The Simpsons Predicted The Future With Disney's Fox Takeover

The Simpsons has a long history of predicting the future.

There is even an episode of South Park in which Butters tries all sorts of devious plans to take over the world but is thwarted at every turn because The Simpsons have already done it.

Now, admittedly there are over 600 episodes of the show, and if you throw enough shit over nearly three decades, some of it is bound to stick.

However, on this occasion they have beaten reality to the punch by two decades and predicted one of the biggest takeover deals in recent history.

Walt Disney is believed to be taking control of 20th Century Fox Inc. tomorrow morning in a deal worth $71.3 billion (£53.7 billion).

These are staggering sums of money to be chucking around for a Mickey Mouse organisation.

This is important not because it's a huge deal, but because in 1998 (November 8, to be precise) The Simpsons ran an episode called 'When You Dish Upon A Star' - you might remember it as the one that had guest spots from Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, and Ron Howard.

One scene shows the outside of the 20th Century Fox studio, with the iconic logo plastered on a sign - beneath the sign it reads: "A Division of Walt Disney Co."

Over the past 15 years or so, Marvel characters have dominated cinema screens, with the likes of Iron Man and Wolverine becoming firmly entrenched at the more successful end of box office records, and recent movies like Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther absolutely cleaning up.

It's all been helped by the MCU characters' ability to cross over between films, meaning all the movies form individual parts of one huge saga, as well as stand-alone adventures in their own right. But of course, there's always been one crucial issue for fans - due to differences in studio licensing rights, not all of their comic book favourites have been able to wander into each other's stories.

How so? Well, basically, the characters who formed the MCU (the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy et al) were licensed by Disney, whereas the X-Men and Deadpool were licensed by Fox. So while comic book readers might have been used to Spider-Man teaming up with Wolverine on the page, there was sadly no chance of that happening on the big screen.

Good news: that's where the merger comes in. This deal finally brings Fox-licensed characters like the X-Men, Deadpool and even the Fantastic Four into the same deal as the characters featured in the MCU - meaning the odds on future spin-offs and cross-overs are pretty good.

After news that the merger would be completed this week, Ryan Reynolds - aka Deadpool - tweeted a picture to show his excitement.

Posting a photo of his superhero character sat on a school bus with Mickey Mouse ears on his head, the actor wrote: "Feels like the first day of 'pool."