I'm imagining a Kermit the Frog, Yoda, and Hulk buddy flick from Disney.

Notes:

1. Harry Potter is owned by Warner Brothers even though the franchise has no new movies planned.

2. Spiderman, X-Men, Ghost Rider, and the Fantastic Four are Marvel, but Marvel was struggling for a while there so they sold the movie rights to other studios. Which means that none of them will appear in future Avengers movies unless they make a big deal.

3. Lions Gate has a lot of awful but lucrative franchises; however, they have made great movies, like American Psycho, Crash, Saw, Lord of War, and more.

4. Sony, Universal, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox are all bigger than I thought.

Infographic of the most lucrative movie franchises:

http://pandawhale.com/post/22703/highest-grossing-movie-franchises-infographic

See also: 6 media giants control 90% of what we read, watch, or listen to

One ring to rule them all.

That's owned by Warner Brothers.

So there are six media giants -- GE, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS -- but seven major movie studios -- Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, Lionsgate, Universal, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount?

GE owns Universal, News Corp owns 20th Century Fox, Time Warner owns Warner Brothers, Viacom owns Paramount.

The Big Six box office sales hit $7 billion in 2010.

That's 2x the next 140 movie studios combined.

I guess Sony and Lionsgate are the two major studios not owned by media conglomerates?

MGM, which owns James Bond, Ben Hur, and others.

James Bond UK rights are owned by Sony (above) so that's another franchise split.

If Disney buys Dreamworks SKG, it could snatch Shrek, Madagascar, and Indiana Jones from Paramount. That's likely their next move, right?

What's also interesting is that none of these movie studios (or media conglomerates!) seem to benefit from owning Internet companies -- News Corp owning MySpace and Time Warner owning AOL were disasters for both Internet properties.

They stick to what they know.

Disney's next move? Focusing on expansion of properties into the BRIC nations; which of those possible future properties most appeals to Brazilians, Russians, Indian, and Chinese?

I believe Fox still has distribution rights for Star Wars (ep IV) for a while, which could complicate reissues/updates/combined sets from Disney-Lucasfilm.

Makes sense -- more incentive for Disney to create new content.