This past week, it was announced that Spiderman will no longer be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Disney and Sony could not reach an agreement with the franchise. Fans were mostly mixed when the breakup was announced, but honestly, the best thing for the Spiderman franchise to not be in the hands of the Mouse any longer. A lot of people may be confused as to why I would think this, so I will explain why.
Here's a little list of the assets owned by the Walt Disney Company as of the publication date above: Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures, D23, Synergy Group, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, 20th Century Fox Animation, Blue Sky Studios, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilms, Lucasfilm Animation, LucasArts, Boom! Studios, Regency Enterprises, Wondery, Buena Vista International, Walt Disney Music Company, Walt Disney Records, Wonderland Music Company, Hollywood Records, Fox Music, Disney Theatrical Productions, New Amsterdam Theatrical Corp., ABC, 20th Television, Freeform, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, It's A Laugh Productions, ABC News, Hulu, FX Networks, ESPN Inc., National Geographic, A&E Networks, Lifetime Entertainment, Gamestar, Rocket Pack, Go.com, The Muppets Studio, Club Penguin Island, Disney Press, Marvel Press, ESPN Books, Babble, and Polaris.
Mind you, this is not even half the list and does not include their content libraries or former assets. This means that a massive chunk of the media we consume is owned by Disney in some way. It is clear that Disney's business strategy recently is buying whatever entertainment studio they could find. This could end up being harmful to the entertainment industry as a whole because media consolidation has been getting worse since Disney bought out Fox two years ago when it was already bad enough. For those of you who do not know, media consolidation is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals control increasing shares of the mass media. There are a lot of issues that media consolidation can have, including media integrity being at risk and net neutrality being at stake.
About thirty-five years ago, 90% of of American media was owned by fifty companies. Today, that same 90% of American media is owned by only six companies, which means those companies now control that amount of what we read, watch, and listen to. Disney, Comcast, Newscorp, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS are what currently controls the media we consume, which results in many popular entities being consolidated and all work under the same umbrella corporation.
With all of this information in mind, it is more than likely best that the Spiderman franchise is no longer in Disney's hands. While I love Disney to death, I'm still critical about all the business practices they have been involved with in the last decade. Regardless, we still have a few new Spiderman movies to look forward to in the future and even though they will not be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that does not determine what the quality of those movies will be.
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