ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA — In late 2017, in a deal worth more than $50 billion, Disney has acquired a substantial portion of 20th Century Fox’s catalog.
In the deal, which finalized just this week, Disney took control of the distribution rights to the original Star Wars films, which they acquired from LucasFilm a few years back, the stable of Marvel characters under Fox’s umbrella, and much more. But one element of Fox’s empire remained under control of Rupert Murdoch — Fox News.
Some have wondered why Disney didn’t buy the whole hog, so to speak. Today, during a call with investors, Disney CEO Bob Iger explained why Fox News was not part of the Disney acquisition.
“Between our parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo, Paris, and Beijing, we already have five Fantasylands,” Iger told investors. “Upkeep on those five are already enough as it is. We just couldn’t find room in our budget to take care of yet another place on the map where there are no rules and nothing matters and anything goes. Besides, we already have flying elephants, we don’t need ones that spew bullshit.”
Iger said that he and his team ran the numbers for weeks, but just couldn’t find a way to get Fox News to fit into their budgetary constraints.
“As much as Sean Hannity reminds us of a somehow dumber, far less charming Goofy,” Iger said, “it just didn’t make good fiscal sense. If Fox News viewers want to experience one of our existing Fantasylands, and they can bear to part with their firearm for a few hours, we’d love to host them at one of our brilliant parks.”
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Another concern Disney execs had was that they already produce so much fact-free content, they weren’t sure if they’d reach the point of consumer overload.
“We have talking mice, ducks, and chipmunks, but I don’t think we have anything as completely separated from reality like Laura Ingraham or Tucker Carlson,” Iger said. “So it just felt like we’d be stretching ourselves very thin trying to keep our quality standards up.”
Fox News executives did not comment on this story.
A version of this story first appeared on Alternative Facts.
Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram, but not Twitter because he has a potty mouth.
