8 ms·

Disney, IP, and “Returns to Marginal Affinity”

70 points by jger15 7y ago

mmastrac 7y ago
It's somewhat terrifying that a single company will effectively own the majority whole market for blockbuster films in NA. Disney has always been a juggernaut but sheesh it's enormous now.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  My thoughts exactly. They've pulled off a Google or Facebook level of domination over their market, it's incredible for a rather old industry.
- post_break 7y ago
  I forget where I saw it but they predicted in the future films would just be called Disney's. Hey what Disney do you want to watch?
eaenki 7y ago
I like the bear and bull case.
skokage 7y ago
I disagree with this article that this is all about their ability to "tell stories", as much as management that's really good at identifying which company to acquire next so they can squeeze every last cent from consumers for whichever IP they are pushing at the time. Most people I've talked to DON'T believe the star wars series has gotten better from a story telling perspective, as this article proposes. I don't think most people believe live-action remakes of their classic cartoons is quality story-telling. I think they are just really good at reading market trends, have enough money in their coffers to acquire whatever is becoming the next big thing, advertise and push it into becoming a cultural phenomenon, then moving onto whatever is next once they've exhausted that IP. Edit - and to be clear, I most likely have a very jaded view here. I don't like disney as a company, nor am I a fan of superhero movies, star wars, or a lot of what the company has been pushing for the last decade or so. I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.
- danShumway 7y ago
  > I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees. That's a really good summation of my views on Disney. It's obvious they know how to build consistently polished stories that will be consistently enjoyable to a wide audience. I respect that. But it's not clear to me that's a goal worth pursuing, or that the artistic value of their movies has gone up because of that. It's good to have some media that's safe and predictable and that is primarily motivated by market trends. But when that's all a company is making, then behind that nice facade lies a deeply cynical way of looking at the world, where creative choices are calculated for broad appeal rather than for their inherent value. I'm not going to say that's all Disney makes. Just that the percentage of films Disney is making that fall into that category is growing at a rapid clip. It's a jaded view in the sense that I'm cynical about Disney, but it's really not me trying to crap on popular things. There are a lot of popular things that are really, really good. But I know when a movie actually feels special and honest to me, when I feel like the author genuinely had a good reason to make it, and made it because they loved it. And Disney movies don't feel that way to me. They're glossy, and pretty, and impressive, and they know the right things to say, but they're made of plastic instead of flesh.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    The insidious thing is that Disney is making an increasing share of all the things, too. I don't understand why they were allowed to buy 20th Century Fox.
    - friedman23 7y ago
      Because when you objectively analyze it, they don't have anything close to a monopoly on content.
      - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
        How can you even say that? I’m dumbfounded. Only in this era of complete erosion of antitrust could this statement be made. Standard Oil would have been awed by this cornering of the market. https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/companies-disney-owns-worldwide/ https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/comp...
draw_down 7y ago
I think this article is trying to convey something worth considering, but I’m not sure because it is so confusingly written.
awl130 7y ago
Author fails to establish a solid correlation (let alone causal relationship) between "storytelling" and affinity. Furthermore, author fails to prove that Disney is better at storytelling than its competitors. He could have first defined "storytelling" and then provided data-driven proof that Disney focuses more on it than its competitors. This is simple enough to do by running such a definition on content (he could use conformity to a three act structure and run it on all movie scripts in the past 20 years, for example). Otherwise we are left with the tautology that Disney content performs better than others because people like it more ("affinity").
tamalpais 7y ago
I have so much respect for Disney and Bob Iger in particular. But something feels lacking about a single company controlling all the best-loved stories in a culture. It’s like a monopoly on sentiment. Until the last 100 years or so it’s been the case that a given culture’s stories — folklores, mythologies, and religions — were in the public domain. And while they were at times subject to tight control, e.g., non-vernacular liturgies, they were more typically “owned” by everyone. I don’t mean this as a criticism of copyright. I support copyright and how it incentivizes cultural creation. But I wonder about whether there’s space for more stories we all own, that can be interpreted by everyone, and, most importantly, that create the same powerful feelings of attachment Disney is so good at creating.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  There are multiple movies of all the stories that the Disney classic animated films are based on. Most of them are not made by Disney... Indeed, at least 3 of them are produced or distributed by Netflix. Copyright doesn't stop people from making movies about folk tales. The cost of making a movie and the generally low returns do.
- SllX 7y ago
  The stories that Disney owns are just a drop in the bucket compared to the whole rest of the world. I mean, no matter what you watch, read, play or listen to, there's only so many hours in the day for any of it. I remember the Aladdin and Lion King movies of my youth fondly, but no more fondly than say, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Smash Bros., Astro Boy, Final Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, Pac-Man, Pokémon, His Dark Materials, Animorphs, or the Harry Potter books. Last I checked, Disney doesn't own any of that and those were just the first handful of examples I pulled out of my hat. I think our media habits are even more fragmented nowadays than they were in my youth, and that's in part because YouTube, Steam, Twitch, Netflix, and the million and one other streaming services we have today didn't exist in the 90s. I think Cable TV was the new hotness, and that was choice compared to mere broadcast television.
  - freddie_mercury 7y ago
    What's more movies get privileged in a weird way over other things. Avengers: Endgame brought in $2.7 billion and is the highest grossing film of all time. Only 5 films ever have broken $2 billion. Phantom of the Opera the musical has made $6 billion, blowing Avengers out of the water. Wicked the musical has grossed $3 billion, more than any movie ever made. Same for Mamma Mia!. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) made $600 million in the first 72-hours, far more than any movie ever. League of Legends makes $1.4 billion a year, again more than any movie ever made. Fortnite makes $2.4 billion. In the UK, more people watched The X Factor than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The book Diary of a Wimpy Kid sold over a million copies in its latest installment. Yet none of those things enter conversations about cultural affinity in the same way movies do.
snowwrestler 7y ago
This article seems like a long and pseudo-technical way of saying that Disney makes a lot of money because they make products that a lot of people like.
- throwawayacont 7y ago
  Worse, it reads like a love letter to a $264.87 billion company, a company responsible for this: >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
nabla9 7y ago
I don't think it's about storytelling at all. Star Wars under Disney or Marvel are not examples of good storytelling. What Disney understands is the brand management. Disney brands are valuable because they are familiar, consistent and safe choices. Disney is the stable food producer in the entertainment business. Using Scorsese's non-cinema as a label for what Disney does not necessarily bad. First 3 star Wars Movies were cinema. People were surprised, exited and blown away. You can't replicate that again and again. Now Star Wars is just Star Wars. People want stable diet of Star Wars that is just like they remember it with minor variations. It's watered down, but very familiar. They keep all the 'best bits' people like. "I have bad feeling about this", "something something dark side".
- habitue 7y ago
  But the article points out that Disney doing that is exactly why Star Wars performance has been lackluster. They're now taking a step back because apparently the public doesn't want a steady drip of Star Wars same-old-same-old
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Star Wars performance “lackluster”? Have you seen the box office returns for them?
    - danShumway 7y ago
      Lackluster compared to Disney's expectations. I think it's somewhat absurd too, but part of the point being made in the conversation around this article is that Disney isn't taking risks or making decisions based on creative output -- they're very, very aggressively following market trends. Their first Star Wars release was one of their highest grossing films in something like a decade, but one bad showing from Solo and suddenly Disney is cutting back on yearly releases. They want movies that are safe and predictable. They want to know before they even start production not just that the film will break even, but that it will make a LOT of money. Clearly based on their own statements, they don't feel that confident about a yearly Star Wars release.
accounn 7y ago
Disney is copystriking the universe.

70 points by jger15 7y ago

It's somewhat terrifying that a single company will effectively own the majority whole market for blockbuster films in NA. Disney has always been a juggernaut but sheesh it's enormous now.

K0SM0S 7y ago
My thoughts exactly. They've pulled off a Google or Facebook level of domination over their market, it's incredible for a rather old industry.
post_break 7y ago
I forget where I saw it but they predicted in the future films would just be called Disney's. Hey what Disney do you want to watch?

eaenki 7y ago

I like the bear and bull case.

skokage 7y ago

I disagree with this article that this is all about their ability to "tell stories", as much as management that's really good at identifying which company to acquire next so they can squeeze every last cent from consumers for whichever IP they are pushing at the time. Most people I've talked to DON'T believe the star wars series has gotten better from a story telling perspective, as this article proposes. I don't think most people believe live-action remakes of their classic cartoons is quality story-telling. I think they are just really good at reading market trends, have enough money in their coffers to acquire whatever is becoming the next big thing, advertise and push it into becoming a cultural phenomenon, then moving onto whatever is next once they've exhausted that IP. Edit - and to be clear, I most likely have a very jaded view here. I don't like disney as a company, nor am I a fan of superhero movies, star wars, or a lot of what the company has been pushing for the last decade or so. I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.

danShumway 7y ago
> I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees. That's a really good summation of my views on Disney. It's obvious they know how to build consistently polished stories that will be consistently enjoyable to a wide audience. I respect that. But it's not clear to me that's a goal worth pursuing, or that the artistic value of their movies has gone up because of that. It's good to have some media that's safe and predictable and that is primarily motivated by market trends. But when that's all a company is making, then behind that nice facade lies a deeply cynical way of looking at the world, where creative choices are calculated for broad appeal rather than for their inherent value. I'm not going to say that's all Disney makes. Just that the percentage of films Disney is making that fall into that category is growing at a rapid clip. It's a jaded view in the sense that I'm cynical about Disney, but it's really not me trying to crap on popular things. There are a lot of popular things that are really, really good. But I know when a movie actually feels special and honest to me, when I feel like the author genuinely had a good reason to make it, and made it because they loved it. And Disney movies don't feel that way to me. They're glossy, and pretty, and impressive, and they know the right things to say, but they're made of plastic instead of flesh.
- thrower123 7y ago
  The insidious thing is that Disney is making an increasing share of all the things, too. I don't understand why they were allowed to buy 20th Century Fox.
  - friedman23 7y ago
    Because when you objectively analyze it, they don't have anything close to a monopoly on content.
    - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
      How can you even say that? I’m dumbfounded. Only in this era of complete erosion of antitrust could this statement be made. Standard Oil would have been awed by this cornering of the market. https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/companies-disney-owns-worldwide/ https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/comp...

draw_down 7y ago

I think this article is trying to convey something worth considering, but I’m not sure because it is so confusingly written.

awl130 7y ago

Author fails to establish a solid correlation (let alone causal relationship) between "storytelling" and affinity. Furthermore, author fails to prove that Disney is better at storytelling than its competitors. He could have first defined "storytelling" and then provided data-driven proof that Disney focuses more on it than its competitors. This is simple enough to do by running such a definition on content (he could use conformity to a three act structure and run it on all movie scripts in the past 20 years, for example). Otherwise we are left with the tautology that Disney content performs better than others because people like it more ("affinity").

tamalpais 7y ago

I have so much respect for Disney and Bob Iger in particular. But something feels lacking about a single company controlling all the best-loved stories in a culture. It’s like a monopoly on sentiment. Until the last 100 years or so it’s been the case that a given culture’s stories — folklores, mythologies, and religions — were in the public domain. And while they were at times subject to tight control, e.g., non-vernacular liturgies, they were more typically “owned” by everyone. I don’t mean this as a criticism of copyright. I support copyright and how it incentivizes cultural creation. But I wonder about whether there’s space for more stories we all own, that can be interpreted by everyone, and, most importantly, that create the same powerful feelings of attachment Disney is so good at creating.

gamblor956 7y ago
There are multiple movies of all the stories that the Disney classic animated films are based on. Most of them are not made by Disney... Indeed, at least 3 of them are produced or distributed by Netflix. Copyright doesn't stop people from making movies about folk tales. The cost of making a movie and the generally low returns do.
SllX 7y ago
The stories that Disney owns are just a drop in the bucket compared to the whole rest of the world. I mean, no matter what you watch, read, play or listen to, there's only so many hours in the day for any of it. I remember the Aladdin and Lion King movies of my youth fondly, but no more fondly than say, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Smash Bros., Astro Boy, Final Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, Pac-Man, Pokémon, His Dark Materials, Animorphs, or the Harry Potter books. Last I checked, Disney doesn't own any of that and those were just the first handful of examples I pulled out of my hat. I think our media habits are even more fragmented nowadays than they were in my youth, and that's in part because YouTube, Steam, Twitch, Netflix, and the million and one other streaming services we have today didn't exist in the 90s. I think Cable TV was the new hotness, and that was choice compared to mere broadcast television.
- freddie_mercury 7y ago
  What's more movies get privileged in a weird way over other things. Avengers: Endgame brought in $2.7 billion and is the highest grossing film of all time. Only 5 films ever have broken $2 billion. Phantom of the Opera the musical has made $6 billion, blowing Avengers out of the water. Wicked the musical has grossed $3 billion, more than any movie ever made. Same for Mamma Mia!. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) made $600 million in the first 72-hours, far more than any movie ever. League of Legends makes $1.4 billion a year, again more than any movie ever made. Fortnite makes $2.4 billion. In the UK, more people watched The X Factor than Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The book Diary of a Wimpy Kid sold over a million copies in its latest installment. Yet none of those things enter conversations about cultural affinity in the same way movies do.

snowwrestler 7y ago

This article seems like a long and pseudo-technical way of saying that Disney makes a lot of money because they make products that a lot of people like.

throwawayacont 7y ago
Worse, it reads like a love letter to a $264.87 billion company, a company responsible for this: >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

nabla9 7y ago

I don't think it's about storytelling at all. Star Wars under Disney or Marvel are not examples of good storytelling. What Disney understands is the brand management. Disney brands are valuable because they are familiar, consistent and safe choices. Disney is the stable food producer in the entertainment business. Using Scorsese's non-cinema as a label for what Disney does not necessarily bad. First 3 star Wars Movies were cinema. People were surprised, exited and blown away. You can't replicate that again and again. Now Star Wars is just Star Wars. People want stable diet of Star Wars that is just like they remember it with minor variations. It's watered down, but very familiar. They keep all the 'best bits' people like. "I have bad feeling about this", "something something dark side".

habitue 7y ago
But the article points out that Disney doing that is exactly why Star Wars performance has been lackluster. They're now taking a step back because apparently the public doesn't want a steady drip of Star Wars same-old-same-old
- scarface74 7y ago
  Star Wars performance “lackluster”? Have you seen the box office returns for them?
  - danShumway 7y ago
    Lackluster compared to Disney's expectations. I think it's somewhat absurd too, but part of the point being made in the conversation around this article is that Disney isn't taking risks or making decisions based on creative output -- they're very, very aggressively following market trends. Their first Star Wars release was one of their highest grossing films in something like a decade, but one bad showing from Solo and suddenly Disney is cutting back on yearly releases. They want movies that are safe and predictable. They want to know before they even start production not just that the film will break even, but that it will make a LOT of money. Clearly based on their own statements, they don't feel that confident about a yearly Star Wars release.

accounn 7y ago

Disney is copystriking the universe.