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ACQUISITION WILL CREATE STREAMING GIANT WITH THIRD-MOST TOTAL VIEWERSHIP, BEHIND ONLY YOUTUBE AND DISNEY |
Fox Corp just unveiled a $22B deal to acquire connected-TV service Roku, creating a streaming player with the third-most viewing of any company, trailing only YouTube and Disney.
The agreement will see Fox pay $160 a share through a combination of cash and Fox Class A stock. This gives Roku an enterprise valuation of $22B, while the equity value is $25 billion.
Roku, founded in 2002, reaches more than 100 million global streaming homes via smart-TVs and connected devices, and is in more than half of all U.S. broadband households.
The transaction is a major step-up in streaming for Fox, whose current iteration began in 2019 after most of the company's assets were sold to Disney. In 2020, Fox bought free, ad-supported streamer Tubi, which it plans to maintain as a separate service from Roku's free offerings. Fox's assets also include its namesake broadcast network, a large local station portfolio, cable networks Fox News and Fox Business, subscription streamer Fox One, and a sports rights portfolio including the NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Big Ten and the FIFA World Cup. >>>$400M In Cost Savings
Related:
Both Sides Of Fox-Roku Deal Call It A Win-Win, But Wall Street Has Questions
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Deadline Exclusives & Originals
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A Good 'Day' - Disclosure Day brought in an estimated $44 million in its opening weekend, delivering the best domestic bow in director Steven Spielberg's career. The debut is also the best in the history of Amblin Entertainment for original IP. >>>Projected At $35M
Advance To Boardwalk - Lionsgate, LuckyChap, and Hasbro Entertainment are partnering with two star writing teams — Neil Widener & Gavin James (A Minecraft Movie) and Rebecca Angelo & Lauren Schuker Blum (Dumb Money) — to flesh out ideas for a Monopoly movie based on the iconic board game. >>>Very Early Days
Another No. 1 For Michael Jackson - Michael has become the highest-grossing musical biopic ever with $911.9 million worldwide, unseating the Freddie Mercury biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. >>>Just Opened In Japan
'Dead' Pilot Not Yet Dead - While NBC drama pilot What the Dead Know did not make the cut for a series order, the network has remained high on the general premise and the project’s star, Taylor Schilling. >>>Searching For New Writer
Remembering James Handy - Carl Kurlander, a screenwriter (St. Elmo’s Fire), TV writer-producer (Saved by the Bell) and documentary filmmaker, remembers his friend actor James Handy, who was stabbed to death on the front lawn of his Tarzana home last week. Handy was, Kurlander writes, "a great character actor who himself happened to possess great character." >>>A Freind's Tribute
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Right now, Michelle Pfeiffer is in two major Emmy-contending television projects: Taylor Sheridan’s The Madison and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, adapted from Rufi Thorpe’s bestselling novel and created for TV by her husband David E. Kelley. The two roles are polar opposites; in The Madison, she is Stacy Clyburn, a well-to-do, rather formidable Manhattan matriarch. In Margo’s Got Money Troubles, she’s the funny, feisty Shyanne Millet, a former Hooters waitress who struggles to support her teenage-mom daughter Margo (Elle Fanning).
Both shows will have a second season, even though Margo began as a limited series. The Madison is renewed for a third too, and Season 2 was already shot at the same time as Season 1, Pfeiffer says. In the next go-round, she teases, “I think the honeymoon is over, and I think we see — or the family sees, and Stacy even sees —that this is going to be a lot harder than the idealism of Montana. And the beauty of it, and the romance of being there, starts to fall away and we see that it’s potentially untenable.” >>>Read The Interview
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Exclusive
Hulu’s Only Murders In the Building is making the most of its trip to London, booking top local talent for the upcoming sixth season. Joining Season 6 are David Tennant, Nicola Coughlan, Jodie Whittaker, Jim Broadbent, Richard Ayoade, Adrian Lukis and Kathryn Hunter.
Exclusive
The Night Agent will give fans what they want before calling it a day — Peter Sutherland and Rose Larkin together again. Luciane Buchanan, who played Peter’s (Gabriel Basso) charge-turned-partner and love interest Rose in the first two seasons of the Netflix action drama, will reprise her role in the series’ upcoming fourth and final season.
Exclusive
Inanna Sarkis (Maintenance Required) is set for a role alongside Phoebe Dynevor and Patrick Schwarzenegger in Beach Read, 20th Century Studios‘ adaptation of the New York Times bestselling novel from Emily Henry, which is shooting this month.
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MORE NEWS
🛑 The likes of X, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok will be banned for under-16s in the UK after Prime Minister Keir Starmer introduced landmark legislation and a promise to deliver “world-leading action.”
🎭 Billy Crystal’s new one-man show 860, directed by Scott Ellis (Fallen Angels, Art), will begin a limited 14-week Broadway engagement at the Imperial Theatre on Thursday, October 1, officially open on Wednesday, October 21.
👌 The Directors Guild of America is one step closer to sealing the deal on a new four-year contract with the major film and television studios after the union’s National Board of Directors unanimously voted to recommend ratification to the membership.
👎 Stockholders expressed deep dissatisfaction with the 2025 compensation package of Warner Bros. Discovery’s chief executive David Zaslav in a non-binding vote at the company’s annual meeting this week. A little more than 84% of votes cast in the yearly say-on-pay tally were against the package.
🚦 Amazon MGM Studios alum Adam Keen has launched Agenda Collective, a full-service entertainment public relations firm, with offices in Los Angeles and New York City. Its roster includes studios, filmmakers, showrunners, writers, producers, authors, sales companies and production entities.
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OBITUARIES
🕯️ Margaret Kerry, the early sitcom actor and dancer who modeled the movements and expressions for Disney animators as they drew Peter Pan's pixie Tinker Bell into being, died of lung cancer on Thursday, June 11, in Wilmington, North Carolina. She was 97. 🕯️ Joe Negri, a jazz guitarist best known to generations of children and their parents as the kindly, music-loving handyman of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, died Saturday, May 30, at a senior living facility outside Pittsburgh. He was 99. 🕯️ Ronnie Schell, a prolific TV character actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of the amiable Pvt. Duke Slater, pal of Jim Nabors’ hayseed Gomer Pyle on the ’60s sitcom of that name, died of natural causes last week at UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 94. 🕯️ Gene Shalit, the longtime film critic for Today, known for his quirky puns and signature walrus mustache, has died. He was 100. Roger Cook, the British broadcast journalist credited with creating the ‘doorstep’ interview technique, has died aged 83. 🕯️ Hollywood Deaths Photo Gallery
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ON THE RADAR
Mon - The Knicks on Fallon
Tue - J.D. Vance on The View
Wed - Outside Tonight with Julian Shapiro-Barnum premieres on YouTube
Fri - Juneteenth; U.S.- Australia World Cup match
Sun - House of the Dragon S3 premiere
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Feeling 'Brand New' - Tom Holland and Zendaya hit the red carpet together for the first time in five years for a Spider-Man: Brand New Day photocall at the Four Seasons Hotel in Madrid, Spain.
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