Soon, you may not be able to see the latest “Star Wars” on Netflix.
Disney 21st Century Fox owns all eight “Star Wars” films, but as early as next year, you may be able to watch them only on a homegrown streaming service the company plans to unveil.
Disney began taking over most of 21st Century Fox on Friday, paying $71.3 billion for the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s empire.
The deal is part of a wave of consolidation sweeping the media industry. Earlier this year, AT&T acquired Time Warner, which owns HBO and the Warner Bros. studios. CBS and Viacom have been caught in a will-they-or-won’t-they situation. And then there’s Comcast, which, after losing Fox to Disney, will most likely make a play for something else.
The mega-mergers mean that a smaller number of big-name companies control a greater portion of TV shows and films, potentially altering where — and how — we see our favorite series or actors.
“Game of Thrones,” produced by HBO, is owned by AT&T Time Warner. That means if you have DirecTV, another AT&T company, you may be able to stream the series on your phone without paying for any data.
Cornering content has become the media industry’s go-to strategy, and it has Silicon Valley to thank for that. Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are spending tons of money for Hollywood talent and film and TV properties, prompting a swift reordering that has yesterday’s media moguls cutting deals to stay alive.
Five companies now control nine of the 10 most-watched cable channels this season. Disney, with the Fox acquisition, owns 50 percent of the North American box office for this year.
Who Controls Which Titles
Disney“X-Men”
“This Is Us”
“The Simpsons”
“Modern Family”
Comcast“The Fast and the Furious”
“Jurassic Park”
“Parks and Recreation”
“Master of None”
AT&T“Harry Potter”
“The Big Bang Theory”
“Game of Thrones”
“Wonder Woman”
Viacom“Mission: Impossible”
“Star Trek” (movies)
“13 Reasons Why”
“Jack Ryan”
Netflix“Stranger Things”
“Glow”
“Mindhunter”
“A Series of Unfortunate Events”
Amazon“Manchester by the Sea”
“The Big Sick”
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
“The Lord of the Rings” (show)
CBS“Star Trek” (show)
“N.C.I.S.”
“American Vandal”
“Jane the Virgin”
Lionsgate“La La Land”
“The Hunger Games”
“The Twilight Saga”
“Orange Is the New Black”
Sony“The Crown”
“Breaking Bad”
“Spider-Man”
“Men in Black”
MGM“The Handmaid’s Tale”
“American Gladiators”
“Rocky”
“Legally Blonde”
But media rights can be convoluted. Traditionally, there was a delicate balance between creators on one end and distributors at the other. Now those divisions are breaking down.
Disney plans to move most, if not all, of its films off Netflix starting in 2019, when it will begin offering its own streaming service. That means newer hits like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” or Marvel megaliths like “Thor: Ragnarok,” currently on Netflix will no longer be available in the next few years.
“One of the most exciting aspects of our Fox acquisition is that it will allow us to greatly accelerate our direct-to-consumer strategy,” Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, said when he announced the deal in December. Creating the company’s own streaming services — at least one devoted to entertainment and one to sports programming — is “vital to the future,” he said.
Netflix will still have rights to some Disney movies released from 2016 through 2018, but they’ll eventually disappear. The point is: In the near future, a viewer will probably have to pay for a Disney service to watch a Disney-owned movie. It’s also possible that many of the TV shows that Disney owns, like “The Simpsons” or “Grey’s Anatomy,” could end up reserved for its streaming service.
That could force other media companies to rope off their content as well.
Warner Bros., one of the TV industry’s largest suppliers of content, is now part of AT&T, which has big ambitions for a streaming service based on its newly acquired trove.
And that could fundamentally change how the TV business has worked for decades. Traditionally, TV studios produced content, while distributors like NBC, or newer ones like Netflix, paid for the rights to air those shows. Once content owners also own the platforms, consumers may end up with several streaming bills for access to all of their favorite programming.
“The Crown,” one of Netflix’s recent hits, is owned by a division of Sony. When Netflix’s rights expire, Sony could license the show to another provider like Hulu, which is now controlled by Disney.
Even Netflix, which plans to spend more than $12 billion this year on programming, relies on other people’s content. It has marketed shows and films you can see only on Netflix as “originals,” but not all of that content is owned by Netflix.
Hulu, which has more than 20 million customers, is now controlled by Disney, but the service doesn’t own any shows. One of the shows it streams, the Emmy Award-winning “The Handmaid’s Tale,” for example, is owned by MGM. That means Hulu could become a Switzerland of streaming. It has already started marketing HBO’s streaming service, now owned by AT&T, as an add-on. Another way to look at it: Disney is playing nice with AT&T.
