Phroobar
Well-Known Member
The movie is the loss leader. It's the IP merchandising (and streaming) where the real money is made.
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Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs
- Thread starter Disney Analyst
- Start date
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Nope, Disney/20th Century finances it through their financing partner TSG Entertainment.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
It’s flagrantly sarcastic comments like these that get misremebered 4-6 months later and get assigned to people who didn’t make them.
Tron and Elio were big flops this year. The Marvel slate was anemic.
As I said, this is the tentpole strategy. They take 10-ish big swings annually and hope to have a grand slam. The trouble is many studios have tried to follow Disney down the rabbit hole and find themselves less successful at it, because they never get their home run, let alone a grand slam. As Disney experienced readily in 2023.
They are pretty happy when three tentpole films connect a year and all the rest isn’t a complete and utter wasteland, that’s a good year for them. They’ll forever be chasing the highs of 2019 when they hit big 7 times. Something I highly doubt we ever see again.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
You know what's funny, TSG's logo is Odysseus shooting an arrow through axes, which is described famously in The Odyssey, but they aren't financing Nolan's movie. Lol.
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
Totally not sarcastic and totally factual.
Disney does consider everything they release as a success no matter how much is made or lost and Disney will probably take the crown for top grossing movie studio in 2025.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Um, you just described the strategy of every studio in Hollywood since at least the 1990s before Iger was even CEO. So if anything Iger is just following the same playbook. Not saying its the right playbook, just saying he didn't invent it or isn't the one to put it into motion first.
And this is how Hollywood is able to finance many smaller movies, off the backs of the tent poles that do well.
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coffeefan
Well-Known Member
coffeefan
Well-Known Member
When Bob Iger’s self stated goal is to produce “product” for consumption, anyone with half a brain cell should be against that. When a studio like Disney took beloved franchises like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Marvel, Pixar, and others and ran them into the ground in search of quick profits I’m going to root against that. When they just churn out slop D+ content, I’m going to be against that. When they spend hundreds of millions on that slop I’m going to be against that.
The question then becomes, why are you for that? Don’t you want better than the expensive crap that has come out? Don’t you want a better cinematic experience?
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
I always find Avatar finances interesting because they’re so muddy.
I’ve read conflicting reports online, I’ve read articles that say the movie is produced and financed by Lightstorm Entertainment (Cameron’s Independent company) and only distributed by Fox, I’ve also read others that say it’s co-produced and distributed by Fox (but doesn’t mention funding), but the TSG website also has it listed as a film they financed.
I seem to remember a similar conversation regarding the last Avatar where the group was trying to figure out who paid for what and how the money was split in the end and that was muddy as well.
Avatar has always been a confusing money situation with who pays for what and how the money gets split up in the end. If I remember correctly TSG even sued Fox over the last film saying they didn’t get paid for some of the tv and distribution deals.
Confusing may be an understatement with this films.
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BrianLo
Well-Known Member
His first post on this thread is from March 2025 telling us he just discovered this thread. But the claim is he's correctly guessed every miss, which I suppose is true if your default position is miss.
Though like I've previously said, I'm judging character not by being wrong (which we all often are because none of us see the future), but how one handles it.
Chi84
Premium Member
Ran out of other threads to criticize Disney. Knowledge of the subject matter is optional.His first post on this thread is from March 2025 telling us he just discovered this thread. But the claim is he's correctly guessed every miss, which I suppose is true if your default position is miss.
Though like I've previously said, I'm judging character not by being wrong (which we all often are because none of us see the future), but how one handles it.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Hollywood financing has always been murky at best. But 20th Century has used many financing companies over the years including TSG, Dune Entertainment, RatPac Entertainment and a few others. Disney has continued using them along with others after the 21st Century acquisition.
But no Cameron as far as I’m aware never financed any of the Avatar movies directly himself but rather invests in the technologies to make them or foregoing salaries and taking backend profit instead. So if you want to say that he spent money making the movies, you’d be partial correct in a sense but the actual production was financed by the studio.
Zootopia 2 iwill be a top 3 movie of the year domestically… maybe top 4 depending on Avatar
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
Indeed. We might be surprised how much Z2 continues to bridge the gap on Moana 2, domestically.
As is, if you completely back China out of Zootopia 1 and Zootopia 2, the latter is only 40M off the former. It still has another 100M+ left in the tank domestically and whatever International minus China brings along. It might even clear 1 billion without China.
TalkingHead
Well-Known Member
Worth noting Way of Water’s Xmas day was the second Sunday (the $29M day).