Disney has enormous reserves of trademarks, content and goodwill. If the Marvel and Star Wars things are over - and they probably are - Disney can shrug them off and carry on.
Oh no. Sure, they have reached their high point, but they will always be with us.
Exactly, look at the people losing their minds over the Snow White thing.
Right now, it dwarfs everything else.
I have been reading the Substack of a certain Ted Gioia who claims in some of his posts that are not paywalled, among many other things, that Disney is not doing well at all and might be ready to be bought by another big corporation, probably Apple if they are foolish enough. He does not come across as a right wing nutter at all to me, if at all, he is too idealistic in his appreciation of artists, creativity and his dismissal of CEOs when they are more financially/technocratically than artistically oriented.
I have no beef in this argument, but I will follow it: he has made me curious about the future developments. Reading about that same subject here feeds my confirmation bias.
I’m sure most of us know all that. But bringing up that phrase is just going to lead to an argument about whether said phrase has any actual merit in general.
Besides, an aphorism without explanation or argument doesn’t really contribute anything to the discussion. It doesn’t actually say what Disney did or how it cost them money.
His comments, however, suggest his audience is primarily the anti-woke people.
But that seems to gloss over the question at hand: not whether “the people losing their minds over the Snow White thing” involves bigotry, but whether “the Snow White thing” will involve profit. The question seems to me to be whether it’ll make a lot of money (with a side discussion of whether it would’ve made a lot more, if they’d done things differently) or whether it’ll fail to break even (but could’ve).
Maybe, I seldom read them, but it is a well known plague of the times that fanatics are more vocal than moderates. I, for instance, never commented there. Anyway, I am non paying reader and have noticed that the subject of Disney going downhill has appeared three or four times in the last year, which made me raise an eyebrow, and now I read about that here.
OK, I will read the comments later. Gotta go now, says my wife. Can’t argue against that.
I believe you mean it little persons everything else.
One of Disney’s recent disasters that wasn’t a theatrical release:
Note that Disney is one of the three main examples given in the Wikipedia article on the phrase “go woke, go broke”.
Disney also suffered low park attendance due to the North American wildfires earlier this year, record breaking heat waves in July, and generally unpredictable weather conditions. People don’t want to fork over Disney levels of cash when unpredictable weather could easily ruin their very expensive vacation.
Disney is also facing stiffer competition from other theme parks like Universal Orlando. Some articles are also citing that people are just sick of Disney’s price gouging. Not only have admission rates far outpaced inflation for the last several decades, but Disney is also charging for things that used to be free. With the economy still rather iffy, folks are choosing to spend their money more wisely on less expensive vacation options.
Airline fares were also high over the summer, which further contributed to the high cost of a Disney vacation, again giving more incentive to choose a less expensive option.
From the articles I have seen, financial experts do tend to agree that “go woke, go broke” is part of the issue, but outside of clickbait articles, they also universally agree that it’s not the entire issue.
You also have to factor in the overall result of Disney’s price gouging. While park attendance is down, the profit per guest has increased due to the higher prices that guests have to pay for everything. Economics 101 says that there’s a sweet spot for maximizing profits. You can sell a lot of stuff at lower prices or less stuff at higher prices, and somewhere in that mix is where your company will make the most money. So decreasing attendance isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the higher costs result in greater overall profits.
Disney is a HUGE company. To put it in perspective, Disney’s revenue is roughly equal to the entire GDP of Uruguay. It may have suffered a bit this year, but it is nowhere even close to dying.
From the filmmaking perspective, it seems like their two major franchises, Marvel and Star Wars, have simultaneously reached a level of saturation that might not be sustainable in the short term. Their two best players are long overdue for a period of rest.
The idea of Apple buying Disney has been around since 2006 according to this Wikipedia article. Disney’s market capitalization is about $168 billion but Apple is worth close to $3 trillion, so it’s possible but unlikely.
All I know is, I ordered a couple of posters of stills from the new Snow White months ago and they haven’t shown up yet. I just sit staring longingly at the UPS truck, singing.
Maybe you’re scaring them away.
No, someday his prints will come.
Maybe the driver doesn’t like being greeted as “Ho”.
Another thing to bear in mind: the media-entertainment industry as a whole is not having a grand time, stock-market-wise. If Disney were “dying”, Warner/Discovery would be getting buried alive. And as mentioned, the theme-park side of Disney’s business is running up against the limits of the citizenry’s valuation of purchasing power when it comes to destination vacationing.
I’ve seen lots of “go woke go broke” comments about the Marvels movie. The only thing woke I can see is that they dared to employ women. It’s not rational so it’s not worth fighting.