For these last few months, it’s consistently felt like the Disney/Fox merger was just around the corner, only for the deal to be pushed back a little further, but as per a new media release from Disney, it seems that we’re now slightly over a week away from the acquisition being finalized.
As it stands, the historic deal is expected to close by 12:02 am ET on Wednesday, March 20th. Before that, it’s said that the deadline for Fox shareholders to elect the form of consideration they’d like to receive is 5 pm ET this Thursday, and that Fox is expected to distribute these holdings at 8 am ET on Tuesday, March 19th. After that, the transaction will reportedly be complete less than 24 hours later.
In case it needed to be said, the deal is set to bring about some huge changes in the entertainment industry, but for Marvel Studios in particular, the lane will soon be clear for Kevin Feige and his team to bring the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the MCU.
In recent months, Marvel’s next set of acquisitions has been the subject of a whole load of hearsay and speculation, with some fans even holding out hope that next month’s Avengers: Endgame will offer some kind of tease of the new arrivals in its post-credits scene.
This late in the game, the idea sounds like a bit of a long shot, but once Marvel’s Phase 3 finale is out of the way, here’s hoping the studio can at least announce a few projects the coming months. In the meantime, the Fox era for the X-Men universe enters its final stretch with the release of Dark Phoenix on June 7th, 2019.
