Should Disney Merge Their Animation Studios?

[MisterPenguin]

Well, believe it or not, Disney is going to make Coco a Broadway Musical. It’s true: https://playbill.com/article/disney-is-bringing-coco-to-the-stage

From diegetic to non-diegetic!!

Diegetic music - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[TP2000]

So, it's just after the 4th of July and summer has really just started for most of the country north of Oklahoma City, but this isn't going very well for DisneyCo so far. It looks like by Labor Day the Company will have lost at least a few hundred million dollars on all their spring and summer tentpoles, barring some bizarre breakout hit of the $150 Million budgeted Haunted Mansion movie.

So what happens in the fall when the calendar flips to Fiscal '24 and the four main studios under the DisneyCo umbrella (Disney, Lucas, Marvel, WDAS), plus whatever the hell Searchlight and Fox are now, have to report they somehow lost hundreds of millions of dollars on their mega-budget projects?

Do the senior execs from all the studios assemble in a dramatically lit Burbank conference room and say "Well done, gang! 2023 was great! Let's do it all again in 2024!"??? Or does Iger and the Board demand they account for how things went so wrong, and list what they'll be changing immediately to ensure 2023 never happens again?

Or, does Bob Iger even exist a few months into Fiscal Year 2024? And someone brand new cleans house from top to bottom?

 

[Casper Gutman]

So, it's just after the 4th of July and summer has really just started for most of the country north of Oklahoma City, but this isn't going very well for DisneyCo so far. It looks like by Labor Day the Company will have lost at least a few hundred million dollars on all their spring and summer tentpoles, barring some bizarre breakout hit of the $150 Million budgeted Haunted Mansion movie.

So what happens in the fall when the calendar flips to Fiscal '24 and the four main studios under the DisneyCo umbrella (Disney, Lucas, Marvel, WDAS), plus whatever the hell Searchlight and Fox are now, have to report they somehow lost hundreds of millions of dollars on their mega-budget projects?

Do the senior execs from all the studios assemble in a dramatically lit Burbank conference room and say "Well done, gang! 2023 was great! Let's do it all again in 2024!"??? Or does Iger and the Board demand they account for how things went so wrong, and list what they'll be changing immediately to ensure 2023 never happens again?

Or, does Bob Iger even exist a few months into Fiscal Year 2024? And someone brand new cleans house from top to bottom?

Well, one hopes that the Disney board isn’t populated by culture war trolls, so they actually look at what is happening across Hollywood and how Disney is faring compared to other studios. And they probably make some moves to slash film budgets, which some posters will consider a personal win for reasons that escape me. And Iger continues.

By the way, Searchlight is the same thing it’s always been, the prestigious indie arm of a major studio. Last year their films included Banshees of Innershin and Nightmare Alley and they’ve got Poor Things lined up later this year. It’s not particularly confusing.

 

[Ghost93]

So, it's just after the 4th of July and summer has really just started for most of the country north of Oklahoma City, but this isn't going very well for DisneyCo so far. It looks like by Labor Day the Company will have lost at least a few hundred million dollars on all their spring and summer tentpoles, barring some bizarre breakout hit of the $150 Million budgeted Haunted Mansion movie.

So what happens in the fall when the calendar flips to Fiscal '24 and the four main studios under the DisneyCo umbrella (Disney, Lucas, Marvel, WDAS), plus whatever the hell Searchlight and Fox are now, have to report they somehow lost hundreds of millions of dollars on their mega-budget projects?

Do the senior execs from all the studios assemble in a dramatically lit Burbank conference room and say "Well done, gang! 2023 was great! Let's do it all again in 2024!"??? Or does Iger and the Board demand they account for how things went so wrong, and list what they'll be changing immediately to ensure 2023 never happens again?

Or, does Bob Iger even exist a few months into Fiscal Year 2024? And someone brand new cleans house from top to bottom?

It's too late to make any major changes to the special-effects-heavy 2024 films as they have either completed filming or are almost finished with filming. Whatever changes Iger would make based on 2023 likely wouldn't be evident until 2025.

 

[TP2000]

By the way, Searchlight is the same thing it’s always been, the prestigious indie arm of a major studio. Last year their films included Banshees of Innershin and Nightmare Alley and they’ve got Poor Things lined up later this year. It’s not particularly confusing.

Well, I agree it's not confusing, but it is unknown. If you went down to your local suburban Costco tomorrow afternoon and asked 100 Americans which corporate giant owns "Searchlight Pictures", less than 5 would know. If they even knew what "Searchlight Pictures" was.

The Banshess of Insherin only had a total domestic box office of $10,582,266. Nightmare Alley had a domestic box of $11,338,117. If you assume that a ticket cost $10, that means that just over 2 Million tickets were sold to those movies combined. Even if those two movies had completely different audiences who only saw one of those movies and not both, that means that only 0.6% of Americans saw a Searchlight Pictures movie in the last 18 months.

So, no wonder you'd get so many blank stares at Costco if you asked average Americans what Searchlight Pictures was and how it fits into its corporate structure.

Movie Comparison: The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) vs. Nightmare Alley (2021)

Domestic box office comparison between The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) and Nightmare Alley (2021)

www.the-numbers.com

It's too late to make any major changes to the special-effects-heavy 2024 films as they have either completed filming or are almost finished with filming. Whatever changes Iger would make based on 2023 likely wouldn't be evident until 2025.

Well, that's not a good sign for '24 then is it, especially heading into a Recession.

Might it get financially worse for Disney before it gets better? Because this isn't sustainable for them.

 

[Casper Gutman]

Well, I agree it's not confusing, but it is unknown. If you went down to your local suburban Costco tomorrow afternoon and asked 100 Americans which corporate giant owns "Searchlight Pictures", less than 5 would know. If they even knew what "Searchlight Pictures" was.

The Banshess of Insherin only had a total domestic box office of $10,582,266. Nightmare Alley had a domestic box of $11,338,117. If you assume that a ticket cost $10, that means that just over 2 Million tickets were sold to those movies combined. Even if those two movies had completely different audiences who only saw one of those movies and not both, that means that only 0.6% of Americans saw a Searchlight Pictures movie in the last 18 months.

So, no wonder you'd get so many blank stares at Costco if you asked average Americans what Searchlight Pictures was and how it fits into its corporate structure.

Movie Comparison: The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) vs. Nightmare Alley (2021)

Domestic box office comparison between The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) and Nightmare Alley (2021)

www.the-numbers.com

Well, that's not a good sign for '24 then is it, especially heading into a Recession.

Might it get financially worse for Disney before it gets better? Because this isn't sustainable for them.

If you asked most folks what a Columbia Studios film was, they’d look at you blankly. The only studio a significant number of people know is Disney. This is one of the major reasons it’s a culture war target even when other studios release more seemingly incendiary films. The other reason, of course, is that it’s associated with childhood development and character formation and the current culture war moral panic is largely powered by older generations’ realization that younger generations aren’t mirroring their political opinions and biases and, unlike in the past, this isn’t changing even as the younger generations grow older. Hence, a concerted, widespread effort to use all methods of coercion available against institutions perceived as integral to childhood development - schools, libraries, colleges… and Disney.

As a side note, I don’t get my knowledge of the film industry from Costco. Neither do you, as you alternate between fairly in-depth (if often misleading) box office analysis and feigned ignorance. I suspect you know that indie arms aren’t meant to crank out blockbusters.

It’s nice to see the recession you’re desperately hoping for make a reappearance. It’s been just around the corner for a couple years now.

 

[TP2000]

If you asked most folks what a Columbia Studios film was, they’d look at you blankly. The only studio a significant number of people know is Disney. This is one of the major reasons it’s a culture war target even when other studios release more seemingly incendiary films. The other reason, of course, is that it’s associated with childhood development and character formation and the current culture war moral panic is largely powered by older generations’ realization that younger generations aren’t mirroring their political opinions and biases and, unlike in the past, this isn’t changing even as the younger generations grow older. Hence, a concerted, widespread effort to use all methods of coercion available against institutions perceived as integral to childhood development - schools, libraries, colleges… and Disney.

You seem to really be in to this "culture war" stuff as you mention it in almost every post..

But then, when I lived back East I knew a couple of otherwise nice guys that dressed up as Colonial era soldiers and re-enacted battles against the British in muddy fields every weekend. So I guess it's similar, but without the breeches and muskets.

...as you alternate between fairly in-depth (if often misleading) box office analysis...

I post the actual box office numbers from a site called The Numbers, and generally include the link to my work. It's just hard data and facts. I don't know how facts can be "misleading".

Like this sort of thing below, that shows the horrible financial returns Disney has gotten on its last three animated tentpoles which has led to myself and a couple other folks wondering why they don't just merge the two studios and save some cash...

Disney spent $535 Million just to produce these three films, plus at least another $200 Million to market them, but has only taken in about $250 Million in box office globally (60/40 domestic/overseas split of box office) from all three combined. That means Disney has lost over $450 Million on just their last three animated motion pictures from WDAS and Pixar.

Blame your culture war all you want. Or blame the stale popcorn at the snack bar. But this is disastrous and isn't sustainable.

Movie Comparison: Elemental (2023) vs. Lightyear (2022) vs. Strange World (2022)

Domestic box office comparison between Elemental (2023) and Lightyear (2022) and Strange World (2022)

www.the-numbers.com

 

[erasure fan1]

I post the actual box office numbers from a site called The Numbers, and generally include the link to my work. It's just hard data and facts. I don't know how facts can be "misleading".

Well you do have strange worlds budget listed at 135mil and everything I see says it is more like 180mil. So you are misleading us as the budgets are more like 580mil combined.