less movies,” he told Deadline, adding: “I just hope what we end up with is going to be a positive in terms of movies.”
It’s a valid concern, and the filmmaker behind the gritty and raw superhero movie “Logan” also wonders if Disney will take the same kind of R-rated risks that Fox did. Mangold knows that those decisions have serious financial repercussions, the kind which the family friendly, four quadrant Disney may not be willing to gamble on.
“The real thing that happens when you make a movie rated R, behind the scenes, is that the studio has to adjust to the reality that there will be no Happy Meals. There will be no action figures,” he explained. “The entire merchandising, cross-pollinating side of selling the movie to children is dead before you even start. And when that’s dead, it means you’re making a grown-up movie.”
“We’ve now so co-opted this idea that these movies are not really stories, but are merchandise entities,” Mangold added. “You can’t kill the characters because they’re worth so much effing money.”
Should this Disney/Fox deal go through, there could be a lot of unwanted and unexpected consequences across the line. And with billions of dollars of stake, taking creative risks no longer becomes the priority.