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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 b
by Syonyk 4y ago
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.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)
- conanbatt 4y ago> 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.
- notafraudster 4y agoCrucially, 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.
- nohaydeprobleme 4y agoYes, 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
- munificent 4y agoI'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.
- ultrasaurus 4y agoAccording 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.
- Syonyk 4y ago> ...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." [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/disney-q1-2023-earnings/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/disney-q1-2023-earnings/
- jefflinwood 4y agoIf 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.
- bigfatfrock 4y ago"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" Not exactly the money machine I was envisioning!
- Syonyk 4y agoNope. For comparison, a recent movie that performed well at the box office was Top Gun Maverick. $1500M box office on a $170M budget - that involved flying and filming an awful lot of hours in "rather expensive to run jets."
- BryantD 4y agoThat’s a movie that performed in the top 5 all time domestically, so probably better not to use it as a target.
- marcosdumay 4y agoI think the GP's point is to compare the costs. At least, that the most interesting point there.
- marcosdumay 4y agoWell, for it to be a replacement for the theaters, it would have to be quite expensive and wouldn't ever become mainstream. If they are going for a mainstream service, Netflix style, it won't be able to replace theaters. Disney seems to want both, so they targeted their service at neither.
- gedy 4y agoI'm still blown away at how CGI movies cost this much to make, market, and distribute in the digital age?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI 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.
- recursivecaveat 4y agoThe 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.
- illiarian 4y ago> Its CGI As if CGI was cheap or easy to make.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoWhen 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.
- illiarian 4y ago> 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.
- eigenvalue 4y agoAs 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.
- silisili 4y agoGoing 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.
- edanm 4y agoI'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.
- JohnFen 4y agoThe original Jungle Book holds up extremely well for me. I can't think of very many movies that are better.
- gambiting 4y agoSure, 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.
- nightski 4y agoWe saw all these on Disney+.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y agoTheir marvel line seems to be a money printer.
- phpisthebest 4y agoTheir Marvel line was a money printer... There is some inertia left in the properties but you can see it dropping like a rock... Same with Star Wars... They are killing their golden gooses
- babypuncher 4y agoStar Wars hasn't even had a new movie since before the Pandemic
- phpisthebest 4y agoYes, They killed that before the Pandemic just like they Killed Marvel.... That last Star Wars movie was terrible.... I would rather watch 2 hours of nothing but Jarjar Binks than that movie...
- lbotos 4y agoAndor is pretty great IMO (surprisingly)
- red-iron-pine 4y agoThat would be worse than the fabled X-mas special
- r00fus 4y agoBook of Boba Fett is claimed to be worse than the X-Mas special.
- Loughla 4y ago>Same with Star Wars... They are killing their golden gooses How is this true of star wars?
- deanCommie 4y agoKeep 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.
- orra 4y agoPlus there's Holywood Accounting. Hollywood filmmakers are famous for their film expenses being as fictitious as their plots.
- gamblor956 4y agoThe 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.
- deanCommie 4y agoToday I learned!
- toast0 4y ago> 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. [1] https://deadline.com/2022/01/turning-red-skips-theaters-disney-premiere-1234906438/ https://deadline.com/2022/01/turning-red-skips-theaters-disn...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Syonyk 4y agoI don't believe it performed any better in disk sales, though I can't say what it did for streaming one way or another. You can drop it from the data set and it doesn't change the argument, though. Disney's been dropping some impressive flops lately.
- dawnerd 4y agoReally it's just a Disney+ movie, no one really buying it on disk.
- Waterluvian 4y agoThe 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.
- acchow 4y agoDisney 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
- BryantD 4y agoOther 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.
- Syonyk 4y agoI don't believe any of those have been Disney, though...
- geoffpado 4y agoAll of them are Disney. 20th Century (Avatar) and Marvel (the rest) are Disney properties.
- kbar13 4y agomarvel is disney
- BryantD 4y agoYeah, 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y agoHow did it cost $175M to make Turning Red?
- alistairSH 4y agoProbably "Holywood Accounting" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting Various sub-entities of the parent (Disney) charging each other service fees to jack up production costs and lower profit (and therefore tax obligations).
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoThey need to make one called Turning Green
- havblue 4y agoI mean, the new movies and shows in general aren't very good, but I'm surprised how good Bluey is. I think I like it better than my kids.
- evan_ 4y agoBluey is licensed, Disney doesn't have any part in it except distributing it.
- PenguinCoder 4y agoBluey is an amazing show and one I'm happy to have the kiddos watching. It also has nothing to do with Disney. They just distribute it basically.
- john1633 4y ago> I think I like it better than my kids. You would choose a cartoon over your kids? :)
- evan_ 4y agosome days...
- gambiting 4y agoI'm not entirely sure what it is, but I absolutely can't stand Bluey. I'd rather watch cocomelon than bluey, and cocomelon is actual cancer for eyes.
- havblue 4y agoIt 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.
- tomatotomato37 4y agoOne 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
- Animats 4y agoDisney 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.
- munificent 4y agoPuss 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.
- Hayvok 4y agoI’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.
- AussieWog93 4y agoEncanto's pretty fun. No dodgy propaganda, and the music is even better than Moana.
- themitigating 4y agoDodgy propaganda?
- AussieWog93 4y agoThe parent was complaining about modern Disney films containing (I'm assuming "woke") propaganda. Encanto was just a really relatable story about a family.
- VBprogrammer 4y agoOh come on, the level of wokeness was off the charts! It had a female body builder and the lead character even had glasses for crying out loud. /s
- glitchc 4y ago[flagged]
- mcphage 4y ago> 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.
- gamblor956 4y agoTurning 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.
- themitigating 4y ago2022 box office numbers are down 40% across the board compared to 2019
- samwillis 4y agoDisney 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.
- JeremyNT 4y agoDisney 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.
- stuckinhell 4y agoI 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 just isn't making good movies anymore.
- matt-attack 4y ago> Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. Disney just released Avatar Way of Water which made $2.3B at the global box office and became the third highest grossing movie of all time.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoAlso 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. [0] https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinematic-Universe#tab=summary https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinemati...
- magic_hamster 4y agoI 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).
- stonogo 4y agoYou can blame their "going broke" performance on whatever you want, since they're demonstrably not: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/gross-p...
- mcphage 4y ago> 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.
- HervalFreire 4y agoThey 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Kyrio 4y agoI'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!)
- yowzadave 4y agoTurning 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.
- hintymad 4y agoI 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
- tzs 4y ago"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.
- etempleton 4y agoAlmost 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.
- tzs 4y ago> 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.