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Answerman - Why Are Big Hollywood Studios Buying Anime Distributors?

Movie theaters and cable are going to be all bankrupt soon. That is because these are now just two obsolete ways of consuming film just like cassetes and CDs are obsolete ways of listening to music.

Why should a person go to a movie theater when one can buy a LED TV for a few hundred dollars and watch movies with higher image and sound quality and why a person should pay to watch TV channels when you can pay to stream everything you want at the time you want?

Take this with a grain of salt if you want, but a few industry insiders I've chatted with have said that is more or less the idea. The comic book industry is extremely insignificant these days, especially compared to movie and television deals.

-Stuart Smith

After the way Disney handled Power Rangers (among other things like the terrible theatrical performance of the Pokemon movies they'd distributed through Miramax), I'm not very convinced they understand such Japanese properties enough to want them owning anime . It's kind of funny how for a short time in early 2010, they owned PR and Marvel (Marvel was involved in creating Super Sentai). Great crossover potential that didn't bear fruit. Not to mention Disney got PR through acquiring parts of Fox. Go figure.

What do I think of streaming video? Fairly little. For the most part I'd rather skip movies or TV shows without an accessible physical media release in my region/language.

It really stinks but the government truly hasn't enforced the anti-monopoly for close to 40 years.

This has happened in a ton of other industries but it's really, really concerning when you realize MAYBE 5 companies are controlling all the media services in North America -- and much of the rest of the world.

Disney's not going to keep Fox Studios open, at least not all of it. It's gonna be downsized drastically... They'll consolidate and lay off a ton of people and there will be that many less films produced per year. Oh, they'll keep 20th Century as a label I'm sure and MAYBE Fox Classic Movies (channel) will on the air but do you think they want more duplication of facilities and personnel than they have already? No, they're gonna lay off a ton of people eventually and probably sell some Fox studio land and studio space to developers. They're not sentimental about landmarks and geography in California. There have been tons of historic sites and long-standing backlots torn down in years past. Nope, they'll be looking at the immediate cash grab then can get! That's what MGM did in the early 1970s when they sold off a lot of studio real estate and tore down their backlots.

I'd be concerned about how Fox film properties and franchises will be handled by Disney in the forseeable future. If you think the Alien films aren't being done well now ---! Disney doesn't have a great track in managing the IP's it acquires. (It's a bit like DC Comics in that sense... They acquire these new characters but really don't understand them or know what to do with them and most of them eventually get squandered and forgotten.) They're thinking how to fit new characters into the theme parks but long-term they don't seem to be planning about how they're going to make any decent media with these things. They've mishandled The Muppets and Star Wars, IMHO.

I'm curious how much of acquiring Fox was motivated out of trying to get Fantastic 4 and X-Men movies under its umbrella. It doesn't seem like much of a coincidence that Marvel cancelled Fantastic 4 for a while and cut the legs out from X-Men when Fox wouldn't work with them the way Sony eventually did with Spider-Man. And wouldn't you know it, Fantastic 4 comes back right around when Disney buys Fox. Marvel farmed out movie rights to various characters and story lines years before Disney got involved with them, and that never seemed to sit well with Disney.


I also agree with you that it is concerning that a few companies are now controlling the vast majority of content. It sort of hit me when I was shopping for a present for my niece at a local store, and I had to really look around for something because all of the most prominently displayed toys were Disney properties.

I haven't had cable television for going on SEVEN years now. Seven. It was difficult at first but then all the major stations in the US on air went digital. My city gets nearly 80 air channels just using an antenna (Mohu Leaf, which was well worth the purchase). There's really no reason to have 700 channels and me not even watch 695 of them.

Plus like you state most all smart TVs nowadays have apps or can cast from your phone.
All of my TVs can cast or have apps. When you have free streaming services like YouTube at your disposal for free that you can watch on a 4K TV it's kind of hard to justify cable. Networks like CBS and the like push free channels on TV apps and Roku as well.

I do pay for Crunchyroll (it's a pretty good service despite any of the 'normie' memes people want to post) and I pay for a free other services. However combined they're drastically less than even most basic cable packages, and that's with near unlimited content that's not held down by cable TV slots.

Do they not know that their originating medium gave way to their beloved cash cows? And that their medium helped make sequential art an actual thing? Do they not have an ounce of creativity and fighting drive to make a statement in this world?

I know they have a deal in China and they are big in Japan, but what they are doing is suicide, and as you've stated, it appears they want to do it.

Pitiful and pathetic.

The fact that 1000s will lose their jobs with the pending Fox-Disney merger/buyout I think is horrible. As much as deep-pocketed lawyers could bring up antitrust lawsuits against this merger, the Disney Empire has the USDOJ wrapped around their corporate mouse fingers.

Well, they handled Ghibli localization and distribution quite well for quite a while.

Do they not know that their originating medium gave way to their beloved cash cows? And that their medium helped make sequential art an actual thing? Do they not have an ounce of creativity and fighting drive to make a statement in this world?

I know they have a deal in China and they are big in Japan, but what they are doing is suicide, and as you've stated, it appears they want to do it.

Pitiful and pathetic.

Kadmos1 wrote:

The fact that 1000s will lose their jobs with the pending Fox-Disney merger/buyout I think is horrible. As much as deep-pocketed lawyers could bring up antitrust lawsuits against this merger, the Disney Empire has the USDOJ wrapped around their corporate mouse fingers.

Well the layoffs would have happened even if the sale didn't happen. Murdoch wants to focus on live news and sports in the US everything else was either going to be sold or shut down.