Why Disney's $71 Billion Fox Deal Still Hasn't Paid Off

Disney agreed to buy most of 21st Century Fox in December 2017, beat Comcast in a 2018 bidding war and closed the deal in March 2019 at about 71 billion dollars. We check what Disney got (Avatar, the X-Men, FX, National Geographic, control of Hulu), what it paid, what was written down, how its stock did and whether streaming profit can pay it back. Every figure comes from Disney and Fox filings or named outlets, anything we calculated is labelled "our math", prices are as of October 23, 2026, and this is not investment advice. Sources: Disney press releases and Forms 8-K and 10-K, Fox Form 8-K, U.S. Department of Justice, Sinclair, Reuters, CNBC, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, NPR, WSJ, LA Times, Forbes, Box Office Mojo, The Numbers. Photo credits: Bob Iger: nagi usano from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY SA 2.0, cropped. Rupert Murdoch: Hudson Institute, CC BY 2.0, cropped. Josh D'Amaro: Spc. Albert Juarez, public domain, cropped. Fox Studios entrance, Los Angeles: Coolcaesar, CC BY SA 4.0. Logos of Disney, Netflix, Comcast, Hulu and Sinclair: public domain. All via Wikimedia Commons. Thumbnail photo: Bob Iger, by nagi usano from Tokyo, Japan, CC BY SA 2.0, cropped, via Wikimedia Commons. Some scenes are illustrative AI generated visuals, which are depictions and not real footage. No generated faces of named people appear in the film.