The Business of Disney

[PanthersATL]

Spinning off a topic from the current Suicide Squad thread where someone talked about how nobody would buy Lucasfilm today after the mess Disney made with the most recent films.

Here's a breakdown of what Disney *paid* vs what Disney's *earned* for some of their acquisitions:

• Marvel - cost: $4 billion.  With over 23 total films (at the time of the article), they've grossed nearly $23 billion at the box office alone
• Lucasfilm - cost: $4 billion. Delivered five films in four years, generating a gross profit of $2 billion
• Pixar - cost: $7.4 billion. Since the purchase, there were 16 films grossing more than $11 billion. Plus add on the uncalculatable value of the early years of John Lassiter turning around Disney Creative (before his work situation thing happened)
• Hulu - cost: $10.5 billion. Helps solidify a streaming audience and recurring revenue
• FOX - cost: $71.3 billion. That Gigantic Library of Content, including the original Star Wars film rights, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Avatar.
  
  https://observer.com/2020/09/disney-buys-star-wars-marvel-fox-hulu-pixar-cost-box-office/

[Shocker]

Disney is an evil empire led by a giant mouse

[PanthersATL]

19 minutes ago, Shocker said:

Disney is an evil empire led by a giant mouse

Back in the late '90's-early 2000's, the Pooh franchise was bringing in more money to Disney than the "Fab Five" (including Mickey) were.

Surveys seemed to back this up, where kids didn't know anything more about Mickey than he "was at the Theme Park". All the work that Walt and company had done to brand Disney as "it all started with a mouse" (aka the Mouseketeers, the Mickey Mouse Club, etc) were seemingly all for naught.

That's what started the big big push to rebrand Mickey and Friends and introduce those characters beyond the theme park appearances while at the same time discounting/minimizing Pooh availability. The Schlesinger merch lawsuit at the same time didn't help matters.

At about the same time, a Disney exec attended a "Disney on Ice" event and saw the audience dressed in generic princess attire. A lightbulb went off, and the Disney Princess merchandise line began.

To me, the Princess moment marked a key pivot for Disney away from "family entertainment" to "let's market towards kids exclusively". With this, Disney proceeded to go down a distinct path away from product/content that would appeal to a wide mass audience with their focus on children. A trip to Walt Disney World used to be a Family Vacation, but now it's "we have to do this for the kids". 

[See also the removal of the fantastically scary Alien Encounter attraction and subsequent replacement with a Stitch overlay, complete with fart smells - as the AE attraction was "too scary for children".  Also, the reworking of "Snow White's Scary Adventures" to "Snow White's Adventures", also because kids shouldn't be "frightened" by an attraction]

LucasFilm and Marvel is one way Disney is trying to loop back to an older audience, but they're running into issues trying to shoehorn everything into an existing park experience vs perhaps finally opening the mythical "fifth gate" at Walt Disney World that would cater towards teens/adults.

[Panther'sBigD]

On 8/22/2021 at 2:12 PM, Inimicus said:

This will be an unpopular opinion (especially with the Star Wars fanboys) but I think Disney has brought a lot to the things of my youth that I loved.

 

I dont have any significant complaint with any of the MCU/Star Wars franchises beyond the fact that it took me 2 different viewings of the Black Widow snore fest to see the whole film

I liked elements of Black Widow, I just wish the writers were better at working 'girl power' into a great script rather than making the whole movie ooze with cheese and smacking viewers over the head with the whole 'girls can do it!' stuff. Reminded me of Kenan's mailman character in Don't Be A Menace:

 

[Brooklyn 3.0]

Disney, Apple, and Amazon should just join forces and make us all mindless robots to do their bidding.

 

I posted that whilst my kid watches D+, on a Mac, and I get an Amazon order today.

[parker]

On 8/22/2021 at 2:12 PM, Inimicus said:

This will be an unpopular opinion (especially with the Star Wars fanboys) but I think Disney has brought a lot to the things of my youth that I loved.

 

I dont have any significant complaint with any of the MCU/Star Wars franchises beyond the fact that it took me 2 different viewings of the Black Widow snore fest to see the whole film

I didn't care for the last two Sequel films.  But the Clone Wars-Rebels-Bad Batch-Mandelorian-Rogue One...that's some of the best Star Wars made after the Empire Strikes Back.  Even Solo was better than I expected.

[Khyber53]

I don't mind that Disney bought up a bunch of stuff because, in truth, they were buying legacy brands that needed to sell and could have gone to companies with less commitment to product and longevity. Look at Marvel --  no one else had the deep wallets to do what they did (basically risking a ton on Ironman -- an unappealing character outside of the Spiderman/Fantastic Four/X-Men realms and believing in rehabbing Robert Downey Jr. and (at that time) relative unknown Jon Favreau). 

Really, just look at how badly other big film companies had screwed up Marvel characters (and DC, too). And Lucasfilm? I think it was showing that George Lucas needed to have the franchise taken off his hands and put into a better place.

But with all of this, it has not reduced the amount of content being created out there. For all the screams of "we will all be sheep watching nothing but Disney properties" there's just more and more and more stuff being created out there. New ideas, new ways of telling stories, new stars in the making. They can keep buying stuff but  we're living in one of the greatest times ever for creative types -- there's a voracious market, there are unlimited outlets and so much money to be made --  either from the big studios, streaming services, and even the  tiny patreon and youtube vehicles.

It's a good time to be alive if you want to be entertained.