One empire grows. Another shrinks.

In separate ballrooms at the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Friday morning, shareholders of the Walt Disney Company and 21st Century Fox agreed to a $71.3 billion purchase plan that gives Disney the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, substantially altering the entertainment landscape.

Regulators in more than a dozen countries must still give their approval. But the shareholder votes brought to a close a six-month corporate showdown, waged across two continents by Disney and Comcast, for supremacy in the rapidly changing media business. Mr. Murdoch’s trove represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain the bulk needed as a counterattack against the tech giants that have aggressively moved into Hollywood.

“Avatar,” the “X-Men” movies, “Titanic” and TV shows such as “The Simpsons” and “This Is Us” will now be owned by Disney. That adds to an already enviable content stockpile from divisions that include Lucasfilm, Marvel Entertainment and Pixar Animation Studios. The deal also gives Disney the cable networks FX and National Geographic; a controlling stake in the streaming service Hulu, which has more than 20 million subscribers; and Star, one of India’s fastest growing media companies.

Some people in Hollywood see the acquisition as the sad ending of an era. Disney is acknowledging that the future of television and movie viewing is online, and this move could set off a wave of mergers in the film business, which has not seen significant consolidation since 1935, when 20th Century Pictures and Fox Film merged to form 20th Century Fox.