“I certainly did not mean to give any hints as to what the future would be,” Fox Television Group chairman Gary Newman said Thursday as he and co-chair Dana Walden wrapped their presentation at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. But facing down a room of curious journalists for the first time since Disney announced that it would be acquiring Fox’s production properties, the two executives, as well as FX chief John Landgraf, couldn’t help but pull back the curtain, even just a little bit, on the fate of their company, what will become of beloved Fox TV shows, and the sword of Damocles hanging over Fox and Disney employees all over town. Their most repeated phrase—“business as usual”—remained unconvincing.
At the beginning of their executive session—which historically combines a presentation with open Q&A from the press—Newman and Walden attempted to get ahead of the questions they knew were coming their way. Hoping to address “the elephant in the room . . . or in our case, the Mouse,” Newman joked that he and Walden had a lovely holiday before running through a series of Photoshopped images of the pair of them at Disneyland. (Perhaps they were taking their tongue-in-cheek P.R. cues from Fox star Ryan Reynolds and his wildly popular Twitter feed.)
But Walden and Newman weren’t all jokes. They also came armed with facts, such as confirming that the nickname being bandied about for Fox Broadcasting, Fox News, Fox Sports, and the Fox affiliate stations—New Fox—will indeed be the company’s official name going forward. Newman assured the room that New Fox will be “very robust and nimble,” and “will continue the tradition of disruption” that made the home of shows like The Simpsons and Married . . . with Children such an iconically rebellious part of the 1990s.
Whatever changes the brand does or doesn’t endure, they won’t be put into place for another year or more—and that’s assuming the Disney sale winds up going through. This lengthy delay prompted Newman to half-joke: “Certainly for the next 12-18 months, we’re very committed to Fox!” As with many Fox (and, frankly, Disney) employees across Hollywood, the future for these established power players is up in the air. After all, mergers create redundancies in both companies. “It’s more complicated when there are individuals who overlap with what Disney does,” Landgraf said Friday morning while pointing out that he and his network have no counterpart at Disney.
Newman’s dark jokes are par for the course of the anxious humor humming around town. Walden was a little more emotionally forthright, saying she was “shocked” initially, and found the whole notion of the sale “a little stunning.” Walden and Newman have worked together as heads of first 20th Century Fox TV, and then C.E.O.s of Fox Television Group, since 1999. Walden says, “Having worked there for such a long time and working so closely with the Murdochs, it didn’t seem to me like that was on the table.”
It’s unclear what will ultimately happen to Walden and Newman—who, ironically, would have been in a safer position in their pre-2014 roles at 20th Century Fox TV. Walden is reportedly a front-runner to take over for disgraced Amazon Studios head Roy Price, but she emphasized that she is not one to abandon ship. “I clearly am going to have a decision to make. I love this company, I’ve spent 26 years here. I love the team, Gary and I have had a hand in putting virtually every person in place. I’m very committed to them. I would not speculate right now about leaving, or frankly about anything other than the work at hand. It wouldn’t be helpful or productive.”
But despite Walden’s stance, speculating on the future is precisely what the press continued to do as Fox stars took the stage to present a roster of new shows. What, for example, will happen the network’s newly launched singing competition, The Four, when Fox is owned by Disney, which now owns Fox’s former flagship series, American Idol? Which becomes redundant? What will happen to Gotham or Lucifer—two of Fox’s DC comic-book shows—when its Disney-owned rival, Marvel, becomes part of its corporate family?
For now, Fox says don’t expect any conflicts. Disney has also made early outreach to Fox’s marquee creative talent, in the hopes of ensuring a smooth transition and perhaps courting certain players to stay inside the Disney-owned Fox family. Both Ryan Murphy—who made Glee,Scream Queens, and, currently, 9-1-1 for Fox and American Horror Story and so much more for Fox-owned FX—and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane received personal calls from Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger. Murphy got a personal call from “the Murdochs” as well. “This kinda stuff happens often now,” MacFarlane says. “I had a very good phone call.”
Murphy, true to his brand, was a little saltier. Though Murphy recently sold his Fox-produced series Ratched to Netflix, the creator has, of late, become almost synonymous with the Fox brand. FX is currently hosting four Murphy shows—Pose,American Horror Story,American Crime Story, and Feud—and the very busy producer joked: “Three months ago, I thought I literally would be buried on the Fox lot. I had my mausoleum picked out, and I was ready to commit. I was was very not prepared for what happened.”
Of all of Fox’s boundary-pushing TV, Murphy’s brand seems the least suited to the dreaded family-friendly Disney-fication that many worry will follow the Fox sale. “Am I going to have to put Mickey Mouse in American Horror Story?” Murphy jokingly asked Iger during their call. Murphy says he’s going to have to wait and see before he decides to sign a new deal with the Disney-owned version of Fox.
But Iger personally assured Murphy and everyone else at Fox that his company is not interested in sanitizing their brand. In fact, FX chief John Landgraf sees what he, Murphy, and the other creatives in his stable do as vital to what Disney hopes to accomplish with this acquisition. If Disney is hoping to expand its empire in order to compete with Netflix and other streaming services, then Netflix’s longtime rival, FX, could have a key role to play. Given how Netflix has used adult-oriented original programming like Orange Is the New Black and The Crown—shows you might readily find on FX—to boost its profile, Landgraf sees FX as, potentially, “the adult scripted component of [Disney’s] larger plan.”
This arrangement would also suit Landgraf’s needs. The executive, who has opened the past few T.C.A. sessions by boasting about his network’s boosted profile both among awarding bodies and critical communities, had to admit that in this past year, Netflix (and on a lesser scale, Hulu) has taken a bite out of FX’s slice of the pie. “Just in terms of scale and sheer numbers that Netflix is putting up, it’s a challenge staying in that upper echelon without more resources. There’s no question that these streaming services are putting extreme pressure on the business enterprise,” he said. “I understand in that context why Hollywood companies feel the need to bulk up.” Those resources, presumably, would be far more bountiful for FX under the Disney umbrella.
Newman described Iger as being “very vocal” about how much he admires what Fox and FX have built. “They’re not acquiring Fox to create some kind of PG company, or as Bob Iger has put it, to ‘Disney-fy’ it.” According to Murphy, Iger said: “The reason Disney was interested in buying Fox was because they believed in assets; they believed in the executives and the creators.” This is the same attitude the company adopted when it purchased Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm—to the great benefit of all concerned.
“I can look at history and I can say Disney, under Iger, has been a very good steward of brands that it has bought,” Landgraf pointed out. “Places like Pixar and Marvel have distinctive cultures, and those cultures tend to thrive under Disney’s leadership. [Iger] seems to have really wanted FX to be part of the larger plan.“ Walden said that the Murdochs were “protective” in deciding who, among the many companies courting them, they chose to sell Fox to: “It’s a brand that they admire, and I don’t believe they would turn these assets over to just anyone.”
In the meantime it is, no surprise, “business as usual” at Fox, with Newman and Walden still ordering pilots and plotting a course for the future without the Mouse in their house. “We have to operate as if this deal doesn’t go through,” Newman said—while acknowledging that everyone in the company expects it will.
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Joanna RobinsonJoanna Robinson is a Hollywood writer covering TV and film for VanityFair.com.
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