{"id":301430,"date":"2025-11-19T15:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T15:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/301430\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T15:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T15:48:09","slug":"fox-is-making-some-weird-business-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/301430\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox Is Making Some Weird Business Deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFox<\/a> either forgot what business it\u2019s in, or its executives are thinking 10 steps ahead of everyone else.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a span of less than four weeks, Fox Entertainment announced a two-way first-look deal with publisher HarperCollins imprint Avon A<\/a>, unveiled a business arrangement with vertical videos maker Holywater<\/a>, took an equity stake investment in actor\/writer B.J. Novak\u2019s (The Office) pop-up elevated fast-food experience Chain<\/a>, and purchased scripted rom-com podcast platform Meet Cute<\/a>, which it intends to mine for projects across multiple platforms. And, as first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Fox Sports bought a piece of its lead NFL analyst Tom Brady\u2019s production and marketing company Shadow Lion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s CEO Rob Wade<\/a> thinking? THR went straight to the man to find out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of announcements recently, but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s been, like, some sudden change,\u201d Wade says of the recent flurry of Fox deals. \u201cIt takes time to implement. It takes time to form a strategy and identify the right targets and then execute. I think that\u2019s where we are at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWade notes that Fox\u2019s relatively small size, brought about by the 2019 sale of most assets to Disney, allows for a level of nimbleness not available to much larger corporations. (The billions of dollars <\/a>from the Disney deal helps here too.) In media\u2019s \u201cscale-or-die\u201d era, Fox essentially chose neither option. While other companies are doing due diligence on the viability of pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox is rolling the dice on a series of low-risk deals instead.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough these Fox Entertainment investments may seem disconnected, IP generation is the through-line. Adapt a YA book for Fox. Adapt a rom-com podcast story for Fox. Adapt a \u2026 pop-up food experience for Fox. (That last one will be \u201csuper fun,\u201d Wade says.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWade\u2019s \u201cdream scenario\u201d is for any of these small investments to become \u201cso big that you\u2019re building products and services off that,\u201d he says. The one with the largest upshot is likely Fox\u2019s partnership with Holywater, a Ukrainian-born microdrama maker<\/a> and platform that services the U.S. market.<\/p>\n

\n\tFox is \u201cin a learning phase at the moment\u201d as it pertains to vertical video, Wade says. \u201cIt feels like it has great potential, but I think there\u2019s a long road ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong the way, Wade will have to convince Fox stars to make dramas he can dice up into 90-second bits and in an aspect ratio they typically reserve for FaceTime. And they have to do it for very cheap.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve heard a lot of people talking about, you know, bigger Hollywood creators getting involved<\/a> in vertical video, and I think that\u2019s fine, but they have to realize you cannot push the cost of these up too high,\u201d Wade says. \u201cBig Hollywood stars are used to making lots of money, and this is a lower margin business \u2014 even in success \u2014 and you have to be happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s only one way that math maths.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf a creator has a burning ambition and a desire and a passion to tell stories through vertical, then I think it could be successful,\u201d Wade says, \u201cbut I think they have to be understanding of the business and the realistic upsides of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWade acknowledges there is \u201ca big question mark\u201d about sitcoms working on vertical video \u2014 they\u2019re colloquially called microdramas<\/a> for a reason. Verticals consist of many chapters, each of which must have \u201cincredibly compelling endings,\u201d the exec adds.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDrama is set up for that, true crime is \u2014 even unscripted is set up for that. Comedy doesn\u2019t tend to have cliffhangers,\u201d Wade says. \u201cI think there is a version of comedy that works. Maybe it\u2019s a skit show, though, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fox either forgot what business it\u2019s in, or its executives are thinking 10 steps ahead of everyone else.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,6265,156926,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-301430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-fox","10":"tag-rob-wade","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}