Over 200 films are likely to have been put into turnaround by Disney following its Fox acquisition.
A bunch of announcements came out of Disney chief Bob Iger’s regular earnings call last week. We heard about how the company’s profits were down due to its big investments, we got an update on the Disney+ streaming service that’s launching in America this winter, and we heard how it’d been getting on with its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film slate.
In the case of the latter, not very well.
After sizeable hits in recent years – The Greatest Showman and Bohemian Rhapsody – Fox has had a rotten year at the box office. X-Men: Dark Phoenix has been particularly cited for criticism.
As such, Iger revealed that the Fox development slate had basically been junked, with the plan being for – surprise, surprise – far fewer movies under the Fox label’s umbrella.
A Reddit user has now listed the films that were in development at Fox on their Imgur account, and the full list can be found here.
Staggeringly, there are nearly 300 titles here (although some listed are out of date, it should be noted), and with the Disney-owned Fox now likely to make fewer than 10 movies a year, virtually wiping out that entire slate. It’s a fair bet that the vast majority of them will struggle to find a new home.
Thus, whilst a new Planet Of The Apes movie is already a given, films likely to have been cancelled in the transition are McClane (the mooted sixth Die Hard film), Assassin’s Creed 2, a Magic: The Gathering movie, Mr Men, Play-Doh, Rentaghost and a new Romancing The Stone outing.
Quite how far any of these had got is unclear (although we knew that a new Die Hard script was ready, as we revealed earlier this year). But as many feared, it looks as though the result of the Disney takeover of Fox will ultimately be fewer movies…
