Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs

[LittleBuford]

The money comes from the taxes Disney paid to the UK Government, ie its Disney's money. Its basically a tax refund, no different than you getting a refund back on the taxes you paid to the US Government.

He understands very well. He also knows that it’s something any eligible production company can benefit from, even as he continues to frame it as some special and sneaky favour to Disney.

It’s called Genteel Trolling, and we would all do well not to fuel it (I’m advising myself as much as I am you).

 

[TP2000]

So, a total loss in 2023 of One Billion Two Hundred And Forty Eight Million.

That's at least three or four brand new E Tickets, plus a couple night parades.

We can quibble about $55 Million lovegifts from the British treasury, and pretend that Poor Things is going to start playing in more than its 800 theaters next weekend, but it's still over a Billion Dollar loss from Disney's movie studios in 2023.

This is likely the year Burbank will never forget, even though they want to. What happens in 2024 because of this? Layoffs? Massive restructuring? Shutting down Pixar's Emeryville campus and merging it with WDAS? An artistic rethink of everything they've been doing the past few years? Or just stick their head in the sand and pretend that Golden Globe nominations have actual monetary value?

Should be fun to watch in 2024, that's for sure. They've got nothing new coming out anytime soon, after they scrapped Snow White and sent it back to the drawing board to add back the dwarves with CGI.

 

[Prince-1]

He understands very well. He also knows that it’s something any eligible production company can benefit from, even as he continues to frame it as some special and sneaky favour to Disney.

It’s called Genteel Trolling, and we would all do well not to fuel it (I’m advising myself as much as I am you).

Hey he also knows that TLM made money but refuses to admit it. Some people like living in their weird little world where facts mean nothing.

 

[wtyy21]

Okay, gang, have we all recovered from last night?

I have. Sort of.

So while we all rehydrate, here is the 2023 Box Office Final Tally for The Walt Disney Company. In total, in 2023 Disney lost a total $1.284 Billion (with a B) from its 15 different movies released this past year via its stable of seven different studios.

At the global box office, the only film to make money for Disney in 2023 was Guardians 3, which had a net profit of $60 Million. Every single other movie from a Disney owned studio lost money.

In no particular order here are those studios and their films, using the format of production and marketing budgets combined, with 60% of the domestic box office take and 40% of the overseas box office take, equating to a profit or loss. All figures are in Millions of Dollars

Marvel Studios = $234 Million Loss
Ant Man: $200 Production/$100 Marketing, $129 Domestic, $100 Overseas = $71 Million Loss
Guardians 3: $250 Production/$100 Marketing: $215 Domestic, $195 Overseas = $60 Million Profit
The Marvels: $220* Production/$100 Marketing, $51 Domestic, $46 Overseas = $223 Million Loss

Walt Disney Pictures = $276 Million Loss
Haunted Mansion: $158 Production/$75 Marketing, $41 Domestic, $19 Overseas = $173 Million Loss
The Little Mermaid: $250 Production/$140 Marketing, $179 Domestic, $108 Overseas = $103 Million Loss

Pixar Studios = $74 Million Loss
Elemental: $200 Production/$100 Marketing, $93 Domestic, $133 Overseas = $74 Million Loss

Walt Disney Animation Studios = $216 Million Loss
Wish: $200 Production/$100 Marketing, $37 Domestic, $47 Overseas = $216 Million Loss

Lucasfilm Studios = $212 Million Loss
Indiana Jones 5: $300 Production/$100 Marketing, $105 Domestic, $83 Overseas = $212 Million Loss

Searchlight Pictures = $120 Million Loss
Chevalier: $46 Production/$15 Marketing, $2 Million Domestic, $200,000 Overseas = $58 Million Loss
Theater Camp: $8 Production/$4 Marketing, $2.4 Domestic, $300,000 Overseas = $9 Million Loss
Next Goal Wins: $10 Production/$5 Marketing, $4 Domestic, $300,000 Overseas = $10 Million Loss
Poor Things: $35 Production/$15 Marketing, $7 Domestic, $0 Overseas = $43 Million Loss

20th Century Studios = $116 Million Loss
The Boogeyman: $35 Production/$15 Marketing, $26 Domestic, $16 Overseas = $8 Million Loss
A Haunting In Venice: $60 Production/$30 Marketing, $25 Domestic, $29 Overseas = $36 Million Loss
The Creator: $80 Production/$40 Marketing, $25 Domestic, $23 Overseas = $72 Million Loss

2023 Grand Total = $1,284,000,000 Loss

That's bigger loss for Walt Disney Studios. I couldn't imagine how Universal Studios (thanks to Oppenheimer and their animated films) and Warner Bros. (thanks to Barbie and possibly Wonka and Aquaman 2, two latter films had the new WB logo at either opening and closing of the film) had better box office performance than Disney have this year.

A very bad centennary year for Disney as opposed to a better centennary year for Warner Bros. (thanks to it's new logo and their box office success in 2023)

 

[LittleBuford]

Hey he also knows that TLM made money but refuses to admit it. Some people like living in their weird little world where facts mean nothing.

None of us knows for certain whether The Little Mermaid made or lost money. It is not a settled argument (though I personally find it a rather pointless one in the absence of more information).

The “debate” about UK film tax relief is entirely different, because there is no ambiguity surrounding the matter at all. The feigned confusion about how it works is nothing but disingenuous trolling.

 

[MarvelCharacterNerd]

1000x this. This is not directed at anyone in this forum in particular, but I will never understand how people think that $12 or $15/month is too much for any of the streaming services. I've always calibrated my sense of the value of entertainment to the cost of a movie ticket. Given the current average ticket price, that'd be about $6/hour of entertainment. Buying a $60 video game? I'm hoping I'll get at least 10 hours of fun out of it. Buying a $25 hardcover? Yeah, that should take me at least 4 hours to read. Buying a $12 CD? If I've listened to it even 3 or 4 times, I've gotten my money's worth.

So much of what's on the Internet works on such a different scale, it's silly. I only need to get 2 hours of entertainment out of a streaming service every month? And my whole family can enjoy it at the same time? What a bargain. There are more shows/games/whatever being created than ever before and everyone has somehow been convinced that everything should be a) always available to them and b) virtually free.

I'm not taking your comments as directed at me but I'm happy to give my perspective that your perspective is colored by a certain level of income, which not everyone has.

I live on a very tight budget. I wouldn't spend $25 on a book, nor $60 on a video game, nor $20 on a single movie ticket for that matter. So yes, $12 or $15 a month is way too much for any streaming service when there are plenty of cheaper or free entertainment options to choose from.

Movies are not worth the current inflated price of admission. Which is IMO the ultimate reason for any box office dropoff overall.

 

[TP2000]

He understands very well. He also knows that it’s something any eligible production company can benefit from, even as he continues to frame it as some special and sneaky favour to Disney.

It's not a sneaky favor only to Disney. I never said any such thing. I'm sure plenty of other Hollywood studios get the same subsidy payments from the British government. How could they not?

But that doesn't mean the government subsidy didn't exist. And thus gave a $55 Million credit to the production of The Marvels.

But even with that $55 Million payment from the British government, The Marvels still lost $223 Million at the box office.

You want to talk about that $223 Million loss, instead of where the magic money comes from?

 

[Prince-1]

None of us knows for certain whether The Little Mermaid made or lost money. It is not a settled argument (though I personally find it a rather pointless one in the absence of more information).

The “debate” about UK film tax relief is entirely different, because there is no ambiguity surrounding the matter at all. The feigned confusion about how it works is nothing but disingenuous trolling.

Based on the reports I read it made money and if it didn’t then it did not lose $100 million like TP keeps making up.

 

[Disney Irish]

He understands very well. He also knows that it’s something any eligible production company can benefit from, even as he continues to frame it as some special and sneaky favour to Disney.

It’s called Genteel Trolling, and we would all do well not to fuel it (I’m advising myself as much as I am you).

Not to mention the $100s of Millions in other tax credits and incentives Disney received from their entire slate of 2023 films.

 

[TP2000]

None of us knows for certain whether The Little Mermaid made or lost money. It is not a settled argument (though I personally find it a rather pointless one in the absence of more information).

The lone article from Deadline that claimed The Little Mermaid broke even at the box office used a math equation that already credits it with $100 Million in net profit from future DVD sales from the movie.

Just let that sink in.

Until we get confirmation in 2025 that The Little Mermaid sold hundreds of millions of DVD copies somehow, we'll have to go with the actual financial data we have in January, 2024. And that data shows The Little Mermaid lost $103 Million.

The Little Mermaid: $250 Production/$140 Marketing, $179 Domestic, $108 Overseas = $103 Million Loss

‘Little Mermaid’ Swimming Against Strong Tides At Overseas Box Office, Leaving Break-Even In Question

In a rare situation for a Disney tentpole, particularly a live action title based on a treasured animated classic, 'The Little Mermaid' may lose money.

deadline.com

 

[TP2000]

WHY DO YOU CARE???????????? You did not even see the film. This is nothing but classic trolling. You don’t like Disney. But here you are. You don’t like gays. But you claim to be gay. Why are you here????????? If I did not like Disney, I would not spend every waking hour of the day on a Disney fan site, trashing Disney. This is freaking amazing.

Data got you down?

I get it, $1.248 Billion is a lot of money. Especially when the parks are so woefully underfunded and under-capacity. But we won't get new rides in the parks by just pretending the movie studios get to keep doing what they've been doing in 2022 and 2023. It's past time for sweeping change at all of Disney's studios, from the very top on down to the cubicle farms.

Because losing over a Billion dollars per year is not sustainable.

 

[Disney Irish]

Despite all the losses, Disney proper is still the 2nd top grossing studio of 2023, with only a $367M gap between them and Uni.

Add in 20th Century and Disney takes the top spot. And so with even the huge successes that Uni and WBD had with Mario, Barbie, Oppenheimer, etc., they still aren't actually bringing in more tickets sales than Disney, Disney is still the top dog in terms of overall market share of the box office.

 

[DKampy]

The lone article from Deadline that claimed The Little Mermaid broke even at the box office used a math equation that already credits it with $100 Million in net profit from future DVD sales from the movie.

Just let that sink in.

Until we get confirmation in 2025 that The Little Mermaid sold hundreds of millions of DVD copies somehow, we'll have to go with the actual financial data we have in January, 2024. And that data shows The Little Mermaid lost $103 Million.

The Little Mermaid: $250 Production/$140 Marketing, $179 Domestic, $108 Overseas = $103 Million Loss

View attachment 761229

‘Little Mermaid’ Swimming Against Strong Tides At Overseas Box Office, Leaving Break-Even In Question

In a rare situation for a Disney tentpole, particularly a live action title based on a treasured animated classic, 'The Little Mermaid' may lose money.

deadline.com

You certainly seem to ignore any facts so you can push your agenda…it’s already been mentioned PVOD would be rolled in with DVD’s and at $19.99 a rental that could add up quickly…We have several people here who said they watched The Little Mermaid that way

 

[TP2000]

Despite all the losses, Disney proper is still the 2nd top grossing studio of 2023, with only a $367M gap between them and Uni.

View attachment 761231

Add in 20th Century and Disney takes the top spot. And so with even the huge successes that Uni and WBD had with Mario, Barbie, Oppenheimer, etc., they still aren't actually bringing in more tickets sales than Disney.

In order to make that pencil out, Disney will need to slash its production budgets by about 60%, give or take.

That level of budgeting doesn't get them to huge profits, but at least it would get them to break even on some of their big movies.

The utter failure in the global marketplace of Disney's tentpoles in '23, stuff like Indy 5, The Marvels, Wish, etc. is unsustainable financially. They either need to figure out how to slash budgets by over half, or make movies at the current budget levels that people want to see in big numbers, with huge audience demand one after another from Disney.

Think audience demand like Barbie, Oppenheimer, Super Mario Bros., Top Gun Maverick, etc.

 

[DKampy]

And not technically a Disney movie but who cares. Can’t wait for this…

Trailer for Mickey Mouse Slasher Film Drops on Same Day ‘Steamboat Willie’ Character Enters Public Domain

Horror comedy film 'Mickey's Mouse Trap' features Disney's iconic character as the killer.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Just the picture alone is giving me Pooh slasher vibes

 

[TP2000]

You certainly seem to ignore any facts so you can push your agenda…it’s already been mentioned PVOD would be rolled in with DVD’s and at $19.99 a rental that could add up quickly…We have several people here who said they watched The Little Mermaid that way

If you'd like, we could pretend that The Little Mermaid made a $100 Million profit in 2023 off of DVD and PVOD sales, and thus The Little Mermaid only lost $3 Million in 2023.

That would get Disney down to only a company loss of $1.148 Billion.

But really, even if we make up numbers like that, does it help?

 

[Disney Irish]

In order to make that pencil out, Disney will need to slash its production budgets by about 60%, give or take.

That level of budgeting doesn't get them to huge profits, but at least it would get them to break even on some of their big movies.

The utter failure in the global marketplace of Disney's tentpoles in '23, stuff like Indy 5, The Marvels, Wish, etc. is unsustainable financially. They either need to figure out how to slash budgets by over half, or make movies at the current budget levels that people want to see in big numbers, with huge audience demand one after another from Disney.

This has been discussed ad nauseam, we know that Disney budgets are too high for what those movies take in today. You don't turn a huge movie studio on a dime. All those budgets were approved mostly pre-pandemic. Budgetary changes at the Studios as coming, as noted by Iger in his comments during the last two earnings call. It'll just take time for those changes to shake out into what is actually released, think 2025 and beyond.

Think audience demand like Barbie, Oppenheimer, Super Mario Bros., Top Gun Maverick, etc.

Those are lightning in a bottle type of films. There is a reason why every studio isn't doing it and why they aren't reproducible, because they don't just fall out of the trees. Hollywood is a copy-cat business, you're going to see a bunch of similar content come out of Hollywood for the next several years and none of them will reproduce the success as those films.

There is a reason why Mattel partnered with Paramount and WDB on future IP films, and Hasbro just sold their eOne studio to Lionsgate to produce their future IP films. All are trying to mine those IPs for the next Barbie and Mario.

 

[TP2000]

As suspected, you did not respond to one single point in my above post. Still waiting to find out why you are here since you hate Disney and you are a gay who hates gay content.

Oh, dear. This one has several levels to it, doesn't it. I'll take this one at a time, just for posterity...

Still waiting to find out why you are here since you hate Disney

I actually love Disney. Or at least, I love the parks. Although my love has dimmed considerably for the American parks. It dimmed first in the 2000's for the Florida parks, as their standards fell and they became sickeningly corporate and vacuous. Then my love for Disneyland dimmed considerably post Covid, after they were forced to be closed by the state government for 13 months and they reopened by abandoning all previous standards for CM behavior and appearance. Cue the bearded ladies serving young girls at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique and tatted up guys with greasy hair at Storybook Land Canal Boats, and the decline was swift. Thank God for Tokyo Disneyland, which still has high standards even though they went through the same Covid closures and economic pain that Anaheim did.

So the movie studios in Burbank and Emeryville just lost $1.248 Billion in 2023. Why? How is that acceptable to anyone here? How is it sustainable? It's not. WDW and Disneyland are still woefully underfunded, and especially the weak and cheap WDW parks are woefully under-capacity. No new rides are under construction. No night parade exists on either coast. Nothing is happening in either property. And the studios just vaporized over one Billion dollars in a single year.

And we're supposed to be okay with that because Harrison Ford was jetted to Cannes in one of Disney's fleet of Gulfstream 6's on standby at Van Nuys Airport (what Climate Crisis? No such thing when you've got to get to Cannes!) so he could be adulated with a 7 minute standing ovation, and Poor Things will lose $25 Million but got a Golden Globe nomination for supporting actress? You're okay with that? Because I'm not.

and you are a gay who hates gay content.

Yikes. Talk about living in a NYC/LA bubble world.

I am a gay. I have been a gay for longer than you have been one. I do not think that gay content/characters belong in children's movies. It serves no purpose to advance our cause of equal rights (now fully gained) and it makes many parents very uneasy. Yes, Anita Bryant was a bigot and a buffoon for claiming we were coming for their children. And she deserved that pie in her face. But that doesn't mean a children's movie needs a gay storyline and characters in it. Save it for the teenagers, at least.

There's nothing to be gained by populating Disney's children's movies with gay characters. At least not in 2024. Check back in 2034 and things may have changed a bit, or "evolved" as President Obama put it after he opposed gay marriage ahead of the 2008 and 2012 elections but suddenly "evolved" on the issue in 2013.

Things will evolve on that front. I have no doubt of that. But it's not happened yet in 2023-24. And Disney has done immense damage to its brand by pretending otherwise. Or by convincing themselves they have the power to re-train their mass audience of suburban parents into accepting their HR approved plotlines.

The box office results are clear; that's a recipe for financial disaster.

Again, check back a decade from now and we'll see where we're at. But for 2024? Disney has a lot of work to do to regain the trust of parents and live up to their original slogan...

 

[crispy]

Despite all the losses, Disney proper is still the 2nd top grossing studio of 2023, with only a $367M gap between them and Uni.

View attachment 761231

Add in 20th Century and Disney takes the top spot. And so with even the huge successes that Uni and WBD had with Mario, Barbie, Oppenheimer, etc., they still aren't actually bringing in more tickets sales than Disney, Disney is still the top dog in terms of overall market share of the box office.

Gross revenue is only one part of the equation, and it's pretty meaningless here. Disney spent more making those films than it made at the box office which resulted in record losses. Many of the other studios don't need to be the "top dog" in order to be profitable because they manage their budgets better.

 

[Disney Irish]

Gross revenue is only one part of the equation, and it's pretty meaningless here. Disney spent more making those films than it made at the box office which resulted in record losses. Many of the other studios don't need to be the "top dog" in order to be profitable because they manage their budgets better.

Yes I'm well aware that profits is the ultimate goal, and budget is the reason that didn't occur.

My point however is that despite those other studios have success, they aren't actually bringing in more ticket sales than Disney overall. Disney with all its studios brought in more ticket sales overall than the other studios. Had budgets been lower we'd be having a very different conversation.

So I think its a reasonable thing to point out. Because the whole conversation the entire year by some posters has been that audiences just aren't showing up for Disney movies, this clearly shows that is not a true statement. The reality is that they are showing up, actually more than other studios, just that not enough showed up for those movies to be profitable given the budgets.