“In 1984, less than a year after Warner Bros. bought back his stake in the studio, Rupert Murdoch made a run at 20th Century Fox. The studio was then owned by wildcatter Marvin Davis, a six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound man of Falstaffian appetites. At one board meeting, Davis catered a nine-course lunch and had his secretary place”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
The two outlined the contours of a deal over lunch at the 21 Club in Manhattan. Davis told Rupert he would only sell a 50 percent stake in Fox. Rupert normally demanded full control of his assets, but he made an exception to get a toehold in Hollywood. On March 21, 1985, Rupert and Davis announced that Rupert would buy half of Fox for $250 million. Only in hindsight would the deal’s significance become clear: it was the moment Rupert transformed News Corp from a newspaper publisher into a fully integrated global media company.
Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family — and the World by Gabriel Sherman Simon & Schuster
Rupert had scant experience in the movie business. His biggest foray to date was financing the 1981 Peter Weir war film, Gallipoliin part to honor his father’s legacy. Rupert needed a Hollywood rabbi, someone who could teach him the baroque ways in which the town operated. Diller could fill this role. He was a show business wunderkind, having taken over Paramount at thirty-two and presided over such hits as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flashdance, and Terms of Endearment. Broad shouldered and balding with a perpetual tan, booming voice, and boundless energy, Diller was a creative impresario and a boardroom killer, a rare combination that made him a once-in-a-generation executive. Over lunch at the Hillcrest Country Club across the street from the Fox lot, Rupert convinced Diller to work for him. “The hot bath of Rupert Murdoch’s enthusiasm is something quite extraordinary,” Diller recalled.
Diller became Rupert’s Hollywood whisperer. Rupert complained of inefficiency, but Diller explained that creative output took time to nurture. Diller hosted lunches to introduce Murdoch to the top producers in town like Stephen Cannell, whose hits 21 Jump Street and The A-Team dominated the ratings. Murdoch deferred to Diller, mostly, but at times his patience wore thin. “You’re costing me a fortune!” he said. “Then go out and buy your own fucking movies!” Diller brayed. Because Murdoch lacked a show-business background, he allowed Diller far more autonomy than his editors — for the time being.
A month after the Fox deal closed, Diller invited Davis and Rupert to a cocktail party for media billionaire John Kluge in Diller’s office on the Fox lot. The German-born Kluge stood just over five feet. His rotund frame and bald head gave him the appearance of a human bowling ball. Despite his diminutive size, Kluge was a giant in the broadcasting industry. Kluge had become an American citizen and built his company, Metromedia, into the country’s largest operator of independent television stations. Diller had heard Kluge, now in semiretirement, might be ready to cash out. Then seventy, Kluge and his third wife, Patricia, had moved to a forty-five-room Georgian estate Kluge built for her in rural Virginia.
As Diller hoped, Kluge admitted he was thinking of selling some stations. Rupert immediately recognized the potential. Metromedia owned stations in major markets, including Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York. With one investment, Rupert could establish a fourth national broadcast network and smash the liberal monopoly of ABC, CBS, and NBC, the gatekeepers that dictated what Americans watched. “There is no dog with hearing as sharp as Rupert Murdoch’s when opportunity calls. It took him less than a second to say, ‘Ha! Let’s go after this!'” Diller recalled.
Buying Metromedia, however, required Rupert to gamble more than he ever had. Kluge wanted $2 billion for his seven stations — 50 percent more than what analysts projected they were worth. “I just thought it was crazy,” Diller recalled. Rupert admitted the price was high, but it was worth the risk. “You’re paying a premium for [the stations] all coming together. It’s the one time in life when wholesale is more expensive than retail,” Rupert said.
Rupert stayed in Los Angeles that week to lock down the Kluge deal. While attending financier Michael Milken’s investment conference — also known as the “Predator’s Ball” — Rupert asked Milken to fund the Metromedia purchase with $1.15 billion in junk bonds. Negotiations continued the following week in New York. “What a great adventure! We’re betting the company!” Rupert told Diller in a cab on the way to Kluge’s apartment. “He’s never happier than when there are huge obstacles to overcome in pulling off something wildly ambitious,” Diller recalled. “He’s a warrior when fighting to establish something in enemy territory — usually against the Establishment.”
On May 6, 1985, Rupert and Davis announced Fox would buy Metromedia’s stations. But Davis pulled out of the deal a month later because he’d soured on media investing, leaving Rupert with a $775 million hole to fill. “You can’t rely on anything he says,” a furious Rupert later complained. Rupert didn’t know where he would get the money, but one thing was clear: the Rupert-Davis partnership in Fox was over. According to Rupert, he challenged Davis to a coin flip to determine which of them would buy the other out of the studio. Davis agreed, then waffled. Rupert bought Davis’s 50 percent of Fox for $325 million and proceeded with the Metromedia purchase alone.
News Corp’s Bronx-born chief financial officer Richard Sarazen scribbled projections on a yellow legal pad that indicated Rupert could handle the debt. Over the years, Sarazen developed complex strategies to legally exploit differences in accounting and tax laws among the countries News Corp did business in. This increased News Corp’s borrowing capacity. “[Rupert’s] father, a famous newspaper editor in Australia, was a manager who made a fortune for others. Rupert decided he’d never do it that way,” Sarazen said.
Even if Rupert could raise the money for Metromedia — a big if — he faced a gauntlet of regulations. Federal law prevented one company from owning a TV station and newspaper in the same city. Rupert applied for an FCC “cross ownership” waiver, hoping he could hold on to it Chicago Sun-Times and his beloved New York Post. Reagan’s FCC granted Rupert a two-year reprieve and signaled it would extend it further. The citizenship requirement was one regulation Rupert couldn’t change. “It’s not a problem, I can take care of it,” Rupert told Diller.
Just a few years earlier, Rupert had sold himself as Australian to the core when he bought Melbourne’s Channel Ten. “I love Australia. I carry an Australian passport, my children are Australian. I have a home in Australia. I hope to send my children through Australian universities.” Now he was breaking the news to Anna that he would become an American to buy more TV stations. “I was shocked. I never thought he’d do it,” she later said. “I realized then how strong his ambitious drive was.” His mother was disapproving as well. “It was quite a bit to swallow,” Dame Elisabeth told a Sydney newspaper.
On the Wednesday after Labor Day 1985, a pair of limousines spirited the Murdoch family into a parking garage beneath the federal court in Lower Manhattan. Anna and the kids — Elisabeth, seventeen; Lachlan, thirteen; and James, twelve — watched Rupert stand with a group of 185 immigrants from forty-four countries. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram delivered an emotional introduction about the meaning of citizenship and then asked the aspiring Americans to place their right hands on their hearts and recite the Oath of Allegiance. Murdoch swore to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, to whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”
That Christmas, the Murdoch family spent the holiday at their Aspen ski house, with its wooden beams and swimming pool built incongruously in the living room. For Anna, it was a moment to celebrate. William Morrow recently published her debut novel, In Her Own Image, about a mother and two estranged sisters set in rural Australia. The book received positive reviews, a salve to her ego that was bruised by Rupert’s criticism of her early writing. Anna would later tell a friend that writing gave her independence, and showed Rupert she wasn’t dependent on him.
For Rupert, the Aspen trip was a chance to recharge after the grueling Fox-Metromedia deal. He had achieved his mission to become a force in American television. But he didn’t have time to slow down. If he failed to repay Milken’s junk bonds within three years, the debt would convert to equity. Rupert’s ownership of News Corp would be diluted, and he would lose control of the company. Put simply, Rupert wagered his empire on the Metromedia deal working out.
From BONFIRE OF THE MURDOCHS: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family—and the World by Gabriel Sherman. Copyright © 2026 by Gabriel Sherman. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, LLC.