Disney’s Mufasa - the lion king

[Disney Irish]

100%. The vast majority of players and coaches are, unless I win, it's a failure. I played competitive sports my whole life and I'm exactly the same way. If you think for a second I'm loosing pictionary, think again. If we're playing something, it's on. But we haven't been talking about players and coaches. We've been talking about the people running the show, the owners, not the players. I'd definitely say the director and actors in Mufasa think it's a big success.

I think you're being shortsighted if you don't think the owners aren't "all in Super Bowl or bust" too as that only makes them more money. Not only that but they are competitive just as much as the coaches and players and other team management. If you don't think the owners give each other a hard time at the owners meetings regarding wins and losses, then you don't know how rich people think.

But we've dragged this on long enough.

That's my point, I don't. I'm going by how businesses think. Every company I've worked for, how Disney values profit over guest experience, the stock market in general, all help form my opinion. But I make it pretty clear it's my opinion based on what I've seen.

It's a movie that made 1.6bill. that's why they are green lighting a 3rd. As I've said, the 2nd didn't hurt them. So does that factor in? Of course. But you still have a core film that made buttloads of cash. That's the motivation in my opinion.

I don't think they thought it would do lion king 2019 money though. Like I said 800 to 900 was probably realistic.

Disney I'm sure would have loved for this movie to make $1B+, or even $800 or 900M like you said. But your opinion if I understood it correctly was they just think this is a "Geez we dodged a bullet with that one" type of neutral result. And I can't just see that as being what they see when looking at a almost $700M (as of this weekend) WW take for this movie. I don't care what the original expectations were in 2020 when they announced this movie, we're talking about now 4+ years later and after the last few years of the box office, ie expectations changed. The landscape has changed, expectations have been reset back to more normal levels within Hollywood and certainly within the walls of Burbank. You're comparing it to 2019 results, which as we've seen by and large aren't coming again, so I don't see why you're of the opinion that Disney expected the same type of result in 2024/2025 after the dismal couple years they had.

Anyways we've gone on about this long enough too. So lets just agree to disagree on this one too.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Lack of comp???… there were a ton of family movies in the marketplace over the holidays including Disney’s own Moana

Yeah…not really

Another Disney title and sonic…which isn’t exactly the same demo

 

[Agent H]

Yeah…not really

Another Disney title and sonic…which isn’t exactly the same demo

What about wicked?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

What about wicked?

Yeah…forgot about that one

Very true

The movie slate really for the last year seem “light”…for whatever reason…maybe that’s just a perception

 

[BrianLo]

What the former made is a disappointment, I’m sure. But we’re getting fairly fixated on a singular (and pretty much only) metric that the company would be disappointed about. The company is sitting on not just recent follow up misses, but has a long baked in Through the Looking glass comp. Certainly not an impossibility no one considered as it was approved and certainly increasingly top of their mind after 2023.

Overall, one negative doesn’t negate the laundry list of positives. I suspect we’ll get an answer in the next quarterly when it is specifically called out as a positive. The movie will probably hit hot on D+ given the leggy halo it has. I actually suspect “Brother“ will have some mild protracted shelf life in the parks. Which “technically” the 1.6B one never did. Of course the movie still made more than just breaking even, this forum always minimizes the back end. Not to mention I think there’s a lot of consensus people really, really don’t think positively of the one that made more money. It didn’t leave a good lasting impression on the zeitgeist.

These are all things that move us beyond neutral. And if this wasn’t a Disney company production, sequels 3/4/5 would be approved with these numbers.

Said a final way, there’s a lot of variety in linguistics I’d use between neutral and blew the doors off that the first one did.