Its internet rumours so it could be wrong, but I don't see how Disney can pay for Hulu without drastic measures and Disney has no choice, but to buy Hulu contractually,so it almost doesn't matter how Lucas Films was doing, they may have no choice but to sell it, even of it was doing alot better.
On this.
Don't believe internet clickbait. PLEASE. I'll give you a quick example from your OP-
Has anyone else heard the rumours that the deal they have to make with Universal over Hulu will cost so much (possibly as high as 70 billion dollars) that Disney will basically have to do a fire sale to pay for it, including selling Lucas Film, Paris & some parks in Asia, parts of Fox Studios, etc...?
So here's what we know.
1. Disney owns 2/3 of Hulu. Comcast owns the other third.
2. That situation is untenable. In January, 2024, both sides have the option to force the sale.
3. While Comcast would like to get Hulu (Comcast also owns Peacock), for various reasons that is very unlikely and it is much more likely that Disney will buy out Comcast.
4. However, because of Disney's acquisition of Fox ($71.3 billion, 2017), as well as taking out loans during the pandemic, Disney has more debt right now than they would like.
5. In 2019, the guarantee Disney gave to Comcast was ~$9 billion for their portion.
6. Disney's long-term debt last quarter was $48.5 billion (net debt is considerably less), which is substantially less year-over-year. About $ 6 billion less.
7. The debt is 3.4 times EBITDA, which is a little higher than they want. but fine for the industry.
Just from that, we can quickly surmise that they could finance the purchase if they wanted to. However, they might want to unload some underperforming assets. Which ones? Maybe none. But some of the speculation is just wrong. For example, the international parks are not wholly owned by Disney, but are all joint ventures with partners; there would be obvious issues with Disney exiting from the ... Disney business. So that's a no-go, and anyone suggesting that as likely is just trying to accumulate traffic without any analysis.
Fundamentally, that's the issue. The best performing part of Disney is the Parks (including Cruises) right now. Quite literally, they can't afford to get rid of those. On the other hand, it makes no sense to divest themselves of content creation in order to add Hulu to Disney+, given that they will need ... content. They also want the content for ... the Parks! So Lucasfilms and Fox also seem incredibly unlikely. Not to mention that would be undoing two of the biggest wins in Iger's legacy.
What's it going to be? Who knows. Maybe debt. Maybe ESPN and ABC? I would wait for something sourced from a reliable report- the rest will just be noise.