Disney/ActivisionIf you’ll allow me to fully indulge my nerdier side for a moment, Disney is very much becoming the Galactus of the entertainment world, and it’s ever so slightly terrifying.
Galactus, if you didn’t already know, is a major Marvel villain – a cosmic entity that travels the universe devouring entire planets in a futile effort to satiate its unending hunger. In that same vein, Disney has been devouring studios and IPs in a never-ending quest. Marvel. Star Wars. The Simpsons. The Muppets. When will it end?
According to a new report, not any time soon.
Activision While it’s early days and probably massively unlikely, there is one Disney investor who thinks it’s the perfect time for Disney to acquire Activision Blizzard, the publisher behind such juggernauts as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and… Candy Crush.
Gerber Kawasaki Inc.’s Nick Licouris told Bloomberg that the company reckons there’s plenty of money to be made in video games (who knew?). Kawasaki Inc. already owns $22 million worth of shares in Disney and $4.3 million in Activision, so you can see why Licouris is rooting for Activision Blizzard specifically, rather than say, Nintendo or Capcom.
While the idea of Activision Blizzard’s stable of talented developers getting its hands on such a massive toybox of characters and IPs is massively exciting, I don’t see it happening. Disney has previously said it’s much happier to simply lend its IPs out to video game publishers (such as EA with Star Wars), so I can’t imagine buying a publisher is a move the House of Mouse is currently equipped to deal.
Besides, Disney probably already has enough money? In the last few months alone, they’ve dominated the box office with the triple threat of Avengers: Endgame, Toy Story 4, and The Lion King, with the last Avengers flick overtaking Avatar to become the highest-grossing film of all time. Not too shabby.
Activision is currently valued around $37 billion, so if Disney decided to spring for the publisher, they’d need to dig pretty deep. It’s not like they couldn’t afford it, but would it really be worth it? I honestly have no damn idea, that’s why I write about video games for a living instead of making investment decisions on a private yacht surrounded by beautiful people.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.