And that's exactly what we're seeing here. It's just some people in congress jumping on the fact that this is big news that will allow them to get their face on TV talking about something their voters have heard about and may be concerned with.
But that dog and pony show won't affect real policy, and no likely modifications to the deal will affect Marvel getting control of the licenses they actually own back.
It's probably good that people are talking about it now, because that will help get things moving.
And when it gets right down to it, people are going to have to recognize that if the concern is a monopoly, Netflix has a near monopoly now. And the key to this deal is it will help Disney compete with Netflix and provide a lower-cost premium-content service that will put a huge amount of competitive pressure on Netflix and prevent them from ruling the world in 5 years.
And some of the arguments I'm hearing about Disney getting too large of a share of box-office are BS. They're not making those huge BO numbers because they have no competition. They're making those numbers because, in stark contrast to things like Fox and Fant4stic, they're giving consumers a quality product that consumers want.
Warner Brothers has DC and Harry Potter. Universal has Frankenstein, The Mummy etc. Paramount has Mission Impossible. Several studios are currently bidding on James Bond etc. etc. etc.
Disney doesn't have any kind of monopoly on key properties and nobody can prevent anybody else from buying the hot new book or video game rights or simply coming up with a great idea and executing it well.
Disney can take something like Pirates of the Caribbean or Guardians of the Galaxy and make a multi billion dollar franchise out of nothing.
Meanwhile, Warner Brothers can take something like King Arthur and make complete crap.
Anti-trust policy should be about providing a level-playing field, not preventing the better team from winning once they get on that field.
