Today, the entertainment industry was chattering away as the news broke that 21st Century Fox and Disney were in negotiations for Disney to purchase some of Fox’s business. The television properties would remain but it’s believed Fox’s movie business and tv production would head to Disney if the deal went through according to CNBC, though Bloomberg has reported the deal is dead right now.

The news spread across the geek-o-sphere with sites excited about seeing the X-Men, Deadpool, and Fantastic Four back at Marvel and part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Marvel is owned by Disney). They were excited that Star Wars: A New Hope would be with Lucasfilm which meant original cuts and more!

Beyond the fact that none of this is happening any time soon, what these sites overlooked in their naivete is that Disney gobbling up some of Fox’s entertainment business further consolidates movie and television production and increasing Disney’s power and control. And currently, Disney is being pretty evil.

In the early 1980s US media was held by just 50 corporations — and the number has dropped to only a handful since then. Reported in 2012, Business Insider just 6 corporations control 90% of the media in America. Things have shifted a bit since then, but reality is just a few corporations control the vast majority of the movies, television, newspapers, and radio you listen to and consume. Disney’s purchase of Fox’s movie and television production would allow them to flex even more weight and in a way that harms consumers.

Here’s just a few ways things can go off the rail:

• Disney has “launched” their own movie service, “Movies Anywhere” after they pulled out of their deal with Netflix. Along with Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox have all signed on to the service. While there’s some good in how the service works, having the studio controlling a major distribution channel is rife for abuse, especially if they were to own Fox too. They could pull all that content from Netflix and other services making Movies Anywhere the only online digital app to view their films legally. Add in the power of the data gained from consumers using their own app and you have a scenario where others can be muscled out or muscled to take part decreasing consumer choice and increasing costs.

Disney and Fox, as well as Comcast Corp and Time Warner Inc, own stakes in Hulu. And while they have signed a deal with that service, there is no reason that couldn’t end if Disney were to control Fox or a deal pressed against Hulu which the service couldn’t accept and survive.

• Speaking of increasing costs, Disney has been muscling theaters to pay more for their films. Disney has recently had two recent spats with theaters over Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi where they demanded greater cuts to show their films and greater demands as to what screens the films will be seen on. Movie consolidation would allow Disney to continue this trend either causing ticket prices to increase, theaters to stop showing their films, or theaters even going out of business. Again, a bad deal for consumers.
• Disney is currently pulling access for reporters over coverage they didn’t like (this negative piece could get us blacklisted for all I know). Disney has banned The Los Angeles Times from all advance screenings of their movies as a vindictive response to an investigative piece it published on Disney’s relationship to the city of Anaheim. Other sites have joined in with the Los Angeles Times in solidarity such as the AV Club and Washington Post. Imagine that extending further to any article Disney deems as negative freezing them out and only providing access to those who will only provide positive coverage. This is a chilling effect for entertainment coverage and free press. This consolidation would give Disney somewhere between 30-40% of the movie market share.

So before you celebrate how the X-Men might fight the Avengers, stop to think how if that happens you could have less choices in how you see that film and pay more to do so.