Disney Does Not Own Dragon Ball: Why the Kevin Feige Live Action Franchise Meme Was a Lie

Disney does not own Dragon Ball, and Kevin Feige was not building a live action Dragon Ball franchise. A meme that popped up on Facebook a couple of days earlier and spread from there claimed otherwise, and it was simply not true. Dragon Ball is owned by Toei Animation, Shueisha and Bird Studio. That is an unarguable truth, and anyone can look it up because the information is readily available online.

The viral meme about Disney, Kevin Feige and a live action Dragon Ball was false

The meme billed itself as a Disney rumor and claimed that Disney and Kevin Feige were working on a live action Dragon Ball movie franchise. It went further, saying "this franchise will sustain disney for the next 15 years and will be way bigger than the star wars and the mcu combined." It was a lie. Disney does not own Dragon Ball.

I did not want to address this again. I really didn't. But even people who follow my work were throwing this in my face or asking me about it. I wish I knew why Dragon Ball fans fell for it. It seems people read something on Facebook or Instagram and simply assume it must be true. It is nonsense.

It was frustrating on a personal level too. A couple of days before I wrote this, I had put out a discussion about the future of Dragon Ball Super, and a ton of people responded that it was never going to work in live action. I never mentioned anything about live action. They had not listened to what I said. They just assumed I was talking about this meme.

Fox distributed Dragon Ball movies, but a distributor is not an owner

The argument people were making goes like this: Fox distributed the last three Dragon Ball movies and helped make Evolution, and Disney bought Fox, so Disney must own Dragon Ball. That is wrong. Fox distributed Battle of Gods, Resurrection 'F' and Broly to movie theaters, but "a distributor is not an owner."

A distributor is basically a company that helps put a movie into theaters. They make the phone calls and handle the actual data processing needed to get the movies out. Fox did that for Toei internationally. Distribution and ownership are not the same thing.

And with Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, it was not Fox anymore. Fox was not distributing that film. Toei and Crunchyroll were. Saying Disney owns Dragon Ball because Fox handled the previous three films is blatant false information. I'm not going to argue about it, because it is not even a question. It is like saying the sky is blue and having someone insist it is pink. I have no time to argue with someone who just wants to talk.

Not a single credible outlet reported Disney's supposed Dragon Ball plans

Let's go deeper into how this is a lie. First of all, why were no credible movie websites talking about it? The same outlets that cover Star Wars and Marvel, like Collider and Screen Junkies, talk about rumors all the time. Yet none of them were talking about this one. It was only on Facebook.

Second, Disney does not own Dragon Ball. Third, Fox was not even distributing Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. Toei and Crunchyroll were. You could look at the poster, which was public by then, and see that Fox was nowhere to be found on it. This is called having critical thinking.

If I sound annoyed, it is because I am. When it gets to the point where even my own audience is being lied to, it bugs me.

Kevin Feige has no history with Dragon Ball, and nobody can predict 15 years ahead

I wasn't done. The meme said Kevin Feige was working on a live action Dragon Ball movie franchise. Kevin Feige has absolutely no history at all with Dragon Ball. None.

Then there is the claim that this franchise would sustain Disney for the next 15 years. Let's pretend it was real. How would anyone know that about a franchise that isn't even a quarter of what Marvel is? Sorry, Dragon Ball fans. I'm a Dragon Ball fan, but I'm not going to lie to you: Avengers is much bigger than Dragon Ball, and if you don't think that, you are living in a dream world. You can't see 15 years down the road. You can't predict what is going to happen in 15 years.

Bigger than Star Wars and the MCU combined? Not even close

The meme also claimed Dragon Ball would be way bigger than Star Wars and the MCU combined. How can anyone say Dragon Ball is going to be bigger than literally two of the biggest fictional franchises in the world? "I love Dragon Ball but I live in this place called reality."

Dragon Ball might be one of the top anime in the world. In fact it is, no question about it. But it is not even a chip off the block of what Star Wars and Marvel are and how much money they make. There hasn't been a single Dragon Ball movie to make a billion dollars.

The same rumor was around in 2020, and nothing came of it

I have talked about this time and time again: Disney does not own Dragon Ball. After this, I'm not going to address it anymore. If you like being lied to and strung along, keep believing it. Because this same rumor existed back in 2020. Two years later, there was nothing. We were told there was a Dragon Ball movie coming out with a particular actor starring in it. Where was it? Where was the movie?

Why had Japan not even addressed it? There had not been a single report out of Japan about a live action Dragon Ball being made for Disney by Kevin Feige. Nothing. Nobody with any credibility was talking about this. Unfortunately, I'm only one man, and I'm not IGN or any of these big companies. Which raises another question: if IGN always has the trailers out early and is in bed with Toei, why hadn't they reported on this? Literally nobody with any credibility was reporting it.

Even so, a friend of mine sent me a message saying a lot of people believed it. There is nothing I can do except tell you that if you do 10 seconds of research into what distribution is, what Fox's role in Dragon Ball was before and was not by then, and who was handling Super Hero, you will know. Whoever made this up is purposely lying to you, especially with that last part about it being bigger than the MCU and Star Wars combined. You can't know something is going to be bigger than something else unless you actually put it out. Nobody knows that, and you can't predict it for a franchise that is not even in the top 10 highest earning franchises in the world.

The 35 billion dollar Dragon Ball figure is earnings, not value

There was another rumor going around too, and somebody tried to argue it with me: that Dragon Ball is worth 35 billion dollars. No. Dragon Ball has made 35 billion dollars or more since 1984. There is a difference between value and how much something has earned.

If you work a nine to five job making 15 dollars an hour, you are going to make over a million dollars across your whole lifetime. But you are not worth that much, because there are these things called bills and food, and we have to spend that money. "This is economics 101." The value of something is not what it makes. You're telling me that Star Wars was valued at 4 billion but Dragon Ball is at 35 billion, so Dragon Ball is worth 31 billion dollars more than Star Wars? Does that make any logical sense?

This goes back to people not using critical thinking, and it does frustrate me, because in life, if you don't use critical thinking, people will take advantage of you. That is what whoever made this meme was doing. I don't even know who it was. This is fake, and I'm done talking about it.

Why do you think so many Dragon Ball fans fell for the Disney rumor?