On this day in 2017, The Walt Disney Company shook the entertainment world by announcing its acquisition of the majority of 21st Century Fox’s assets for $52.4 billion in stock, a move that dramatically expanded Disney’s empire and redefined Hollywood’s power structure. The deal, which faced regulatory hurdles and ultimately closed in March 2019 at an adjusted value of $71.3 billion, brought iconic franchises like The Simpsons, X-Men, and Avatar under Disney’s umbrella, bolstering its content library for the streaming era.
To understand the magnitude of this merger, it’s worth revisiting the storied histories of both companies. The Walt Disney Company traces its roots back to October 16, 1923, when brothers Walt and Roy Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Hollywood, California. Starting with animated shorts featuring characters like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and later Mickey Mouse, the company pioneered feature-length animation with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Over the decades, Disney evolved into a global powerhouse, expanding into theme parks (beginning with Disneyland in 1955), live-action films, television networks like ABC (acquired in 1996), and more recently, streaming with Disney+ in 2019. By 2017, Disney was already a media giant, known for its family-friendly branding and strategic acquisitions like Pixar (2006), Marvel (2009), and Lucasfilm (2012).
21st Century Fox, meanwhile, had a lineage deeply embedded in the golden age of cinema. Its predecessor, Fox Film Corporation, was established in 1915 by Hungarian immigrant William Fox in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The company grew through the silent film era and merged in 1935 with Twentieth Century Pictures—founded in 1933 by Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck—to form 20th Century Fox. This studio became synonymous with blockbusters like The Sound of Music (1965), Star Wars (1977, distributed by Fox), and Titanic (1997). In the 1980s, media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation acquired the company, expanding it into television with the launch of the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. A 2013 corporate split separated News Corporation’s publishing assets from its entertainment divisions, creating 21st Century Fox as a focused film, TV, and cable entity.
The 2017 acquisition wasn’t a full takeover. To address antitrust concerns and allow for a clean separation, 21st Century Fox spun off certain assets into a new entity called Fox Corporation before the deal closed. This meant Disney gained control of 20th Century Fox’s film and television studios, cable networks like FX and National Geographic, a 30% stake in Hulu, and international assets such as Star India. However, Fox retained ownership of its core broadcast and news operations, including the Fox Broadcasting Company (with its local TV stations across the U.S.), Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, and Fox Sports networks like FS1 and FS2. This carve-out preserved Fox’s independence in live sports, news, and over-the-air broadcasting, areas where regulatory scrutiny was particularly intense.
Eight years on, the ripple effects of this deal are evident in Disney’s dominance of the box office and streaming wars. Hits like Avengers: Endgame (2019) and the integration of Fox properties into Disney+ have fueled record profits, while Fox Corporation has thrived as a leaner operation focused on news and sports. As the media landscape continues to evolve with AI-driven content and cord-cutting, this historic merger remains a benchmark for consolidation in entertainment.
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