Yeah, just need to start a cult around your movies and you’re good to go.
It might work for Disney too, if Disney returned to the model it used 40 or 50 years ago. Back then, there would be a new Disney picture every four to six months or so. I’m sure many of us remember movies like The Monkey’s Uncle, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Love Bug, That Darn Cat, No Deposit No Return, and The Million Dollar Duck. Live-action comedies, using few if any special effects, often with a touch of romance, but only a touch. Not always low-budget, but never over-the-top budget-wise. These put kids’ butts in theatre seats, provided Disney a steady income, and the movies could be shown later, often in two parts, on the weekly Disney TV show.
I don’t think Disney is dying, but I do think it might want to reconsider the once-a-year-or-two big expensive live-action CGI blockbusters that rehash its earlier animated films. Disney is not Marvel, and IMHO, it shouldn’t try to be. Disney does animation well, and it can stick to a big animated picture every two years or so (Frozen, Tangled) if it feels the need to do so; but to keep the lights on and the rent paid without worrying, it perhaps should return to the low-budget live-action comedies it made back in the day; and avoid the big-budget live-action CGI-laden stuff…
Oh, there are lots of examples. Here’s a list of some, but there are many more:
If you make a great, entertaining movie, they will come. The problem is that it’s really hard to make a great , entertaining movie, and even harder to predict how it it will do in a global marketplace. There is also a limited supply of people who make great movies, but an endless supply of mediocrities and hacks.
Much better to take a property of known interest and profitability, add in lots of diverse but bland characters to attract everyone and turn off no one, make sure you don’t offend anyone or any country critical to the movie’s success, and go all in. Create a spectacle few other studios can manage, market the,living hell out of it, and merch the crap out of it. Guaranteed profit! Marvel characters make great Christmas toys. Wes Anderson characters, not so much.
This has been working for Marvel because they managed to be great and entertaining while still ticking the boxes. But eventually the properties become franchises and turned over to workaday studio people and they turn out formula stuff done very professionally but not special in any way.
This works, until the quality drops to the point where the property loses its value to the public. Then you’re boned.
Lemme look at the financials.
Earnings per share, year ending
9/2020 -1.58
9/2021 1.1
9/2022 1.73
9/2023 1.29
Does that look like a collapse in earnings? Not to me.
Ok, what’s the Price/Earnings (PE) ratio like? A high PE ratio indicates lots of expected growth in profits (or sometimes unusually low earnings for the previous year, which doesn’t apply in this case). A low PE ratio indicates the opposite.
For comparison, the S&P 500 has a PE of 20.4. Exxon has a PE of 10.3. IBM has a PE of 20.1. Google has a PE of 26.5. NVidia (which Wall Street is wild about) has a PE of 62.9. And Disney has a PE of 71.7. Yahoo’s algorithm says that Disney is “Near Fair Value”.
Wall Street isn’t the final authority on these matters, but I think it’s fair to say that they are optimistic about Disney’s prospects. Those arguing that they are doomed should sell the stock short.
I mean, Disney literally is Marvel, though.
In fact, yes; but practically-speaking, it’s not. If I was a parent, I’d look to Disney for family-friendly entertainment for my under-12 kids: the Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Elsa, Simba, singable songs and fun side characters. If I was an adolescent boy (I won’t attempt to speak for girls, since I’ve never been one), I’d look to Marvel for action, superheroes, CGI special effects, and other things that attract that demographic. Gritty, intense drama, lots of explosions, and all that.
Disney and Marvel may be joined at the hip, but they produce two different products for two different audiences. Which is fine, really.
The thing is, they actually do still make movies like this. They just go straight to TV/streaming, are solely intended for kids (not families), and are completely forgettable trash.
It’s been pointed out before in this thread but a link emphasizing it is warranted: profit from a movie isn’t all captured in the box office. For Disney merchandising is a steady big business.
To no small degree movies are commercials for the merchandise (and the park and the cruise line and even the streaming service) as much as anything else. Capturing that cleanly as bottom line is something I’m sure they have teams trying to do.
Well, I did not say either that it was what you said, specifically then, the “substantial bunch of people who simply don’t want the movie they liked when they were 9 changed” are the ones being really silly.
As I am fond of pointing out, there was a time just a few years ago - and it may still be true - that Pixar had generated more revenue from “Cars” themed merchandise than had been generated in ticket sales for every Pixar movie ever made.
As I remember, the sequels to the original Cars movie were generally terrible and not up to the usual Pixar standards. But the merchandise sold very well. And I think much of the merchandise appealed to boys, while many of the Disney films are girl-oriented.
Heh.
There’s a short throwaway scene in the original movie where Lightning McQueen is imagining himself as a attack jet, firing missiles against some adversary or another. About three seconds of screen time.
They made a toy of McQueen-as-F15. Again: 3 seconds on the screen gets a toy.
And sold one of them to my son.
Mel Brooks said it best: Merchandising!
Aside from their Art Books, Cars is the only Pixar merchandise I have ever bought. I have the 24th scale toys of Lightning and Mater. If they had produced a more expansive set of them I would’ve collected them all, but they stopped at two.
That stuff goes on Disney+ now. I saw “The Absent Minded Professor” in theaters way back when, but no one would see it today done that cheaply.
If cheap movies got released as Disney (or Marvel) movies it could destroy the brand, since people expect a certain type of quality. Better to put it on TV, with fewer expectations, or release it as a different brand.
I liked the third one, which had an unexpectedly feminist vibe.
The second one was just dumb.
Cars 2 was misguided in its execution and misunderstood in its viewing. A spy movie set in the Cars universe is a fine idea; making Mater the protagonist with a byzantine plot is not. Relevant to this discussion, though, is that it greatly expanded the scope of merchandising.
It makes more sense when you see it as Pixar/Disney stealing riffing on the classic Speed Racer Anime, specially the episodes where Speed’s little Brother and his chimp found a big clue and spend all the Byzantine episode trying to convince others about what they found.
Add the Interpol agent into the mix (Another character in the Speed Racer cartoon), and one can imagine where they got the main ideas for the movie.