If The U.S. Government Blocks The AT&T And Time Warner Merger, WB And DC Comics May Be Sold Separate
- Thread starter ZattMurdock
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- Comics
Actually because Time Warner owns CNN its been floated around that they would.
So, I'm not up on monopoly laws, but can one have a monopoly on intellectual property of a certain type? While I don't really want Disney buying any more of my childhood, I'm not sure that them having access to a lot of popular fantasy stories and characters qualifies as what I would consider a monopoly. The AT&T/Warner merger is more dubious due to it being about consolidating methods of broadcast.
I honestly don't think the government cares if Disney owns two comic companies.
Not that I think it will happen.
This makes absolutely no sense.
But the hilarious TLJ hate reaching this type of level of misinformation and ignorance is kind of great.
Like, that shouldn't be possible. If the AT&T thing gets blocked, Disney should not be able to buy DC because of the same reasons. If it ever happened, Marvel might actually have a good comic/animated series...
I'm all for Disney getting Fox's Marvel stuff but Disney being in any position to acquire DC is not okay.
It wouldn't. The comic industry would continue exactly as it has for the past 15 years: a niche product that helps support movies, video games and merchandise.
Wouldn't splitting up WB & DC complicate things for the Injustice series & the CW shows going forward?
WB approached Marvel about a sale of DC in the 80's but it didn't happen because Marvel was dealing with an anti-trust suit from First Comics.
I don't see how any company could do DC Better than Warner Bros. I think the only egregious treatment of the properties is DCU and that creative team and their creative formula won't be around forever. Or even very much longer at all. DCU probably gets a C, current DC animated projects get an A-, video games A+, comics B+? I don't know, that's like a 3.33 GPA for DC at WB. Pretty good.
I have to wonder if the average comic book store does more business in traditional comic print media, or from merchandising and collectibles?
How exactly are they going to control anything? What's the nature of the monopoly that everyone is so afraid of?
Disney will essentially own more than 80% of the comic market and have a major influence on how it's business is run. No other publisher will ever have the resources Disney has to make changes and compete on their level. Image, Dark Horse, Valiant, Lion Forge, etc. are publishers that barely exist to the public consciousness. That's not even mentioning complete control of general superhero pop culture.
No one's going to block a DC-Marvel "merger". Comic books are a niche, luxury industry.
CCGs and merch by far.
CCGs and merch by far.
We're just now about to get X-Men and F4 on the MCU plate.... Now we talking extending the table to for DC too!?
Absolute craziness.
Supernatural every night!
Because they're rich and they can buy everything.
Ew no, why would anyone want DC to be owned by Disney? Nobody needs to see All-New All-Different DCU.
They would own 80% of the market so easily off the top of my head
1. They can set their prices to whatever they want because they have a huge majority
- this includes other stuff like pushing distributors or even shops
2. With no real competition they can also hoard all the talent while also not paying as well as they would.
In all likelihood a purchase of DC would not require "rich", at least not by their acquisition standards.
It would mean that one single company controls the majority of the business for the industry, allowing them the leverage to squeeze others out of the market. They could do things such as threatening to restrict comic stores access to their catalogue unless those stores met certain requirements like promoting and merchandising their product over competitors. Or outright telling them to drop competing brands. Another common tactic would be simply undercutting competitors through volume. Offer those stores more copies of the top product for less, paying incentives for meeting goals, etc... making it more financially attractive for stores to focus on their brand over competitors. There are several laws to prevent these types of things from happening. Antitrust and Monopoly laws.
Just because it's the only major producer doesn't necessarily make it a monopoly
Well Marvel was worth $4 billion a decade ago.
Now that the film side is probably seen to have more potential value to a buyer?
I'd say DC by itself probably fetches $6-8 billion. At the absolute very most I could see bidding get up to $10 billion.
First of all, why would someone sell DC Comics separately from Warner Brothers? It would literally be like Apple buying Disney and selling off Lucas Arts.
So all of Warner Bros would likely be ~$30bn right after spending $60bn for Fox?
DC Comics is not a huge part of Warner, at least not in this instance. The talk here is that all the individual parts of Time Warner would be sold separately so they can still get a high value for everything without selling it all at once (because that would be blocked as we are seeing now). That means Turner, HBO, DC, it's all being spun out separately and sold individually in this scenario.
So it's not someone selling DC separate from Warner, it's Warner being pieced out completely and being sold as parts.
Like, no one is acquiring all of Warner here. That's the point. They can't sell all as one.
If investors want to sell, they'll do whatever they deem necessary to ensure the sales go through. They don't care how it's split as long as they get paid. If selling WB as a package deal isn't considered attractive OR if they get offers that value sections of WB (I.e. DC) in such as way as they feel they'll get more profit in seperate sales then they will absolutely do it.
Just the comics? Not much.
The whole DC brand? Like I said before, it would probably end up selling for somewhere around $6-8 billion.
Time Warner is too attractive a package to break up when there are still so many big players on the scene. This just feels like too much of a 'doom and gloom' scenario in this M&A frenzied age.
Verizon, Amazon and perhaps even Apple (for a second time) would jump in for the whole of Time Warner if AT&T aren't successful. Plus there are many suitors out there that haven't even dipped a toe in the market yet. What about Microsoft? They don't have any media assets and are sitting on tens and tens of billions on reserves. If MS did buy Time Warner with HBO and Warners under their belts they'd be media heavy hitters literally overnight.
But, perhaps the real story is if a vertical merger like AT&T and Time Warner doesn't happen then surely a horizontal merger like Disney and Fox wouldn't stand a chance of happening either?
Verizon, Amazon and perhaps even Apple (for a second time) would jump in for the whole of Time Warner if AT&T aren't successful. Plus there are many suitors out there that haven't even dipped a toe in the market yet. What about Microsoft? They don't have any media assets and are sitting on tens and tens of billions on reserves. If MS did buy Time Warner with HBO and Warners under their belts they'd be media heavy hitters literally overnight.
But, perhaps the real story is if a vertical merger like AT&T and Time Warner doesn't happen then surely a horizontal merger like Disney and Fox wouldn't stand a chance of happening either?
I'm specifically talking about the film division and TV production as Warner Bros (where DC sits under). The full Time Warner would go for at least $85bn.
Warner Bros would probably be somewhere around $20-30bn. A buyer of Warner Bros would be dumb to buy just the film division or film and TV and then lose access to DC. Think about the implications. No DC Universe for film. No DC Universe for gaming and entertainment.
Maybe Disney buys DC, then sells it to Comcast for a fair price plus the release of all their Marvel and other property rights (movie, amusement park, etc), then everyone is happy.
That would be an excellent buy for any major studio (Sony, Universal, Paramount) or any of the major streaming providers (Netflix, Amazon). Personally, keen to see DC comics in Netflix hands or potentially Sony (out of the major studios).
They are not and it would not.
I can tell you that when the news of Kaz stepping down reached the Sony studio lot there was mass panic as Yoshida, given the chance to talk up the media assets, instead talked about a record label they are starting in China with TenCent.
Despite what they might say Sony are on the block, as I've been saying for ages, too and definitely aren't in it for the long haul either.
Sony has almost 5x the amount of cash on their balance sheet than Disney
Verizon could face scrutiny for the same reason AT&T is (they are already an ISP and content distributior in that way). It's the same reason Comcast has to stay away.
Amazon really doesn't have the money to buy it all at once. I mean in the literal sense they do, but it'd be a huge investment relative to what money they do have, and it would be into an area they've never broached with an acquisition that size.
Apple could, but at the same time who knows what Apple is gonna do because they've shown to be content to sit on a vast majority of their money for some time now.
As for it affecting Disney-Fox, it wouldn't. It's pretty well-told at this point that the DOJ is doing this because of the CNN element. In all likelihood this block doesn't even stand a chance of holding up in court for that reason alone. It's built on a flimsy premise because Trump's admin wanted to make things tough for Warner/CNN.