Their last few movies have been... well "abysmal" would make some abysses unhappy to be compared to the movie performance.
Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M.
It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.
Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget.
They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs.
You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem.
> It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.
It's hard to make anything at the box office when it was barely released to theaters[1]. Wikipedia says it ended up in three US theaters, some theaters in the UK and 12 overseas markets without Disney+. Otherwise, direct to streaming and discs.
The old world metric was how much money a film made. The new world metric is how much engagement a film provides a paid service. I think this is why Netflix often makes films that are critically panned but keeps making sequels, or why they drop critically acclaimed shows.
Disney will probably never want to share the truth about which of their films were business flops or not.
Disney has been making bad movies for a while, but for whatever reason Marvel sold well despite repeating the same storyline every time... Same writing, same style, same jokes, same flair.
After the MCU reset, I don't think Disney has any idea what to do.
They could probably use ChatGPT to make better scripts tho
Why would people buy it on disk when it was released onto Disney+? It has other metrics of success - it was one of the most streamed programs in March 2022.
I guess for some kids it's easier to pop a dvd in the player than navigating menus. Also, kids tend to watch the same movie again for ever, maybe it's safer for some parents to buy the actual thing, even more during the streaming war where parents switch from service to another.
> I guess for some kids it's easier to pop a dvd in the player than navigating menus
I can't speak for all kids, but for mine it's the opposite—the main TV remote they use controls our Fire TV Stick, and has a button for Disney+ built in. Plus, our iPads have Disney+ apps. Whereas our optical drive is a PS4, so they'd need to use the TV remote to switch to a different input, plus the PS4 controller. I'm not saying they couldn't figure it out if they wanted to, but for them, navigating menus to Disney+ is much easier.
As someone with a 2 year old child, I can attest that these movies sucked. Compare them to, say, Ratatouille, which was made using much more primitive rendering/animation, but the story and voice acting are great (and the graphics still very good), and it's no surprise that no one wants to see them. My child would rather watch the older, better movies 10+ times than one of the new ones even once.
My wife and I started Turning Red and Turned it Off halfway through. I haven't even tried the others.
Favorites in our place with the kids are Cars and Planes (though more Cars lately). We're on an old musicals kick lately, and it's just fun watching some of the big budget musicals from the 60s - when they wanted to get a whole street of people dancing, they went out and got a bunch of people trained to dance in the street. They also were a good bit longer, and generally had more room to breathe. The story didn't feel rushed at the end like a lot of the more modern one do (Encanto is a particular offender here, as far as I'm concerned).
Funny, I don't feel this way at all - Encanto is probably one of my favourite recent disney films, I must have seen it 100 times now(partially because of my kid watching it all the time, but that's the funny thing - despite pretty much knowing every single line by heart now, I still like it. The story is good and the songs are great).
Turning Red is equally great - as someone who has also grown up in the 90s the film just gets so much right, it's a delight to watch. The story turns into absolute nonsense by the end but meh, the joy of watching teenagers figure out how to get money for a concert they want to go to is worth it.
Yes I will say my daughter absolutely loves Encanto (and also Moana). Also the Good Dinosaur (but we had to cut back on that because she started growling like the feral child in the movie and that seemed like a bad development!). The music in Encanto is good.
Since you mentioned Cars, there's an interesting thing I noticed when Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was in theatres. At that time, when I try to search the movie on IMDb, typing "three" (and I have to emphasize that I typed "three" not "3"), IMDb's first search suggestion was "Cars 3" instead of that Oscar winning movie that was playing im theatres at the time. I'm pretty convinced that Disney payed IMDb for that placement or something like that.
> We're on an old musicals kick lately, and it's just fun watching some of the big budget musicals from the 60s - when they wanted to get a whole street of people dancing, they went out and got a bunch of people trained to dance in the street.
Oh, for that you have to go back to the 1930s and Busby Berkeley. "Footlight Parade" is probably the best of that genre. At least see "Shanghai Lil".
We keep a DVD-based Netflix account around for a lot of this stuff, and I've purchased quite a bit of physical media on eBay or at local thrift stores over the years. It's rare to pay more than $5 or $6 for a good DVD of stuff we're looking for, and then into Plex it goes. Most of it can ship Media Mail if I'm not in a hurry.
As far as I'm concerned, streaming services are good for "I want to watch something; I don't care what." They tend largely trash for "I want to watch this specific thing."
I enjoyed it much more after reading a bit about the cultural background, but was genuinely confused about its intention before. Probably the case for many folks who grew up similarly (unstructured, low expectations), which is perhaps more common in the US (but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Going back even further, mine loved Jungle Book more than anything recent. Now that's staying power!
Anymore, we'll just wait for them to hit streaming. As GP mentioned, the latest movies just haven't seemed very good. Not up to par with the likes of Moana and Frozen, at least.
I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that. While my kids certainly like some older movies, a lot of them are incredibly slow and boring. Especially for me! Jungle Book, a movie I loved as a kid, has nothing on most of the newer releases, which are far more entertaining IMO.
Man, I still sing the, "Bear Necessities" song to myself as a 40 y/o and it's been so long that I can't even remember seeing the original movie. Didn't they put out like 2 additional Jungle Book movies? I can't think of a reason to watch them.
Having grown up with Tail Spin also very much helps the staying power of anything Baloo.
Sure, and as an adult I would prefer it over most of the other modern productions. The richness of the backgrounds, the characters, the voice acting, the songs = absolutely top notch. But my kid just finds it boring - and he's right to an extent, it's very slow paced, and many scenes are just of characters walking along and talking with each other. Those scenes obviously make a lot of sense from the story telling perspective, but a kid doesn't find watching the congregation of wolves and their discussion about what to do with the man-cub even slightest bit interesting.
She just loved the singing and dancing, and -loved- the way Baloo talked. Which is interesting because during the movie I was wondering what accent he had, and how that accent doesn't seem to exist anymore.
That's what most mid-southern accents sounded like up until quite recently. A 'southern' accent you hear now is mostly a caricature of an Alabama accent.
>Pending the Disney acquisition of Pixar, the two companies created a distribution deal for the intended 2007 release of Ratatouille, to ensure that if the acquisition failed, this one film would be released through Disney's distribution channels. In contrast to the earlier Pixar deal, Ratatouille was meant to remain a Pixar property and Disney would have received only a distribution fee. The completion of Disney's Pixar acquisition, however, nullified this distribution arrangement.
Ratatouille was a Pixar movie. "Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution." Ratatouille was released after the merger was complete but I'd imagine the story was largely locked in.
I'm a huge fan of the Disney movies that came out when I was growing up (Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast are my favorites). My kids like those movies a lot too.
But I think some wonderful movies have been made in the last ten years, most notably Encanto and Turning Red. They're both massive successes, and I think they are in many ways better than those movies I grew up with.
Not to mention Frozen, Moana, Inside Out, etc. These are all wonderful movies.
(Ratatouille is also great, btw, don't get me wrong!)
I’ve got four kids (ages 2 - 10) so I’m likely prime target demographic for Disney.
Didn’t take my kids to see any of these, haven’t streamed them.
Before 2020 we probably saw every Disney and Pixar animation movie since 2012 with our kids. Some of them multiple times - Inside Out was genius, and I still hum Moana to myself.
We had zero interest in these movies from the trailers, and once we learned they would come with great big ice cream scoops of propaganda and eye-rolling allegory it was easy to say “no thanks” and keep our money.
"Frozen" drew a fair amount of complaints in right-which Christian circles for being pro-gay. They see the "Let It Go" song as about coming out. Also the sauna at the trading post. There was a man and 4 kids in the sauna, and the only other person we saw who wasn't just someone stopping in to trade was the owner, also a man. So apparently that clearly makes the two men a gay couple with some adopted children.
An interesting place for movie reviews, regardless of your political or religious leanings, is the entertainment section at christiananswers.net. I'm an atheist but find it quite helpful.
In the reviews themselves they rate the movies both on moviemaking quality and moral quality, and cover both aspects in the review. They are quite willing to rate a movie 5 out of 5 on moviemaking quality and praise its story, acting, cinematography and so on, while at the same time rating it as extremely offensive and telling you in detail why seeing it might put your soul at risk.
There are comments there too which are almost never useful, but are often quite amusing. For example on one of the Harry Potter film reviews one of the commentators went on about how the film is actually promoting real witchcraft, and explained that before she became Christian she was a witch, performed real spells that worked, and the Harry Potter books and movies are an accurate portrayal of that real witchcraft and the spells that she use to use.
> Also the sauna at the trading post. There was a man and 4 kids in the sauna, and the only other person we saw who wasn't just someone stopping in to trade was the owner, also a man. So apparently that clearly makes the two men a gay couple with some adopted children.
In the musical, they turn that scene into a giant naked chorus line singing about hygge.
Your actions affect others
The need for self-control
The power of sacrifice
Don't judge a book by its cover
Love takes time and is built upon sacrifice and caring
Damn, make sure no one stumbles into a propaganda production like Kill Bill, or such an obviously wake drivel like the original Alien.
>>while men either bumble or act maliciously throughout the movie
Felix is the embodiment of a strong masculine character - looking after his wife and child at every step, with all the typical traits you'd associate with men. And Mirabel's father(Augustin) is literally the only character willing to stand up to the grandmother and her abbhorent treatment of Mirabel. I don't know which version of encanto you've watched, but I don't recall a single male character acting maliciously throughout this entire film - it doesn't happen.
The only thing I can think of that's even close is that Augustín gets stung by some bees in the opening and then again later as a callback, which is mostly just so we can see that Julieta can heal people. Bruno is maybe shown to be cowardly but then he risks his life multiple times to save other characters and rushes to take the blame for something that's not his fault to protect Mirabel.
> that the strong roles are all played by women, while men either bumble or act maliciously throughout the movie.
I think you went into that movie with a preconceived notion, because that doesn't match up with the actual movie. For starters, there aren't any malicious characters, there's just well meaning family who sometimes make poor decisions. The closest thing to antagonistic relationships are between Mirabel and Isabella, and Mirabel and her grandmother.
Disney Plus is eating any traditional cinema revenue, looking at box office ticket sales no longer really works in this new world.
Disney, as a company, is in the middle of a mutation. The traditional block buster is dead, part of that is restructuring the company behind a new production and distribution process.
I think Dreamworks shows the traditional blockbuster isn't dead look at Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. My kids made me take them to see that 3 times, and each time I thought it was pretty decent for a kids movie.
Disney is a truly massive company. Looking at the performance of children's movies to gauge the overall health of Disney the company is sort of like looking at Whole Foods to gauge the overall health of Amazon.
Keep in mind, financials are extremely difficult to get to ground on:
1. Budgets tend to not include marketing which are all over the place - big movies TEND to have a marketing budget of almost the same magnitude as the filming budget
2. But at the same time, movie theaters keep half of the box office gross.
So in the worst case, a movie needs to make FOUR times it's "budget" to be profitable.
But movies keep making money after the initial box office - either on home media, or streaming, though exactly how studios attribute individual streams to revenue from a monthly subscription is opaque and impossible to uncover.
By and large though, you're probably right - all 3 of these are failures.
The marketing budget being the same magnitude as the film budget is actually a large part of Hollywood Accounting. At least for the major studios, most of the "marketing budget" for a big film is in cross-promotional efforts with related entities that don't cost them actual money, or for tie-ins or licensing deals which their marketing partner is sharing some or all of the costs.
Also, movie theaters don't get half the box office gross. For big budget films, the distributor gets a declining share of ticket sales, starting with 90% for major films (Marvel, Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible, anything by James Cameron), and declining each week down to a low of about 10% after 2-3 months (depending on the specific contract between the distributor and the theater). This is a large part of why studios are now so focused on first-weekend gross: it's also their most profitable weekend.
Almost all of their best movies have had heavy involvement in the writing / directing role by a couple of key players and most of those individuals have either graduated to a producer role or have moved on from Pixar.
Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Up, Inside Out, and Soul were all written and/or Directed by Pete Doctor.
Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, and Wall-E were written and directed by Andrew Stanton.
There are multiple writing and directing credits on all of their films, but these two have writing and directing credits on almost all of the great original ones.
One thing I have noticed is some of the more recent Pixar movies don't feel like Pixar movies at all. They feel like Disney movies: Lot's of musical numbers, a lot more slap stick and silly, more cheap laughs. Have to wonder if Disney has been asserting too much influence on the company.
> One thing I have noticed is some of the more recent Pixar movies don't feel like Pixar movies at all. They feel like Disney movies: Lot's of musical numbers, a lot more slap stick and silly, more cheap laughs
Which Pixar movies had lots of musical numbers? Of the ones I've seen (all but Lightyear) I only recall zero to three (depending on what counts as a musical number) that I'd count as having musical numbers. Have I forgotten some?
"Turning Red" had a some scenes where characters were singing, but they were singing for in-universe purposes. When I think of musicals what comes to mind is shows where the singing is not for an in-universe purpose.
Similar for "Soul" and "Coco". They had main characters that were struggling musicians and their music played a major part in their lives. All the music I recall in those was in that context (although it has been a long time since I've seen "Coco" so I could have forgotten music that was not in-universe.
Turning Red was released on Disney+ instead of in theaters due to Omicron, so the fact that it still made $20m in theaters is actually quite an accomplishment. It apparently did quite well on Disney+; at the time of its release was the 2nd-most watched movie on [edit] streaming in general for 2022.
Disney didn't brag about the viewing numbers for either Strange World or Lightyear, so those films didn't appear to do well in theaters or streaming.
"Turning Red" was streamed by 2.5 million households on its opening weekend. It was the most watched program across all streaming services in the US that week and the next week. For 2022 it was streamed about 114 million times.
That suggests that people did in fact want to see it.
One thing I've noticed is DreamWorks, which had a "second-rate Disney" feel in the early 2000s, has really been stepping up lately. Almost gives me AMD/Intel kinda vibes
Disney had their own in-house "second-rate Disney".
The Crap Sequels Division was called DisneyToons, dedicated to producing low-budget sequels: Cinderella II/III, Mulan 2, The Lion King 1½... That unit was shut down in 2018. Crap sequel production continued under a different part of the organization, with somewhat larger budgets.
Puss In Boots 2 was easily in my top five movies of the past few years. It's just so much better than any animated sequel of a spin-off centered on a joke character has any right to be. It's an excellent film.
The fact that the entire narrative arc depends on it being a sequel makes it even more impressive.
Other than Avatar, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Thor… at worst you can say that animation’s been a bit rocky, although Turning Red was a streaming release.
Yeah, Marvel is Disney, and the cuts happening this week appear to be company-wide rather than focused on animation.
That said, I tend to agree that both Animation and Pixar are floundering a little bit and it’s a problem. Marvel could be healthier too and certainly Star Wars isn’t doing what Iger wanted. However, I am more inclined to point at Chapek’s reorg as the cause: you’re going to affect creative satisfaction when you remove the ability to control your movie’s creative destiny.
Iger is working to fix this and that’s a good thing.
Also considering that every MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) movie made since 2008 is a Disney movie it's hard to agree with that particular statement. According to [0], the budget for all MCU movies since Disney purchased Marvel has been a little over $6B and the "worldwide box office" sales have been over $28B.
To be fair to the parent commenter, however, "Disney is making movies nobody wants to see," (the converse of the actual statement) seems like a less controversial statement which may be closer to their intended meaning.
> that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see
I can't completely discount what you're saying, since I have no interest in Lightyear (the toy from Toy Story, but it's not a toy? Why?) or Strange World (it looks fine, but their ads didn't make very clear anything about it).
But I will say that Turning Red was wonderful, and my family has happily watched that a number of times. Not surprised it flopped in the theater, though, given I didn't even know it was in the theaters. As far as I'm concerned it went straight to Disney+, like Pixar's previous 3 movies. It's been one of my favorite things about the service.
> It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.
Turning Red was surely a hit on Disney+. Hard to see from the consumer side what the impact was, but disney+ is a money machine and the can easily double the price.
> ...but disney+ is a money machine and the can easily double the price.
The very same Disney Plus that lost 2.4M subscribers in Q1[0]?
That doesn't seem like "You could easily double the price" sort of performance. They still have plenty of subscribers, but they're not going "up and to the right" on the subscriber graph anymore.
It's hard to make the case that Disney is doing anything but "dropping flops on a public that doesn't want to see them."
If you dig into those numbers, they lost 3.8 million subscribers in India due to losing streaming rights for cricket matches.
I don't think that's a reasonable lens to be looking at how Disney's cartoon movies are doing.
I do think it might be worthwhile if you wanted to decide if Disney should have decided to keep the streaming rights, and whether the economics of that decision make sense.
"Disney’s Direct-to-Consumer revenue for the quarter rose 13%, to $5.3 billion, while its operating loss increased 78% to $1.05 billion"
...
"due to higher content and technology costs at Disney+ (with higher average costs per hour of programming, which included an increased mix of originals) as well as higher content costs and lower ad revenue at Hulu"
Crucially, Turning Red was _not_ released in theatres in most countries due to COVID-19. It may or may not have been a money loser, but there's very little reason to believe executives think it's anything about the movie that made it that way.
Yes, Turning Red's low revenue was primarily a cause of the film not being in theatres, rather than the quality of its story.
I personally liked the story of Turning Red very much (though I'm biased to like it because it's set in Toronto), but more objectively, the film is a step above Strange World and Lightyear in terms of ratings.
Turning Red's ratings: 95% on the Tomatometer of Rotten Tomatoes (RT), 7.0/10 on IMDb, and 3.7/5 on Letterboxd
Lightyear's ratings: 74% on RT, 6.1/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd
Strange World's ratings: 72% on RT, 5.6/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd
I'm neither Canadian nor an immigrant, but I absolutely loved Turning Red. I felt it was 10x better than Encanto. But the latter has catchy meme-worthy tunes, so here we are.
According to Wikipedia it did pretty well: ...the most-ever for a Disney+ original title... the most watched program across all streaming services in the U.S. ... continued to hold the top position ... the second most-watched movie on U.S. streaming services in 2022.
I don't know how it could've cost $175MM, but it's a quality movie and deserves kudos for giving us some diversity in protagonists.
I don't get how Marvel's movies are getting worse too. Take Black Panther, for instance, why would people even not consider it premise insulting? Maybe Americans thought it was perfectly normal to depict Wankanda like that, but let's imagine a similar story about China: China is a closed society with a highly advanced civilization and a technology level that surpasses the rest of the world. The country is ruled by tribal chieftains who use swords, spears, and what not to fight for succession of chieftain. Many Chinese people are passionate about foot-binding. The chieftains live in the palace that are extravagantly rich and the level of medical technology is almost miraculous. The magnetic levitation trains are like magic. IN the same time, ordinary Chinese people live in huts and spend their days feeding rhinoceroses (or, to fit the local customs, pandas), as there are barely any road in the country.
If you were to show this movie in China and tell us that it praised the Chinese people and culture, I'd say you're being insulting
It might have something to do with the fact that so many episodes revolve around some elaborate game the kids play. Or, it might be related to how the parents have infinite time to skip work and indulge their precious kids.
I mean, obviously your opinion is incorrect, but that might be why. On the plus side, at least you didn't have to correct me about Disney not being the company to develop the show, as if I thought Disney had a secret Australian animation division. So you have that going for you.
Turning Red was a great movie—my daughters love it and have watched it repeatedly. I put that one in the category of wonderful box office bombs: miracles that they managed to exist, in spite of being obvious box office failures, like The Big Lebowski or Blade Runner.
I wouldn't point to a couple of movies as the cause for this. Disney is a gargantuan machine with many, many divisions. The parks, streaming, gaming, movies, merchandise, resorts, real estate, etc. These days even if a movie doesn't do well in the box office, it's still a major asset for streaming (which I can only assume is very worthwhile).
I don't have any inside knowledge, but in case you didn't already know Hollywood is famous for, to put it charitably, 'unusual' accounting practices [1].
Maybe the authorities chase after some of the cases, but as far as I can tell the status quo remains sketchy AF.
I was going to ask the same thing. How does Turning Red have a budget of 175 million? Is most of it advertising? Its CGI and I don't remember any celebrity voices in there that would cost that much.
The quoted budgets for films don't include marketing. I believe that's because that cost actually belongs to the distributor, not the producer of the film. A rule of thumb is that a big-budget movie or game has a marketing budget roughly equal to it's production budget apparently.
When I was but a little boy, Terminator 2 had CGI and cost brazillians. We have entire movies made with humans basically just standing in front of green screen. You cannot seriously claim it has gotten harder or more expensive.
> When I was but a little boy, Terminator 2 had CGI and cost brazillians.
And it has very few CGI shots compared to modern movies. It only had about 50 CGI shots in total.
In comparison, Everything Everywhere All at Once which had tons of practical effects and budget constraints had 500. A modern blockbuster movie pushes the number of CGI shots beyond 2000.
> We have entire movies made with humans basically just standing in front of green screen. You cannot seriously claim it has gotten harder or more expensive.
Again. For some reason unbeknownst to me you keep assuming that CGI is cheap and easy. Especially given the amount of CGI, resoultions and the details that have to be there.
Hmm. Allow me to rephrase. Clearly, we are assuming two different current states. I indicated that T2 was made almost 30 years ago with MASSIVE improvements across just about every facet of computer generated visuals. That movie cost 100 million to make ( about twice that in today's dollars adjusted for inflation ) and it had some stars in it ( Arnold reportedly being paid cool $15M ), which easily explains some of the cost.
I am not assuming its cheap and easy. I am assuming it is both cheaper and easier than it was and noticeably so.
All that said, I think we may be just approaching it differently. Let me share my thought process.
Cameron suggested the actual CGI scene count is 42[1] ( we can do 50 for easier math, but 42 will favor your position so lets assume 42 ).
According to wiki[2] CGI budget was 15M-17M ( and lets assume 17M to account for the upper cost to accommodate your view of CGI cost ).
At $17M for 42 an instance of CGI comes to $404k a pop for T2. Unfortunately, this is misleading as it does not give us a good way to compare against Turning Red as its all CGI, so we need to compare in minutes ( tr is 1h40m or 100 minutes ). Without doing any real analysis, I have to rely on net again[1], where we learn that:
"all the work required to bring the T-1000 to life, costing $5.5 million, and taking eight months to produce, which ultimately amounted to 3.5 minutes of screen time. "
5.5M/3.5 = $1.571M per minute for Terminator 2 ( or about ~3M USD adjusted for inflation ).
In other words, adjusted for inflation re-running TR assuming the same cost as T2 results in 300M ( 100 minutes * 3M per minute ) projected CGI cost for TR ( almost double TR's budget, which we know was not all CGI ). In other words, CGI has gotten almost 100% more efficient, partially because I seriously doubt entire $175M TR budget went to CGI ).
I am not arguing its peanuts ( although I am sure argument could be made what with current AI tools ), but it is definitely more cheap.
To be fair, it might not be more easy ( that I have zero knowledge of ).
So it's more of "while it's definitely easier and cheaper to produce, the amount of work and detail that is now expected has gone up exponentially". I'm always reminded of this when I see VFX breakdowns for TV series like tis one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxTNhNe6Fbc
And I totally agree with your breakdown of costs :)
Various sub-entities of the parent (Disney) charging each other service fees to jack up production costs and lower profit (and therefore tax obligations).
I'm sure Disney was disappointed in Lightyear's performance given its marketing push and brand appeal, but I don't think you're listing the movies that are central to Disney's strategy anymore. Ever since COVID, Disney has pretty much banished Pixar to Disney+, not as "premium" releases that cost extra, but just included day one on the service. If they had theater runs, they were limited or international-only. That includes such films as Soul, Luca and Turning Red, whereas Encanto from their other animation company (Walt Disney Animation Studios) got a wide and successful theatrical run. Turning Red's box office returns are irrelevant because of this. However, due in part to people going back to theaters and (largely) to the film's brand recognition, Lightyear became the first Pixar film since 2019 to be given a real theatrical release. And the main reason it bombed was, I believe, because everyone and most importantly families had gotten used to being able to watch those movies on Disney+ for a lot cheaper. Even if that one waited two months to come to the service.
As for Strange World, it was widely observed that Disney didn't give it any marketing push and a majority of people weren't even aware of its existence. To me, the main reason is that Disney doesn't bother to hype up movies that they don't really believe in. Strange World was one such film, a WDAS movie that isn't a fairytale or a musical (and isn't safe from the kind of conservative hate campaigns that Disney tends to avoid). Disney has a long history of letting their studios make films outside of the cookie cutter but release them with little fanfare. They can now easily be written off as Disney+ fodder.
Disney absolutely still relies on their animation studios for blockbusters, but they've noticed which formula works best for each. Pixar is never as successful as when it does sequels. WDAS routinely hits the 1 billion mark when it makes new additions to their fairytale canon, or bombastic musicals (see Encanto's massive success). It's no surprise then that they're now pushing WDAS, a notoriously sequel-averse studio, into making a third Frozen and a second Zootopia, and that a _fifth_ Toy Story is suddenly in the works at Pixar alongside... Inside Out 2. Any other project is bound to get buried in the release schedule or dumped on Disney+.
So what kind of movies are core to Disney's strategy? Star Wars is on a kind of hiatus and lives on Disney+. We have Marvel of course, which isn't in the healthiest state but still produces frequent hits. Avatar is now a big one. Any animated movie that fits their preferred formula. And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark, and I've no doubt that their lifeless Little Mermaid clone will do the same. I think Disney is now suffering from the same "we grew too big, too quick" realization as every other tech and entertainment giant, and they're definitely reeling from a few recent failures, but I wouldn't use Strange World or Turning Red as the poster children of their troubles; they never bet much on those anyway.
Unfortunately, when Disney makes the most bland and forgettable nostalgia bait, they still make the "movies people want to see".
(Apologies for the wall of text, I've had thoughts about the state of Disney for a while!)
They have some good stuff. Spider Man: No way home.
Mandalorian is pretty good, Star wars: Andor was the best Star Wars I've seen in a while. I guess a lot of people missed out on Andor given that almost everything Star wars has been mostly crap.
I think part of the explanation for your list involves the fact that people don't like movies that much anymore.
> The first round will begin this week, and managers will soon start to notify affected employees. A second, larger round of layoffs will take place in April, Iger said, with several thousand staffers let go. A third round of layoffs will then occur “before the beginning of the summer” to reach the company’s planned goal of eliminating 7,000 jobs.
For the people at Disney wondering whether they'll get hit in one of the waves of indiscriminate axe swings, sounds less like the happiest place on earth, and more like the anxiety and stress of living under a wicked stepmother.
It was never the happiest place on earth for a lot of the non-creative types. No idea how the creatives at Disney felt.
For instance, they used to have unpaid interns do full days at theme parks in-character and people would fly all the way from Australia for that privilege because, you know, you get to be Peter Pan for a summer.
It's sort of the same experience as Amazon. If you're a customer, it's the greatest thing ever. If you're an employee, not so much.
> For instance, they used to have unpaid interns do full days at theme parks in-character and people would fly all the way from Australia for that privilege because, you know, you get to be Peter Pan for a summer.
Want to hear one even crazier than this? I literally have to PAY a company in order to go there and move heavy weights around to the point of exhaustion. Insanity.
I shouldn't have to pay extra so my kids don't get treated like trash (let people skip in front of them in line, removing them from their seat when someone with a special badge shows up, etc...) on a "dream" vacation.
The disease? Disney is out of touch with it's customer base.
if somebody was willing to pay more than you as a customer to get said special badge (which caused your kid to get removed from their cheaper seat), isn't Disney in tune with its customers?
request from privileged customer: "we want to pay more for a better, more privileged experience"
offering from disney: exactly what the request wants, for more money/profit
you might not agree with it because you're in the "i don't want to pay the more expensive premium" camp (which, granted, most people would be). it's just... that doesn't matter when you are competing/have those who are willing to pay the premium on top of what you're willing to pay, does it?
they're running an experiences business and they've been able to find customers who are willing to pay more (than you)
> we want to pay more for a better, more privileged experience
The person who wants their experience to be better by making other customer have a bad experience is a customer to be avoided. They cannibalize your market.
I'm surprised that's it, given how so many of there franchises like Marvel and Star Wars aren't too doing well, and then still trying to deal with Covid changing the way they run the Parks.
I can't imagine them getting political with Ron Desantis helped at all, he's extremely popular in Florida.
Thinking about the Pixar brand, I still the remember the first I thought Pixar isn't as good anymore was with Brave. I also remember being surprised a large amount of the original Pixar teams left to Dreamworks or other places.
I expect Bog Iger was brought in as a Hatchet Man, he already fired Victoria Alonso an executive with disney for 17 years rumored to be behind marvel phase 4 and 5 failures.
He never really left, he kept his office for years after "stepping down" while having meetings without his replacement. He literally saw covid coming and decided to "step-down" to save his image before taking back control last year
Feel bad for those employees, being on the line of fire myself at Google and waiting to find out if I have a job next month.
That being said, how on Earth has Disney managed to screw up 10 years of Marvel success? They spread themselves too thin trying to create too many shows without proper planning. And that's only focusing on Marvel. They also managed to piss people off with their half-assed Star Wars trilogy, to the point that you can clearly perceive directors going into different and incompatible paths for films that should build on the predecessor.
Edit: They should be two franchises that print money, but instead we get the current headlines.
I've yet to see a layoff announcement without the comments being about how it was done wrong. No notice? How horrible, everyone is going to be anxious all the time, people were caught off guard, how do they know when their job is safe. Notice? How horrible, this has to be a power play. No direct responsibility? How horrible, someone should be blamed for this. Direct responsibility? How horrible, they don't really care about this and it doesn't affect them enough. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the announcement to "The entire board committed seppuku after announcing the layoffs" to be met with comments of how horrible, don't they know how many more problems this chaos from lack of upper management will cause for the remaining workers?
The truth is the only acceptable way to perform a layoff is to not need to perform a layoff, be it more profit or not over expanding. Though as a warning, there will be upset if the company doesn't expand fast enough or doesn't invest the profit too. If reality hits it's a matter of avoiding ways of doing it which are worse not finding a way everyone is going to agree was a great way to get rid of a bunch of jobs.
I agree the only acceptable layoff is no layoff. I think it's justified to criticize a layoff, no matter how it is performed. And I agree that criticizing the mechanics of each layoff is misguided.
I think layoffs leave a bad taste in the mouth because they seem to suggest that some employees weren't necessary. If you aren't cutting programs or products, you are either saying some employees did nothing, or the remaining employees will shoulder more work for the same pay.
I wonder: if layoffs were accompanied by a list of programs/products that are being sunset, if it would be more palatable.
It's quite easy to be busy doing nothing that turns out to be worthwhile. Both down to an individual level (I'm very guilty over the years) or up to a division/project in a large corporation. In this frame it's not that the employees did nothing it's what the employees were hired to do gave no profit. Sometimes that's okay, it's close and it'll be worthwhile. Other times it's a moonshot bet in which case it lasts as long as the company can afford to make moonshots. In some cases it's not okay, the company expected the division to be profitable and it's costing the business. In none of these cases is it about some employees doing nothing or others taking more load. Those are both certainly options but to list them as the only options is to work backwards from your conclusion about layoffs not forwards from reasons they occur.
I won't disagree that my response reads with a bias. I'm an employee, not an employer, I can't deny that.
But you say "sometimes... It's close". I think you have to allow for the scenario where it's not close, and management mad a bad call, and need to suffer the consequences. But THEY don't suffer the consequences... And their subordinates do.
I do think there are definitely occasions it's beyond fair to blame management for a bad call and expect consequences. One of the most blatant cases for this being well deserved, IMO, is when management makes cuts and then expects to (or does) receive bonuses for hitting budget targets. You didn't hit budget targets, you bombed and cut back so it didn't look like you failed. Another is serial mismanagement where it's not just a mistake it's a regular failure to be able to manage successfully in a typical scenario.
However, just as it doesn't make sense when people call for blood/resignation/pay cut/etc of an engineer the instant they make a costly mistake (even though some poorly run places of course will), it's not a given that a mistake in management was made therefore we need the blood of some in management. The question on consequences, in both cases, is usually "would it be expected someone else in that role is doing significantly better at avoiding these problems" not "has this employee ever made a mistake".
I appreciate verbing, but I don't think this is what happened when the user submitted the (now corrected) title. Not on purpose, anyway. I think what happened is a confusion between "lay off" and "layoff" (which also happens between "log in" and "login", "set up" and "setup", etc).
There's no motivation to verbify "layoff", since the verb version already exists and is very close ("lay off").
Not "Lays off," "Let go," "Set free to chase their dreams," or whatever other euphemism you care to find. "Fired" is the word, and it's a perfectly good one to use, unless you're a PR flunky trying to tiptoe and weasel word around what just happened.
Firing and laying off are different things. You're fired if you're more or less at fault (misconduct, not meeting goals, not doing the job requirements, failing a drug test, violating policies, etc, etc); you're laid off if the position is being eliminated.
Sometimes there's a little bit of both; when you eliminate 7000 positions, you may or may not consider recent performance reviews while you're doing it. Sometimes the employer doesn't want to go through the process of firing for cause, so they claim it's a lay-off, etc. But there's a difference.
Layoff is better than the Britishism "made redundant" anyway. The action to make someone's position redundant generally happens at a different time as when the position is declared to be redundant. A merger may make many people's positions redundant, but they won't generally be laid off until a later time when their position is declared redundant.
Firing means at fault. Layoff is not at fault. For an employee collecting EI or looking for another job, the distinction between the two makes a world of difference.
There is a deep hypocrisy in using such a dramatic insult about hubris to describe what is merely a person pointing out a (now corrected) grammatical mistake in a headline (which may or may not be in the process of evolving to no longer be a grammatical mistake, but as of now it's still pretty obviously wrong to say "Disney layoffs 7000 people").
The last few years have been very capital-rich and interest-low. In that environment you hire. When the capital dries up and interest rises you lay off. If you don't lay people off in the bad times you can't hire them in the good times. Disney is evil for many, many reasons, but laying off three percent of their workforce when interest rates go through the roof and they're in a cold war with a lunatic governor is not one of them.
In that environment you hire. When the capital dries up and interest rises you lay off.
This sort of MBA-logic, algorithmic approach to business is why American corporate life is so terrible.
Let's see some vision and leadership for a change. Instead, we get endless cycles of resume-padding for management and scapegoating for the people creating the business value.
> If there was a better way to do things companies would be doing it.
One economist says to the other, "look, there's $20 on the ground!" The first replies, "nonsense, if there were, someone would have picked it up already!"
This attitude needs to stop. We have normalized treating people like machines that can just be turned off and on at a whim.
Sometimes a layoff is necessary, but we have gotten to a point where it’s just a normalized no foul action that actually raises stock prices instead of being seen as a failure of leadership.
Maybe Disney couldn’t prevent these layoffs. I don’t really think that their current struggle with DeSantis is what’s behind this.
For the record, they had a profitable year last year ($28 billion profit), and the year before that.
People keep talking about layoffs like they are no big deal and people just have a bad week or two and then have another job and everything is just fine. We’re talking about a country where people’s healthcare is tied to their employer. Where many people are living paycheck to paycheck or don’t have savings enough to whether a prolonged unemployment.
People really need to stop acting like layoffs are no big thing and we should all just accept them without complaint as seasonal inconveniences.
> This attitude needs to stop. We have normalized treating people like machines that can just be turned off and on at a whim.
Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of all the money that just got made by treating employees as disposable.
Any profit-driven company would literally feed its employees into a meat grinder if it were not illegal and it made the stock price or valuation go up. "Ethical" concerns that don't increase profit might not as well exist.
"Any profit-driven company would literally feed its employees into a meat grinder if it were not illegal and it made the stock price or valuation go up."
This is uncomfortably true, at least for too many companies.
Unfortunately, though, our society lets them get away with it. Too many people are willing to just shrug and say "that's business" and act like there's simply no other way to be.
Yeah... Investors should wise-up to top top management that specialize in destroying every form of non-tangible capital for short term gains, banking in a commission, and moving to a healthier company.
But well, in practice "investor" is really a name for powerless people whose money is managed by those same people applying the con. So I don't think they will wise-up any soon.
> In that environment you hire. When the capital dries up and interest rises you lay off. If you don't lay people off in the bad times you can't hire them in the good times.
Imagine if it were reversed.
In that environment you strike and demand higher wages. If you don't demand better wages in good times you won't have a decent salary in bad times.
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! It's your pal Mickey Mouse here, and I've got some news to share with all of you. Now, don't get too worried, but it looks like some of our Disney friends are going to be saying goodbye real soon.
That's right, as much as it pains us to say it, we've got to do what's best for our company and that means making some tough decisions. So, if you hear from your manager that you're part of the first round of layoffs, please know that we're thinking of you and wishing you all the best.
But don't you worry, because Disney is still going to be the most magical place on earth! We're going to keep bringing joy and happiness to all of our guests, and we know that our remaining cast members will continue to make dreams come true.
So, let's all stick together and keep that Disney spirit alive. We may be going through some changes, but we'll always be a family. Thanks for all you do, and keep on smiling!
Gawrsh! Hello, all my wonderful Disney coworkers. I'm so sorry to have to give you some not-so-magical news today. According to a memo from our CEO Bob Iger, the company will be laying off some of our fellow cast members in the coming weeks. Oh boy, I know this isn't easy to hear.
The first round of layoffs will begin this week, and managers will be letting affected employees know soon. Then, a second, even larger wave of layoffs will happen in April, with several thousand employees being let go. Finally, a third round of layoffs will occur before summer, all to reach the company's goal of eliminating 7,000 jobs.
Gosh, it's so tough to have to say goodbye to our colleagues and friends, but we have to remember that we are all part of a team, and sometimes tough decisions have to be made to keep our company moving forward. It's all part of the circle of life, as Simba would say!
Disney is a special place, an important part of so many people's lives. We have to keep delivering the magic to our audiences and guests, even if it means making difficult decisions. We will get through this together, and we will continue to make dreams come true every day.
Stay strong, my friends, and remember to keep smiling!
Perhaps you should read the full memo before commenting? The two entire paragraphs prior to that sentence made it perfectly clear management axed the positions.
Don't be dense. The use of euphemism is what the OP finds objectionable. Leaving implies a choice. These people are getting booted and the company is using weasel words to gloss over the fact that this was a conscious decision that was made by people working for the company and it will cause harm to the people effected to the benefit of the company.
No, the OP just latched on the bait the writer laid out there. The memo made it very clear in the lead up to that sentence that management was responsible.
It's, like, using active voice. Like it's a thing the employees are actively, purposefully, doing or perpetrating. Of course it doesn't actually unambiguously say "and they've fully consciously decided they would like to no longer work to", but it's definitely language that's designed to, however ineffectively, not draw attention to the blatant fact that the company has chosen to fire people.
That’s kind of like pointing at the guy openly peeing into the pool and saying to those around you, you know, that guy’s actions aren’t doing him any favors of how we perceive him, then tossing your empty soda bottle into the pool.
Poor treatment of their employees (IT laid off then forced to train cheaper replacement staff) is more than enough reason. Any working person has solid ground to not be on the side of Disney.
How do you get from public announcements of layoffs (ostensibly based on failure of several movies), to market inefficiencies from governmental subsidies, to forced labor camps?
Well you see, any suggestion of rules or laws that are pro-worker smell like communism. And as we all know, even the vaguest hint of communism automatically results in millions of people dying in forced labor camps, because nuance in politics is dead.
I didn't think I was the one being cynical in a discussion where someone equated better standards around hiring and layoff practices to forced labor camps...
It's not even in "slippery slope fallacy" territory anymore. It's like arguing that kids throwing rocks in their back yard leads to earthquakes.
Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M.
It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.
Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget.
They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs.
You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)