Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M.
It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.
Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget.
They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs.
You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)
It's hard to make anything at the box office when it was barely released to theaters[1]. Wikipedia says it ended up in three US theaters, some theaters in the UK and 12 overseas markets without Disney+. Otherwise, direct to streaming and discs.
[1] https://deadline.com/2022/01/turning-red-skips-theaters-disn...
You can drop it from the data set and it doesn't change the argument, though. Disney's been dropping some impressive flops lately.
Favorites in our place with the kids are Cars and Planes (though more Cars lately). We're on an old musicals kick lately, and it's just fun watching some of the big budget musicals from the 60s - when they wanted to get a whole street of people dancing, they went out and got a bunch of people trained to dance in the street. They also were a good bit longer, and generally had more room to breathe. The story didn't feel rushed at the end like a lot of the more modern one do (Encanto is a particular offender here, as far as I'm concerned).
Anymore, we'll just wait for them to hit streaming. As GP mentioned, the latest movies just haven't seemed very good. Not up to par with the likes of Moana and Frozen, at least.
But I think some wonderful movies have been made in the last ten years, most notably Encanto and Turning Red. They're both massive successes, and I think they are in many ways better than those movies I grew up with.
Not to mention Frozen, Moana, Inside Out, etc. These are all wonderful movies.
(Ratatouille is also great, btw, don't get me wrong!)
Didn’t take my kids to see any of these, haven’t streamed them.
Before 2020 we probably saw every Disney and Pixar animation movie since 2012 with our kids. Some of them multiple times - Inside Out was genius, and I still hum Moana to myself.
We had zero interest in these movies from the trailers, and once we learned they would come with great big ice cream scoops of propaganda and eye-rolling allegory it was easy to say “no thanks” and keep our money.
Is that new for Disney? Or is it just you don't like the current flavor of propaganda and allegory?
Disney, as a company, is in the middle of a mutation. The traditional block buster is dead, part of that is restructuring the company behind a new production and distribution process.
Disney just isn't making good movies anymore.
1. Budgets tend to not include marketing which are all over the place - big movies TEND to have a marketing budget of almost the same magnitude as the filming budget
2. But at the same time, movie theaters keep half of the box office gross.
So in the worst case, a movie needs to make FOUR times it's "budget" to be profitable.
But movies keep making money after the initial box office - either on home media, or streaming, though exactly how studios attribute individual streams to revenue from a monthly subscription is opaque and impossible to uncover.
By and large though, you're probably right - all 3 of these are failures.
Also, movie theaters don't get half the box office gross. For big budget films, the distributor gets a declining share of ticket sales, starting with 90% for major films (Marvel, Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible, anything by James Cameron), and declining each week down to a low of about 10% after 2-3 months (depending on the specific contract between the distributor and the theater). This is a large part of why studios are now so focused on first-weekend gross: it's also their most profitable weekend.
Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Up, Inside Out, and Soul were all written and/or Directed by Pete Doctor.
Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, and Wall-E were written and directed by Andrew Stanton.
There are multiple writing and directing credits on all of their films, but these two have writing and directing credits on almost all of the great original ones.
One thing I have noticed is some of the more recent Pixar movies don't feel like Pixar movies at all. They feel like Disney movies: Lot's of musical numbers, a lot more slap stick and silly, more cheap laughs. Have to wonder if Disney has been asserting too much influence on the company.
Which Pixar movies had lots of musical numbers? Of the ones I've seen (all but Lightyear) I only recall zero to three (depending on what counts as a musical number) that I'd count as having musical numbers. Have I forgotten some?
"Turning Red" had a some scenes where characters were singing, but they were singing for in-universe purposes. When I think of musicals what comes to mind is shows where the singing is not for an in-universe purpose.
Similar for "Soul" and "Coco". They had main characters that were struggling musicians and their music played a major part in their lives. All the music I recall in those was in that context (although it has been a long time since I've seen "Coco" so I could have forgotten music that was not in-universe.
Disney didn't brag about the viewing numbers for either Strange World or Lightyear, so those films didn't appear to do well in theaters or streaming.
That suggests that people did in fact want to see it.
The fact that the entire narrative arc depends on it being a sequel makes it even more impressive.
Disney just released Avatar Way of Water which made $2.3B at the global box office and became the third highest grossing movie of all time.
To be fair to the parent commenter, however, "Disney is making movies nobody wants to see," (the converse of the actual statement) seems like a less controversial statement which may be closer to their intended meaning.
[0] https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinemati...
I can't completely discount what you're saying, since I have no interest in Lightyear (the toy from Toy Story, but it's not a toy? Why?) or Strange World (it looks fine, but their ads didn't make very clear anything about it).
But I will say that Turning Red was wonderful, and my family has happily watched that a number of times. Not surprised it flopped in the theater, though, given I didn't even know it was in the theaters. As far as I'm concerned it went straight to Disney+, like Pixar's previous 3 movies. It's been one of my favorite things about the service.
Turning Red was surely a hit on Disney+. Hard to see from the consumer side what the impact was, but disney+ is a money machine and the can easily double the price.
The very same Disney Plus that lost 2.4M subscribers in Q1[0]?
That doesn't seem like "You could easily double the price" sort of performance. They still have plenty of subscribers, but they're not going "up and to the right" on the subscriber graph anymore.
It's hard to make the case that Disney is doing anything but "dropping flops on a public that doesn't want to see them."
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/disney-q1-2023-earnings/
...
"due to higher content and technology costs at Disney+ (with higher average costs per hour of programming, which included an increased mix of originals) as well as higher content costs and lower ad revenue at Hulu"
Not exactly the money machine I was envisioning!
If you were to show this movie in China and tell us that it praised the Chinese people and culture, I'd say you're being insulting
You would choose a cartoon over your kids?
:)
Maybe the authorities chase after some of the cases, but as far as I can tell the status quo remains sketchy AF.
Same with Star Wars... They are killing their golden gooses
Various sub-entities of the parent (Disney) charging each other service fees to jack up production costs and lower profit (and therefore tax obligations).
As for Strange World, it was widely observed that Disney didn't give it any marketing push and a majority of people weren't even aware of its existence. To me, the main reason is that Disney doesn't bother to hype up movies that they don't really believe in. Strange World was one such film, a WDAS movie that isn't a fairytale or a musical (and isn't safe from the kind of conservative hate campaigns that Disney tends to avoid). Disney has a long history of letting their studios make films outside of the cookie cutter but release them with little fanfare. They can now easily be written off as Disney+ fodder.
Disney absolutely still relies on their animation studios for blockbusters, but they've noticed which formula works best for each. Pixar is never as successful as when it does sequels. WDAS routinely hits the 1 billion mark when it makes new additions to their fairytale canon, or bombastic musicals (see Encanto's massive success). It's no surprise then that they're now pushing WDAS, a notoriously sequel-averse studio, into making a third Frozen and a second Zootopia, and that a _fifth_ Toy Story is suddenly in the works at Pixar alongside... Inside Out 2. Any other project is bound to get buried in the release schedule or dumped on Disney+.
So what kind of movies are core to Disney's strategy? Star Wars is on a kind of hiatus and lives on Disney+. We have Marvel of course, which isn't in the healthiest state but still produces frequent hits. Avatar is now a big one. Any animated movie that fits their preferred formula. And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark, and I've no doubt that their lifeless Little Mermaid clone will do the same. I think Disney is now suffering from the same "we grew too big, too quick" realization as every other tech and entertainment giant, and they're definitely reeling from a few recent failures, but I wouldn't use Strange World or Turning Red as the poster children of their troubles; they never bet much on those anyway.
Unfortunately, when Disney makes the most bland and forgettable nostalgia bait, they still make the "movies people want to see".
(Apologies for the wall of text, I've had thoughts about the state of Disney for a while!)
Live action Aladdin was surprisingly good—it was best went they stepped away from the original animated movie, and switched to remaking Hitch.
Mandalorian is pretty good, Star wars: Andor was the best Star Wars I've seen in a while. I guess a lot of people missed out on Andor given that almost everything Star wars has been mostly crap.
I think part of the explanation for your list involves the fact that people don't like movies that much anymore.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/business/disney-earnings/inde...
For the people at Disney wondering whether they'll get hit in one of the waves of indiscriminate axe swings, sounds less like the happiest place on earth, and more like the anxiety and stress of living under a wicked stepmother.
For instance, they used to have unpaid interns do full days at theme parks in-character and people would fly all the way from Australia for that privilege because, you know, you get to be Peter Pan for a summer.
It's sort of the same experience as Amazon. If you're a customer, it's the greatest thing ever. If you're an employee, not so much.
Want to hear one even crazier than this? I literally have to PAY a company in order to go there and move heavy weights around to the point of exhaustion. Insanity.
I shouldn't have to pay extra so my kids don't get treated like trash (let people skip in front of them in line, removing them from their seat when someone with a special badge shows up, etc...) on a "dream" vacation.
The disease? Disney is out of touch with it's customer base.
if somebody was willing to pay more than you as a customer to get said special badge (which caused your kid to get removed from their cheaper seat), isn't Disney in tune with its customers?
request from privileged customer: "we want to pay more for a better, more privileged experience"
offering from disney: exactly what the request wants, for more money/profit
you might not agree with it because you're in the "i don't want to pay the more expensive premium" camp (which, granted, most people would be). it's just... that doesn't matter when you are competing/have those who are willing to pay the premium on top of what you're willing to pay, does it?
they're running an experiences business and they've been able to find customers who are willing to pay more (than you)
The person who wants their experience to be better by making other customer have a bad experience is a customer to be avoided. They cannibalize your market.
> (than you)
Not impressed with this attempt at trolling.
I can't imagine them getting political with Ron Desantis helped at all, he's extremely popular in Florida.
Thinking about the Pixar brand, I still the remember the first I thought Pixar isn't as good anymore was with Brave. I also remember being surprised a large amount of the original Pixar teams left to Dreamworks or other places.
I expect Bog Iger was brought in as a Hatchet Man, he already fired Victoria Alonso an executive with disney for 17 years rumored to be behind marvel phase 4 and 5 failures.
That being said, how on Earth has Disney managed to screw up 10 years of Marvel success? They spread themselves too thin trying to create too many shows without proper planning. And that's only focusing on Marvel. They also managed to piss people off with their half-assed Star Wars trilogy, to the point that you can clearly perceive directors going into different and incompatible paths for films that should build on the predecessor.
Edit: They should be two franchises that print money, but instead we get the current headlines.
Savage.
The truth is the only acceptable way to perform a layoff is to not need to perform a layoff, be it more profit or not over expanding. Though as a warning, there will be upset if the company doesn't expand fast enough or doesn't invest the profit too. If reality hits it's a matter of avoiding ways of doing it which are worse not finding a way everyone is going to agree was a great way to get rid of a bunch of jobs.
I think layoffs leave a bad taste in the mouth because they seem to suggest that some employees weren't necessary. If you aren't cutting programs or products, you are either saying some employees did nothing, or the remaining employees will shoulder more work for the same pay.
I wonder: if layoffs were accompanied by a list of programs/products that are being sunset, if it would be more palatable.
Layoff is not a verb.
https://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/verbing-weirds-langu...
There's no motivation to verbify "layoff", since the verb version already exists and is very close ("lay off").
"Disney Fires 7000 People."
Not "Lays off," "Let go," "Set free to chase their dreams," or whatever other euphemism you care to find. "Fired" is the word, and it's a perfectly good one to use, unless you're a PR flunky trying to tiptoe and weasel word around what just happened.
This sort of MBA-logic, algorithmic approach to business is why American corporate life is so terrible.
Let's see some vision and leadership for a change. Instead, we get endless cycles of resume-padding for management and scapegoating for the people creating the business value.
If there was a better way to do things companies would be doing it.
Sometimes a layoff is necessary, but we have gotten to a point where it’s just a normalized no foul action that actually raises stock prices instead of being seen as a failure of leadership.
Maybe Disney couldn’t prevent these layoffs. I don’t really think that their current struggle with DeSantis is what’s behind this.
For the record, they had a profitable year last year ($28 billion profit), and the year before that.
People keep talking about layoffs like they are no big deal and people just have a bad week or two and then have another job and everything is just fine. We’re talking about a country where people’s healthcare is tied to their employer. Where many people are living paycheck to paycheck or don’t have savings enough to whether a prolonged unemployment.
People really need to stop acting like layoffs are no big thing and we should all just accept them without complaint as seasonal inconveniences.
Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of all the money that just got made by treating employees as disposable.
Any profit-driven company would literally feed its employees into a meat grinder if it were not illegal and it made the stock price or valuation go up. "Ethical" concerns that don't increase profit might not as well exist.
Imagine if it were reversed.
In that environment you strike and demand higher wages. If you don't demand better wages in good times you won't have a decent salary in bad times.
They aren't "leaving". Have the guts to stand by what you have actually done or the shame to remain silent.
That's right, as much as it pains us to say it, we've got to do what's best for our company and that means making some tough decisions. So, if you hear from your manager that you're part of the first round of layoffs, please know that we're thinking of you and wishing you all the best.
But don't you worry, because Disney is still going to be the most magical place on earth! We're going to keep bringing joy and happiness to all of our guests, and we know that our remaining cast members will continue to make dreams come true.
So, let's all stick together and keep that Disney spirit alive. We may be going through some changes, but we'll always be a family. Thanks for all you do, and keep on smiling!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-igers-layoff-1...
