Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
Yes, which is why brands like Criterion, Shout!, Kino, Indicator, Arrow, Warner Achieve etc still exist
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Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs
- Thread starter Disney Analyst
- Start date
Yes, which is why brands like Criterion, Shout!, Kino, Indicator, Arrow, Warner Achieve etc still exist
Wendy Pleakley
Well-Known Member
You seem to be missing the point that in the scenario I've described the artists are paid. Then, because the movie is a "license" and not "owned", it can be removed and I'm expected to pay them a second time for the exact same content.
Yes, it's technically stealing. We've established that. It would also be an immoral anti-consumer move, and would almost certainly lead to more piracy and less money for artists.
flynnibus
Premium Member
ultraviolet and how many other schemes are lined up at your door to speak with you
Tim Lohr
Well-Known Member
First off, the Disney "successes" you list here (No Way Home, Dr Strange and Avatar) aren't really "Disney's Success". No Way Home & Dr Strange are a products of the Kevin Feige/Marvel Studios creative team, and Avatar is all James Cameron... but there's no "creative center" for The Walt Disney Company anymore.
Disney is basically just a corporate name now, it's a brand of Theme Parks, and Crusie ship, Children's toys and it's something that's traded on The New York Stock Exchange, but it used to be a "creative entity", especially when Walt Disney was alive.
For the first 50 years there was a core team of people who did everything. Of course there's the 9 old Men of Feature Animation, but when Disney branched out into TV and Theme Parks in the 1950's those same animators moved into those new ventures too.
George Bruns, Buddy Baker, and The Sherman Brothers did the music for films, TV shows, and theme Park Rides, and Robert Stevenson directed the majority of the live action films from Johnny Termain and Old Yeller in the late 50's, to Mary Poppins, The Love Bug, Flubber, in the 60's, up to The gy D.A. in the late 70's.
There was a consistency to the what these people did, a similar sensibility to it all, a similar sense of humor, a similar sense of fun, so if you went to a Disney movie, or a Disney Theme Park, or watched a Disney TV show... you knew what to expect. Then people like Glen Keane and John Lasseter carried that consistency onward from the 80's until a decade or so ago, but they're both gone and it's become a mess now
Disney has gone and become the opposite of "consistent", it's this totally fragmented thing trying to be all things to all people. Pixar basically makes a lot of rather expensive "Art House" type of "personal films", which are lovely, "Elemental" is a beautiful film, but "personal films" are not "universal films", they're niche subjects that don't really connect with a mass audience.
For some reason Disney feature animation doesn't want to make musicals anymore, even tough the music helps tell the story quickly and those sequences are an opportunity for the most exciting and experimental animation. "Raya and the Last Dragon" was another really beautiful film, but it could have used some music to move it along a little quicker. Instead of doing it as a musical they were trying to mimic a Jet Li type of martial arts epic like "Hero" in CGI animation.
CGI animation all looks the same, whether it's Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, Illumination, or the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee? it all looks alike, there's nothing distinctive about any of that stuff visually ...but look at Snow White and Pinocchio, then Bambi and Dumbo, then the Mary Blair films of the early 50's Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan, then Eyvind Earle's work on Lady and the Tramp & Sleeping Beauty, and then Ken Anderson who takes over with 101 Dalmatians in the early 60's and stay on til Pete's Dragon... all those movies "look" distinctly different but "feel" the same and the all have great music holding them together. Shutting down "HAND DRAWN" Feature animation was one of the worst mistakes of Bob Iger's tenure, because only Disney could produce those kinds of movies on a regular basis, and all these "live action remakes" seem to be based on the beloved Hand Drawn Animation musicals of the past.
Bob Iger is the guy that fragmented the Walt Disney Company into Star Wars, and Marvel, and Pixar, and Fox, and whatever else, but the last big "Live Action Success" Disney had were the Pirates of the Caribbean films... which were started by Micheal Eisner as CEO.
"Disney" needs to find it's own identity again. The Pirate of the Caribbean films work because they matched the irreverent humor, supernatural fantasy, and special effects wizardry of the ride... John Depp provided the irreverent humor and Jerry Bruckheimer knows how to make big movies that appeal to a broad audience, the same way Walt Disney and Robert Stevenson did. The Pirate films are a 21 century version of the "old fashioned Disney sensibility" ...and that's why they work
Hawkeye_2018
Well-Known Member
wasn't ultraviolet just a free digital copy that came with a disc and not a standalone purchase?ultraviolet and how many other schemes are lined up at your door to speak with you
anyway, I mostly use Apple as I know they aint going anywhere anytime soon
Phroobar
Well-Known Member
What part of your license is over and you don't get to keep it you don't understand?
If you wanted to keep it forever, you should have bought the DVD. The ip owners can do whatever they want with a digital license. This is basically you renting a movie and then copying it.
Wendy Pleakley
Well-Known Member
Yes, but I'm sure some people who prefer digital had an expectation that those copies would endure.
Also worth noting that UltraViolet did allow users to transfer their library to another service before shutting down.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Aside from being a Disney fan forum, we're talking about it because Disney loses huge amounts of money better than the other big studios.
Using the same 60/40 domestic/overseas ticket take and marketing being half the production budget formula we've used for Disney, here's where the Big Four other studios stand now off of their summer movies as of Tuesday, August 1st box office;
Warner Brothers (The Flash -172, Barbie +201) = $29 Million Profit
Universal (Super Mario +456, Fast X -173, Ruby Gilman -80, Oppenheimer +65) = $268 Million Profit (Edited to add Fast X)
Sony (Spider-Verse +250, Insidious +50) = $300 Million Profit
Paramount (Transformers -93, Tom Cruise Is Still Short Part One -182) = $275 Million Loss
Disney (Guardians +57, Mermaid -104, Elemental -113, Indy 5 -274) = $434 Million Loss (Not including Haunted Mansion's losses)
Once Haunted Mansion gets included in the tally, by Labor Day weekend Disney will have lost over half a Billion dollars at the box office this summer. That's a really big problem for them.
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The Numbers - Daily Box Office Chart for Monday July 31, 2023
Daily Domestic Box Office Chart for Monday July 31, 2023
www.the-numbers.com
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Phroobar
Well-Known Member
People can prefer all they want but that isn't how the license is written. The only thing that is guaranteed is the physical copy. When the physical copy doesn't work anymore, you can buy another physical copy. Why would you not want to support your favorite artists?
Disney Irish
Premium Member
I'll let it go man when you let go of your stances on the MCU.....
Disney Irish
Premium Member
You seem to be forgetting some movies like Fast X for Universal, which brings down their totals by at least $100M or more for marketing, etc.Aside from being a Disney fan forum, we're talking about it because Disney loses huge amounts of money better than the other big studios.
Using the same 60/40 domestic/overseas ticket take and marketing being half the production budget formula we've used for Disney, here's where the Big Four other studios stand now off of their summer movies as of Tuesday, August 1st box office;
Warner Brothers (The Flash -172, Barbie +201) = $29 Million Profit
Universal (Super Mario +456, Ruby Gilman -80, Oppenheimer +65) = $441 Million Profit
Sony (Spider-Verse +250, Insidious +50) = $300 Million Profit
Paramount (Transformers -93, Tom Cruise Is Still Short Part One -182) = $275 Million Loss
Disney (Guardians +57, Mermaid -104, Elemental -113, Indy 5 -274) = $434 Million Loss (Not including Haunted Mansion's losses)
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View attachment 735051View attachment 735052View attachment 735055View attachment 735056
Once Haunted Mansion gets included in the tally, by Labor Day weekend Disney will have lost over half a Billion dollars at the box office this summer. That's a really big problem for them.
The Numbers - Daily Box Office Chart for Monday July 31, 2023
Daily Domestic Box Office Chart for Monday July 31, 2023
The only thing I really want to push back on is this.
Disney has always done a mix of musical and non-musical animated features, all with a varying degree of success or failure.
Their most recent biggest success were the musicals. Their next feature is a musical.
And they usually throw in some non-musical in-between.
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TP2000
Well-Known Member
To be honest I just looked at the Top 30 movies playing in theaters as of July 31st. Which means Fast X died in theaters fast this summer.
Let me add Fast X (which I've never heard of until now and assume it's that car racing franchise where the awful dancers perform in that tube for you on the Tram Tour?). I added on a marketing budget of $150 Million to Fast X with its shockingly high production budget.
Warner Brothers (The Flash -172, Barbie +201) = $29 Million Profit
Universal (Super Mario +456, Fast X -173, Ruby Gilman -80, Oppenheimer +65) = $268 Million Profit
Sony (Spider-Verse +250, Insidious +50) = $300 Million Profit
Paramount (Transformers -93, Tom Cruise Is Still Short Part One -182) = $275 Million Loss
Disney (Guardians +57, Mermaid -104, Elemental -113, Indy 5 -274) = $434 Million Loss (Not including Haunted Mansion's losses)
Disney Irish
Premium Member
I just don't see it going away completely and so its still additive to the bottom line, albeit smaller than in decades past.
I have doubts on it getting to the level of effecting the overall market. If it does studios will end up trying to put digital locks on content to prevent piracy. It'll always be a cat and mouse game, but overall its a small subset of content consumption.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
That's the problem, if you only look at the top 30 you don't see all the actual losers for all these other studios. Which makes this whole "analysis" dishonest.
For example Sony lost $80M-100M or so for Knights of the Zodiac, Love Again and No Hard Feelings.
So if you're really going to do this comparison you best get all the data points so it can be seen what all studios are going through, not just Disney vs some cherry picked movies.
This is not to say Disney is performing better or is not have a worse time this year, they are having a worse time, but its about being honest about what is happening to the whole industry.
Jedijax719
Well-Known Member
The issue comes down to price. In most cases, the digital copy is about the same price as the physical copy. It is sometimes a little less due to a slight difference in quality (but not much depending on your TV). So, the assumption is that you are paying about the same price to get the same product from a different means. If it were a long-term "rental" as some are saying, then the price should be different. The other assumption is that while movies and shows can be taken off of streaming services at anytime, movies that you buy digitally and have on Amazon or Moviesanywhere will remain unless something REALLY weird happens. In other words, they aren't going to be removing people's digital purchases the way they remove things from streaming.
Has anyone faced the loss of a digitally purchased movie at the hands of the studio or platform? I didn't think so.
flynnibus
Premium Member
It's not likely ever to go to zero, but it's not likely to be a subject of significance.
The pure digital play along with 'play everywhere' concepts have made it even harder for content providers to lock up their content. Literally the raw video is captured in native formats on the PCs these days because the producers want to let you watch their content on your browser, on your PC, etc.... outside their walled garden that was a hardware media player of the past. The piracy game is so much more mainstream now than it was 20yrs ago because it's been made consumer level. Literally type in a name, click, and stream live.
The reason you don't hear so much about it today is because the paid options were so cheap in the 'lure in new subs' phase. For $5-$10 a month most people will just stay the clean path because they avoid guilt, it's working, and the cost is negligible (How iTunes won over pirates).
Make the cost non-negligible... and you will see much larger swaths of people turn to piracy... who has refined their toolset all along and is ready to take people in. Unlike 'invite only' or trading sites of the previous warez generations.
So as studios ramp up trying to monetize more and more... they will push people right into the darkness of piracy. Which is bone head simple these days... the only real barrier is people needing to use a VPN.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Some form of piracy will always be there, as I said a cat and mouse game. Just in my opinion it won't become this huge issue that you're prophesying to happen upon rising costs. I also suspect studios will try to find a way to lock content down as much as possible if it become a larger issue.
But we'll see....