I flagged this - it seems too clearly flame bait. If it was an honest mistake, my apologies. Disney had three movies in 2023 which took more than $200 million at the US box office
As much as I despised for example the first new Star Wars, The Force Awakens:
"The film grossed $2.07 billion worldwide, breaking various box office records and becoming the highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada, the highest-grossing film of 2015, and the third-highest-grossing film at the time of its release"
People forget that the movie came out nine years ago and shouldn't pass for "recent years", which the discussion above is about. The movie also primarily sold through hype to kids who grew up with the prequels, which had little to do with the quality. People, including me, still lived in denial back then. It wasn't until the second movie that my friends realized how terrible Star Wars had become and promised to never watch a Disney movie at the cinema again. A reputation Disney seems to have embraced considering the countless discussions of their decline.
"It grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2017"
and part 3:
"grossed over $1.077 billion worldwide, making it the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2019 "
Cannot really be called flops either. And the Mandalorian is highly succesful as well. And probably some other movies, I don't know, I do not follow. My point is, that I share the criticism of how bad Star Wars became under Disney, I dropped out, after they seriously introduced yet another death star. But commercially they were highly succesful.
Brand erosion takes time, so "force awakens" was seen by nearly every star wars fan, giving it a try. But if they were disappointed they were less likely to see it's sequel "the last jedi" which numbers show that I believe. If trust was further shaken by the quality of "the last jedi" then the numbers for it's sequel "the rise of skywalker" would reflect that. If trust was further shaken by the TV offerings like "Mandelorian" or "Book of Boba Fett" or "obi-wan kenobi" show, then those would also progressively have less and less viewership and less and less subscribers to streaming services like Disney+.
A business can do something that makes a ton of money and still tarnishes their brand and their relationship with their fans. So those fans thinking its a flop, even if it was a financial success isn't quite wrong.
They were flops even if they made money because their expectations were so infinitely sky-high.
Force Awakens? Everyone who had ever seen Star Wars went to see it (extended family had a tradition of seeing Star Wars movies when they came out). Later ones didn’t have that, and we’ve never seen the last one.
Elemental obviously outperformed expectations but was no Toy Story. Wish is not doing well and looks unlikely to recover.
We’re long gone from the era of every single Disney (or Pixar) animated film being an absolute instant classic and powerhouse.
(Part of this may be the huge number of live action remakes - even if financially successful they seem entirely forgettable).
Star Wars is destroyed beyond redemption by now, and the same goes for Indiana Jones. Pixar is also on a downwards trajectory, and whoever says otherwise is deluding himself/herself.
Pixar is just a movie studio now, churning out basic animated movies. They’re no longer head-and-shoulders above everyone, and other studios are certainly competitive or even outclassing.
Turning Red and Teenage Kraken have a superficially similar plot and the Pixar one is much “better made” in many ways, but neither is earth-shattering.
And how much did those movies cost to make? I think the movies you are referring to were expecting to make 500m or more. They needed to make about 500 to break even!
Disney said have some successes last year. But they aren't as impressive as you might think
Box Office is not the yardstick disney uses, that's just the first phase of the disney wheel. They make oodles of money in merchandise and theme park content that's based on the same (expensive) IP as the movie. When they don't break even on the movie, they'll generally break even or make money on the IP behind the movie.
Here's the problem with that analysis, how do you attribute revenue to a specific movie? Will people attend the theme parks or spend more at them because of [movie X]? It's the same problem you have with streaming. Will people subscribe or stay subscribed to D+ longer because of [movie X]?
Until you can answer one or both in a repeatable, predictable way, we can wave our hands and say "it makes money later!" or "it doesn't make money later!" and neither is provable.
One other aspect that we CAN prove: streaming kills DVD sales. That's a revenue stream that is gone and won't be coming back so we have yet another deficit to fill.
Until then, Box Office and merchandising are the ONLY numbers that we, analysts, and stockholders can point at where "You put in $X and got out $Y" for their movie business. And as of right now, that puts Disney's 2023 numbers deeply negative.
To be clear, I totally agree with you. I think the success of theme parks and merchandise has been covering up mediocre IP from Disney for a while, and that fact is dangerous to their future prospects.
However, trying to balance this critique with some fairness to their strategy, it is difficult to disambiguate "the strategy isn't working" from "the strategy is helping us float across some mediocre years until we chance upon the next Frozen". It's kind of like VC returns, where it's 10 "%" of their IP (Star Wars, Mickey, Frozen, Toy Story, Marvel, etc.) that drive 90% of their performance. 2023 was definitely a poor "vintage" for Disney IP.
That being said, Disney has rebounded from many spells of mediocrity, and their theme parks, merchandise, and old IP (now monetized through Disney+ as you say) have kept them afloat through those poor periods.
Most recently they've only been able to jump-start the IP engines through acquisition (Pixar 2006, Marvel in 2009). I'm not a Disney shareholder myself, but I agree that the IP tap seems to be running dry and that's very concerning. I don't think Epic Games has anywhere near the value ceiling that Marvel and Pixar did.
> One other aspect that we CAN prove: streaming kills DVD sales. That's a revenue stream that is gone and won't be coming back so we have yet another deficit to fill.
Which is why Disney+ is its own streaming service. Keeps all the eggs in the same basket.
So far, streaming hasn't made nearly the same amount as DVD sales and it's ridiculously expensive to run one.
That said, licensing to other streaming services often does work. You get revenue for the cost of a contract vs having the infrastructure costs and nebulous ROI. You get the added benefit of direct attribution because you can tell "we licensed [movie X] for $X for Y years".
That would traditionally be the case, but the merchandising is bombing too, and (anecdata time) I can confirm this through personal observation: 80%-off sales of Star Wars merchandise in a local toy store, and my kids and their circle having a keen sense of which IP they like (unsurprising spoiler: it’s the stuff based on good movies, not the stuff based on bad movies).
I think the surest example of this is the Lego Star Wars toys more and more being obviously adult-targeted.
Not everything can be Frozen, but the pallet of Wish merchandise at Walmart is still there and now all marked down (except the Lego because they know that someone will buy it eventually for parts).
Elemental merchandising was completely non-existent and that was a mistake, people enjoyed that.
