News Disney’s Boy Trouble: Studio Seeks Original IP to Win Back Gen-Z Men Amid Marvel, Lucasfilm Struggles

[HMF]

My theory is Disney forgot what young men dream of being…having a light saber, having powers, and saving the Princess is what young men dream of, or being invincible, muscle clad, and defeating the bad guys, that’s what young men dream of, or being a spy with cool gadgets, who women fawn over while he saves the world, that’s what young men dream of, or being an adventurer who visits exotic places solving mysteries while defeating the bad guys… I think young men dream of being the idealized “man”… strong, handsome, rich, funny, smart, appealing to the ladies…

Disneys image of what young men dream of being is Pedro Pascal, I’d argue they dream of being Chris Helmsworth.

To be fair the concept of what men want vs what women want is not really a legitimate argument these days seeing as how a lot of younger people have moved on beyond the concept of "gender roles"

 

[McMickeyWorld]

I'm curious to see what kind of projects they'll come up with. I'm Gen z, but I feel like I know nothing about the audience they're aiming for. Should be interesting to watch their attempts.

 

[McMickeyWorld]

To be fair the concept of what men want vs what women want is not really a legitimate argument these days seeing as how a lot of younger people have moved on beyond the concept of "gender roles"

I wouldn't say for sure, probably 50/50, depends on who you ask.

 

[Basil of Baker Street]

Feels they no longer aim at anyone. Maybe that's been their problem. Everyone feels excluded.

 

[CaptinEO]

It's dumb for Disney to think that purchasing Marvel and Star Wars meant they had captured the male market forever.

Like all things the interest in them ebb and flow. Marvel and Star Wars won't always have a huge draw and their 2010s resurgence is overdone and people are no longer interested.

The company was stupid enough in that timeframe to dedicate way too much square footage for these properties into each of the parks.

Now a third of Disneyland and Hollywood Studios are landlocked as Star Wars with most of its space being not utilized/decorative. Disney is actively making their Avengers ride in DCA that was supposed to open in 2021. They are betting on two new Avengers movies and a Mandalorian Movie.

Everyone called it that when Disney purchased Marvel and Star Wars they would milk them to death and it absolutely happened.

Kids now are more into memes and events than anything, and we shouldn't expect every generation to like the same thing the past generation did.

Disney needs to once again be a content house making new films/shows with new ideas that capture a generation.

 

[brb1006]

This isn't something new. Disney has always had "trouble" with the "boy" crowd, so to speak. It's baked into their DNA as a company in tandem with how Americans socialize their young men. Even more man-friendly subject matter from Disney like Aladdin or Hercules is offputting to a lot of young guys due to being fantasy. Buying Marvel and Star Wars was meant to offset that, and it's clearly wearing off.

I don't know what the solution is, but I think the inevitable framing of "yeah the company SUCKS now" doesn't hit the mark. A lot of younger people I know do have a fondness for Disney, even if it's definitely nowhere near as strong a brand as it is with Gen X and millennials. The thing that Gen Z and Alpha are super passionate about? Anime and video games (both the games themselves and streamers), two things Disney avoids like the plague. And call me a skeptic, but I don't think investing in Fortnite is gonna be enough.

A band-aid fix (keyword, band-aid), parkside, would be a Ghibli ride in Japan at Epcot, and since they let Nintendo slip through their fingers, do something with Kingdom Hearts or Sonic the Hedgehog at Studios and/or DCA. But longer term, they either need to figure out how to shore up what they were good at and made them an American staple (media for little kids, young ladies, single older adults, and families) while not trying to capture "all quadrants", or actually break into the young guy market with something truly original.

Too bad Disney's relationship with Ghibli ended years ago. Recently, Studio Ghibli opened "Ghibli Park" in Japan (emphasis on "Park").

As for Disney's relationship with anime and manga, there were a couple Japanese manga based on Disney Films that was made for Japanese Disney fans. Such as The Aristocats manga "Miriya & Marie" from 2008 and the recent Three Caballeros manga. The only Disney Animated Film to gain an anime adaptation is Lilo and Stitch.

 

[brb1006]

My answer would be that for a time, it was both

The fabled "Disney Renaissance" was also when they had market dominance in animation, family movies and theme parks

What were the alternatives then, pre Pixar and Dreamworks? Imitation Disney movies from Don Bluth and others. The success of Disney (and The Simpsons on TV) led to a mad spending by studios to crank out as much content as possible for TV and theaters, but it took a while for those to hit their stride.

Theme Parks? Disney was tops. Universal wanted to be at the same league, but struggled mightily. Vegas briefly wanted in on the same demographic. Six Flags rapidly expanded, but was the cheap alternative.

That kind of untouchable feeling is what led to Disney's hubris, but it wasn't without justification.

But it's amazing what a hard line the year 2000 was. If you were a kid in the 90s, Disney was special. The 2000s? Not so much.

Interestingly enough, around the same period as the Disney Renaissance. The Looney Tunes actually gained a huge resurge in popularity with the general public for the entire 1990s decade. Even before the success of Space Jam, you couldn't escape seeing anything Looney Tunes during that period. Warner Brothers actually started making newer animated Looney Tunes (including occasional direct-to-video movies) and spinoff material to keep the general public interested in them.

As a kid, I remember seeing tons of young girls and women owning anything featuring Tweety Bird while boys and young men would seek out stuff featuring either Daffy, Bugs, or any male Looney Tunes star during my school days. I vividly remember Disney started making baby merchandise showing Mickey and his friends as infants. Warner Bros took notice and started merchandise starring the Looney Tunes characters as babies called "Baby Looney Tunes" in the late 90s before gaining an animated series in 2003.

Not to mention, Six Flags during that period were trying as hard as they could to rivaling Disney in terms of entertainment and guest satisfaction.

Once the 2003 feature film "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" bombed at the box office in 2003. Warner Bros decided to slowly not prioritize the Looney Tunes characters in media. It's hard to believe there was a point in time when the Looney Tunes shared the same amount of public interest as Disney did with their films and characters.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

Interestingly enough, around the same period as the Disney Renaissance. The Looney Tunes actually gained a huge resurge in popularity with the general public for the entire 1990s decade. Even before the success of Space Jam, you couldn't escape seeing anything Looney Tunes during that period. Warner Brothers actually started making newer animated Looney Tunes (including occasional direct-to-video movies) and spinoff material to keep the general public interested in them.

Warner Bros stores in malls helped to fuel this interest too

 

[Disney Irish]

Too bad Disney's relationship with Ghibli ended years ago. Recently, Studio Ghibli opened "Ghibli Park" in Japan (emphasis on "Park").

As for Disney's relationship with anime and manga, there were a couple Japanese manga based on Disney Films that was made for Japanese Disney fans. Such as The Aristocats manga "Miriya & Marie" from 2008 and the recent Three Caballeros manga. The only Disney Animated Film to gain an anime adaptation is Lilo and Stitch.

Disney recently released several Star Wars manga and anime's including Star Wars: Visions series on D+ as well as a manga version of Mandolarian. Both have been pretty well received, and Visions is on their 3rd season coming out in October.

 

[brb1006]

As the father of young boys, I suspect a lot of this has to do with changes of media consumption. Video games and YouTube or the random mobile game are far more prevalent in their consumption habits than conventional TV. Movies still have a solid footing here, so that doesn’t completely explain it.

I think a bigger issue is Disney’s desire to expand its properties into more four-quadrant ones. There was a decided push to make conventional “boys” IPs like Marvel and Star Wars more palatable and marketable to girls/women. I don’t know if that push was successful but it seems to have lost the attention of its original core audience.

Before Disney brought Star Wars and Marvel, they actually attempted making merchandise aimed at the boy demographic called "Disney Heroes" initially known as "Disney Adventurers".

For those who don't know about Disney Heroes. Right after Disney created the "Disney Princess" franchise in the early 2000s. They decided to launch a male counterpart called "Disney Heroes" that focused on Disney films and Disney characters that had male protagonists (such as King Arthur and Merlin, Robin Hood, and Peter Pan) that was extremely short-lived. Disney only sold a small amount of figures and sold poorly.

I vividly remember seeing the "Disney Heroes" brand at my local Disney Store in the early 2000s.

In 2018, Disney considered on launching a new franchise similar to the Disney Princess brand called "Disney Animals". The brand focused on Disney Films and characters that focused heavily on animal characters. This time, it was aimed at the unisex demographic (aimed at both young boys and girls) and focused on characters from Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, Bambi, and The Aristocats.

Disney Animals was first announced at "Rendez-vous Des Partenaires" (aka RDVDisney) conference in France by Sarah Cohen aiming for a 2019 release. As of 2025, Disney has remained radio silent on the Disney Animals concept.

Huge shame because as an animal lover who preferred Disney Animals over Princesses. I would have loved the new Disney Franchise/Brand since I actually knew both young boys and girls who strongly loved and preferred Disney Movies centered on Talking Animals over Princesses during my childhood and school days.

The 101 Dalmatians and Winnie the Pooh franchises proves that both genders love Disney works that are animal focused. Heck, Disney deeply considered on turning The Aristocats into its own franchise similar to 101 Dalmatians due to Marie's sudden popularity that occurred in the mid to late 1990s/early 2000s. You would think Disney would deeply consider this during the 90s/2000s before prioritizing Star Wars and Marvel. But they fail to notice the untapped potential on making a brand focused on Disney Animal Characters that appeal to both genders. Disney Animals would been the perfect opportunity for the public to get more interested in older Disney Animal characters and films.

 

[Smugpugmug]

Warner Bros took notice and started merchandise starring the Looney Tunes characters as babies called "Baby Looney Tunes" in the late 90s before gaining an animated series in 2003.

Every Gen Z kid remembers Baby Looney Tunes as being the "home sick from school" show. That's the only way anyone saw it LOL

 

[brb1006]

Warner Bros stores in malls helped to fuel this interest too

Boy was the Warner Bros Studio Store expansive. While much pricey compared to the Disney Store, I loved how they actually themed their own stores to specific locations. Such as the New York location having Bugs Bunny as the statue of liberty.

 

[BlakeW39]

Woah. This is crazy. I cannot imagine why young men, of all demographics, would have not resonated with Disney's recent content. This is truly puzzling!

 

[BlakeW39]

By the way: video games are generally a higher-investment type of content than movies. They are frequently 12-100+ hour experiences with a deep focus on progression. They also take longer to make and so go longer between installments. So "shortening attention spans" doesn't explain why Marvel or Star Wars movies are struggling. Because other types of content that demand more focused attention are not failing in the same way.

At the end of the day, all these IPs have been egregiously mismanaged, by people who don't like or understand them. Hence why Japanese manga is also surpassing American comics and anime is surpassing superhero adaptations.

 

[networkpro]

To be fair the concept of what men want vs what women want is not really a legitimate argument these days seeing as how a lot of younger people have moved on beyond the concept of "gender roles"

I would say that may be more of a regional thing than you might like.

 

[TP2000]

Disney’s Boy Trouble: Studio Seeks Original IP to Win Back Gen-Z Men Amid Marvel, Lucasfilm Struggles

As Marvel and Lucasfilm stumble, Disney hopes originals will lure Gen Z audiences.

variety.com

Interesting article on Disney movies / new IP. My impression is that there has been a cultural shift from classic narrative formats, where Disney generally excels, to bite sized, frenetic meme culture and various gamescapes.

What?!? Burbank has a problem with its new content resonating with boys and young men?!? I'm shocked!!!

Disney spent $5.7 Billion ($4 Billion in 2012) to buy Lucasfilm and the Golden Goose of the Star Wars universe, and then handed it off to this wise elderly lady and her galpals in HR to guide the Star Wars world forward for decades to come...

Disney spent $6 Billion ($4 Billion in 2009) to buy Marvel and recently has been spending $250 Million or more per movie to create stuff like this to "lighten and brighten" (in the immortal words of Alissa Heinerscheid, former VP of Bud Lite) the Marvel universe of characters...

Meanwhile, the mega-budgets and army of storytelling "experts" at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, with a lot of help from those HR ladies again, were entertaining those teenage boys little brothers with stuff like this...

And after all that storytelling success, and lots of input from "experts" living in Los Angeles (with a weekly standing Sunday brunch date in Silver Lake), the approximately 23 million males under age 25 in the USA, and many more overseas, are staying away from Burbank's flagship studio releases by traditionally male-dominated studios and storytellers?!?

I am absolutely shocked by this! There must be some clerical error somewhere in the data. It's impossible that young men and boys don't want to flock to these stories the new crop of "experts" and executives are approving and producing!

SHOCKED!

 

[Nirya]

By the way: video games are generally a higher-investment type of content than movies. They are frequently 12-100+ hour experiences with a deep focus on progression. They also take longer to make and so go longer between installments. So "shortening attention spans" doesn't explain why Marvel or Star Wars movies are struggling. Because other types of content that demand more focused attention are not failing in the same way.

At the end of the day, all these IPs have been egregiously mismanaged, by people who don't like or understand them. Hence why Japanese manga is also surpassing American comics and anime is surpassing superhero adaptations.

Gen Z ain't playing story-based stuff. They're playing Fortnite and FIFA and CoD, games that have no story (lol if you think people are touching story mode in a CoD game) but allow them to jump in and start playing whenever they have free time. Most of the most popular games either release a new version every year or are constantly updating. It's millennials who are more apt to play a story-based game like a God of War or Last of Us.

Also, tell me you don't know about manga without telling me you don't know about manga. Manga is popular because of the sheer volume of it, both from numbers and genres available. It is popular because it is coming out constantly and if you start a series that turns out to be bad, you can simply switch to something else. And I think most manga and anime fans can tell you exactly how mismanaged their favorite IP are. Shonen Jump is notorious for mismanaging their brands and milking the cow for as long as possible.

 

[AdventureHasAName]

The smart move is to buy a toy company, preferably Hasbro. It would allow Disney to manufacture their own toys and it would open up a bunch more boy-centric intellectual property. Hasbro gives them GI Joe, Transformers, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, Nerf, My Little Pony, as well as, a ton of board games with brand recognition (Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Twister, Clue, Candy Land, Operation). Short of buying Warner Brothers, it is the best avenue they have available to increase their IP library.

 

[Mike S]

I think a bigger issue is Disney’s desire to expand its properties into more four-quadrant ones. There was a decided push to make conventional “boys” IPs like Marvel and Star Wars more palatable and marketable to girls/women. I don’t know if that push was successful but it seems to have lost the attention of its original core audience.

I find it sad that it took until page 2 for someone to finally make this point. Ignoring the elephant in the room much?

The smart move is to buy a toy company, preferably Hasbro. It would allow Disney to manufacture their own toys and it would open up a bunch more boy-centric intellectual property. Hasbro gives them GI Joe, Transformers, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, Nerf, My Little Pony, as well as, a ton of board games with brand recognition (Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Twister, Clue, Candy Land, Operation). Short of buying Warner Brothers, it is the best avenue they have available to increase their IP library.

And whatever appeal those franchises have to boys would be “fixed” shortly after Disney got their hands on it. The way to fix their “boy problem” is simple: fire everyone that thinks what they did overall with LucasFilm and Marvel was good. There were a few successes but the whole of it looking back was way more bad than good though with Marvel the issues only really started after Endgame.

 

[BlakeW39]

Gen Z ain't playing story-based stuff. They're playing Fortnite and FIFA and CoD, games that have no story (lol if you think people are touching story mode in a CoD game) but allow them to jump in and start playing whenever they have free time. Most of the most popular games either release a new version every year or are constantly updating. It's millennials who are more apt to play a story-based game like a God of War or Last of Us.

Also, tell me you don't know about manga without telling me you don't know about manga. Manga is popular because of the sheer volume of it, both from numbers and genres available. It is popular because it is coming out constantly and if you start a series that turns out to be bad, you can simply switch to something else. And I think most manga and anime fans can tell you exactly how mismanaged their favorite IP are. Shonen Jump is notorious for mismanaging their brands and milking the cow for as long as possible.

First of all, read more carefully. I did not mention story in my comment. I mentioned "progression." Which would include games that do not have a focus on narrative.

But either way, you're not correct.

For example: https://www.lab42.com/blog/genz-gam... to play,strongly prefer Action/Fighter games.

While Gen Z does spend much of its time with PvP shooters, it is misinterpretive to take that as evidence that they don't spend time with narrative driven games.

And, for manga... you are also incorrect. Manga is not just popular through its "sheer volume," that is obviously untrue because even when we control for that variable, single issues sell much better that they do in comics. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of manga and anime, I know those IPs have been mistreated. But not to the extent of American comic books. The American comic book industry has been on decline for more than 30 years.