Thousands of jobs at risk as Disney takes over 21st Century Fox
Disney’s new assets also include the powerhouse Fox TV studio, responsible for hits such as Homeland, This Is Us, and Empire
Los Angeles — Walt Disney completed its $71bn acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s entertainments assets, and now must get to the task of squeezing out promised cost savings, an effort that will lead to thousands of redundancies in the film and TV business. With the deal, Disney takes over a portfolio that includes the 104-year-old 20th Century Fox studio, the FX and National Geographic cable networks, and an additional 30% of Hulu, the online video service. To make the deal work financially and support the company’s costly efforts to compete with Netflix, CEO Bob Iger has promised $2bn in cost savings, a commitment that all but assures epic job cuts. The deal is one of the most dramatic in the current wave of entertainment-industry mergers, shrinking the number of major Hollywood studios to five from six and putting the irreverent Homer Simpson and Family Guy in the same stable of cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The closing follows a nearly two-year effort that inc...
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