6 ms·

At risk? They haven’t had hit movie for years. They have destroyed just about everything they’ve touched, from Indiana Jones to Star Wars to Snow White.

by tomcam 3y ago

ahuhz 3y ago
Hit movies don’t really seem to matter to Disney in the grand scheme of things. It’s more about selling merchandise of their already established brands.
jjulius 3y ago
And yet they're still incredibly relevant...
paulddraper 3y ago
By what metric was Star Wars not a hit movie
- bombcar 3y ago
  By comparison to the previous two trilogies, and by performance of offshoots resulting in cancellations. It was supposed to kick off a Marvell-style universe of infinite blockbusters. It didn’t.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    That's not the definition of a flop though
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    The number of hit movies is vanishingly small by those goalposts.
nilamo 3y ago
They've had several hits over the past few years, what nonsense are you spreading? Encanto and Turning Red are both great
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- herbst 3y ago
  When a company is spending more to make a movie than they earn with the movie it's no success just a lot of bought buzz
  - nilamo 3y ago
    Encanto: $150m budget vs $250m box office. So again, "no hit movies" is easily disproven with 10s of time to look into it.
    - Khaine 3y ago
      A movie needs to bring in twice its budget to be profitable[1] is the common rule of thumb. The budget doesn't include things like marketing, and the fact that the box office is shared with the theatre owner. So in your example, it potentially lost money for Disney. The wikipedia article almost says as much [2] "Although it underperformed at the box office ..." [1] https://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-be-profitab-5747305 https://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encanto
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Was Encanto the one they dumped on Disney+ real quick? It might have strongly affected popularity of the song (which is catchy as all hell, and can stand with Let It Go) since that was perhaps the peak. None of the recent Disney animated movies have been “direct to DVD” terrible but they haven’t been exceptionally better than everything else. It used to be that everyone basically considered Disney (and upstart Pixar) to be at the top of the class, and even extremely successful movies like Despicable Me to be a tier or two below.
wnevets 3y ago
> They haven’t had hit movie for years. are we really gonna make up things that are easily disprovable?
michael_nielsen 3y ago
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
- paganel 3y ago
  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.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    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.
- chrismcb 3y ago
  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
  - gen220 3y ago
    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.
    - caseysoftware 3y ago
      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.
sota4077 3y ago
Well this is just straight up false. Moana was a massive success. Frozen is a monstrous success for them. Star Wars not being a success is objectively false. The Force Awakens is the second best selling Star Wars movie of all time.
- chrismcb 3y ago
  Moana came out almost 8 years ago! The force awakens is even older. I think you are proving the OPs point.
  - LarsDu88 3y ago
    And they're making a live action one baby!
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Live action remakes are the new “safe sequel”. I think they should be compared to how well a literal rerelease of the original would do. I think part of the evidence is just how absolutely long lived Frozen 1 has been. Nothing has been able to even come close to unseating that, not even its sequel (they were very smart to keep everything similar enough so that Frozen 2 merchandise can substitute for Frozen 1 in a kid’s eye). It’s very indicative that people jump to movies that have been out for a decade or more, and probably can’t even name most of the more recent releases.
Benjamin_Dobell 3y ago
Frozen is one of the newest entries out of any media franchise to gross more than $10B — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media.... More than Fortnite has grossed. Not too shabby.
- chrismcb 3y ago
  Frozen came out ten years ago and frozen 2 came out five years ago. I think that qualifies as a few years. Granted life has been tough on the movies since some odd event in 2020
  - Benjamin_Dobell 3y ago
    It's relative. No-one else has produced a media franchise that earns as much or more than Disney any more recently. Disney has also produced some of the most recent highest grossing box office films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films. Again, this is relative. We've just had a pandemic followed by writers and actors guild strikes.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Minions is damn close, however. Freaking billion dollar movies and infinite numbers of the yellow dudes everywhere.
  - nirvdrum 3y ago
    If you take "for years" to literally mean "more than one year", sure. I think it's colloquially understood to be far longer than that. "Encanto" came out in 2021 and I'd consider that a hit. The soundtrack saw wide play, everyone I know who's seen it loves it, and they're merchandising the hell out of it. To be fair, I saw "Wish" with my family and we all enjoyed it, but it obviously didn't come close to "Frozen 2" numbers. They're not all hits. With animated film taking years to produce, those perhaps aren't the metric to use. It'll be another few years before the next major animated film by Disney is released. The Marvel movies release more frequently and seem to print money. "Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3" came out last year and has done $845MM¹. ¹ -- https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2977202945/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2977202945/
yellowapple 3y ago
> They haven’t had hit movie for years. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone singing that one song from Encanto I'd be able to buy Disney.
gamblor956 3y ago
Avatar 2 came out just over a year ago is one of the highest grossing movies of all time.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Both avatar movies are somehow insanely high grossing and apparently nobody remembers them at all. It’s a skill set to be sure.

At risk? They haven’t had hit movie for years. They have destroyed just about everything they’ve touched, from Indiana Jones to Star Wars to Snow White.

by tomcam 3y ago

At risk? They haven’t had hit movie for years. They have destroyed just about everything they’ve touched, from Indiana Jones to Star Wars to Snow White.

ahuhz 3y ago

Hit movies don’t really seem to matter to Disney in the grand scheme of things. It’s more about selling merchandise of their already established brands.

jjulius 3y ago

And yet they're still incredibly relevant...

paulddraper 3y ago

By what metric was Star Wars not a hit movie

bombcar 3y ago
By comparison to the previous two trilogies, and by performance of offshoots resulting in cancellations. It was supposed to kick off a Marvell-style universe of infinite blockbusters. It didn’t.
- airstrike 3y ago
  That's not the definition of a flop though
- paulddraper 3y ago
  The number of hit movies is vanishingly small by those goalposts.

nilamo 3y ago

They've had several hits over the past few years, what nonsense are you spreading? Encanto and Turning Red are both great

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
herbst 3y ago
When a company is spending more to make a movie than they earn with the movie it's no success just a lot of bought buzz
- nilamo 3y ago
  Encanto: $150m budget vs $250m box office. So again, "no hit movies" is easily disproven with 10s of time to look into it.
  - Khaine 3y ago
    A movie needs to bring in twice its budget to be profitable[1] is the common rule of thumb. The budget doesn't include things like marketing, and the fact that the box office is shared with the theatre owner. So in your example, it potentially lost money for Disney. The wikipedia article almost says as much [2] "Although it underperformed at the box office ..." [1] https://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make-to-be-profitab-5747305 https://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-does-a-movie-need-to-make... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encanto
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Was Encanto the one they dumped on Disney+ real quick? It might have strongly affected popularity of the song (which is catchy as all hell, and can stand with Let It Go) since that was perhaps the peak. None of the recent Disney animated movies have been “direct to DVD” terrible but they haven’t been exceptionally better than everything else. It used to be that everyone basically considered Disney (and upstart Pixar) to be at the top of the class, and even extremely successful movies like Despicable Me to be a tier or two below.

wnevets 3y ago

> They haven’t had hit movie for years. are we really gonna make up things that are easily disprovable?

michael_nielsen 3y ago

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

paganel 3y ago
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.
- bombcar 3y ago
  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.
chrismcb 3y ago
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
- gen220 3y ago
  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.
  - caseysoftware 3y ago
    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.

sota4077 3y ago

Well this is just straight up false. Moana was a massive success. Frozen is a monstrous success for them. Star Wars not being a success is objectively false. The Force Awakens is the second best selling Star Wars movie of all time.

chrismcb 3y ago
Moana came out almost 8 years ago! The force awakens is even older. I think you are proving the OPs point.
- LarsDu88 3y ago
  And they're making a live action one baby!
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Live action remakes are the new “safe sequel”. I think they should be compared to how well a literal rerelease of the original would do. I think part of the evidence is just how absolutely long lived Frozen 1 has been. Nothing has been able to even come close to unseating that, not even its sequel (they were very smart to keep everything similar enough so that Frozen 2 merchandise can substitute for Frozen 1 in a kid’s eye). It’s very indicative that people jump to movies that have been out for a decade or more, and probably can’t even name most of the more recent releases.

Benjamin_Dobell 3y ago

Frozen is one of the newest entries out of any media franchise to gross more than $10B — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media.... More than Fortnite has grossed. Not too shabby.

chrismcb 3y ago
Frozen came out ten years ago and frozen 2 came out five years ago. I think that qualifies as a few years. Granted life has been tough on the movies since some odd event in 2020
- Benjamin_Dobell 3y ago
  It's relative. No-one else has produced a media franchise that earns as much or more than Disney any more recently. Disney has also produced some of the most recent highest grossing box office films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films. Again, this is relative. We've just had a pandemic followed by writers and actors guild strikes.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Minions is damn close, however. Freaking billion dollar movies and infinite numbers of the yellow dudes everywhere.
- nirvdrum 3y ago
  If you take "for years" to literally mean "more than one year", sure. I think it's colloquially understood to be far longer than that. "Encanto" came out in 2021 and I'd consider that a hit. The soundtrack saw wide play, everyone I know who's seen it loves it, and they're merchandising the hell out of it. To be fair, I saw "Wish" with my family and we all enjoyed it, but it obviously didn't come close to "Frozen 2" numbers. They're not all hits. With animated film taking years to produce, those perhaps aren't the metric to use. It'll be another few years before the next major animated film by Disney is released. The Marvel movies release more frequently and seem to print money. "Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3" came out last year and has done $845MM¹. ¹ -- https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2977202945/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2977202945/

yellowapple 3y ago

> They haven’t had hit movie for years. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone singing that one song from Encanto I'd be able to buy Disney.

gamblor956 3y ago

Avatar 2 came out just over a year ago is one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

bombcar 3y ago
Both avatar movies are somehow insanely high grossing and apparently nobody remembers them at all. It’s a skill set to be sure.