> Jeff Katzenberg, the co-founder, has been 'making content and selling to kids' for 40 years to the tune of literally Billions. Star Trek films, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Shrek, How to Train your Dragon etc. etc. - just huge, monster titles.
My argument against this point is simple: few of those were original content conceived by Katzenberg/DreamWorks/Disney. They were existing stories (most already successful as books). The only things I can see in his filmography that are possibly original and hugely successful are Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar, Road to El Dorado, and _maybe_ Chicken Run.
>In the case of Disney, the company's success is largely based on its ability to create and produce compelling movies and characters.
> Since they stop doing so, Disney is in trouble.
Weird live action remakes and recycled franchises are lazy.
I'm still hoping disney will rediscover traditional animation and give us more original content.
> Lots of indies keep close track of Disney. Many of them have a good understanding of the cost structures and revenue splits
From what I have seen most of them seems to be quoting each other figures in some kind of circle jerk with very little idea about what's actually true and most of it seems more fiction than fact, especially when it comes to derivative products and merchandising.
> Most Disney films are not based on fairy tales. Their biggest animated films are original works.
Since 1990, Disney has produced (in terms of animated works):
* 14 films clearly based on classical mythology, fairy tales, or literature.
* 7 films clearly original works
* 4 sequels
* Pocahontas, which is (loosely) based on historical events
* Moana, which I'm not sufficiently well-versed in Polynesian mythology to know if it's based on an actual mythical event or merely draws inspiration from it
* The Lion King, which is allegedly inspired or directly ripped off of Kimba the White Lion (although Disney vehemently denies it)
* Wreck-it Ralph, although technically original, relies on a lot of explicit video game references.
> Doesn't take a genius to understand that at some point Disneys content will be sup-bar what others are offering. Even when they today have a head start.
I think Disney's whole business model is built around insuring that never happens, both by hiring the best people and by buying any company that demonstrates a threat to their hegemony.
> Some rent-seekers merely think they get to own ideas now.
are you quite serious? Disney doesn't think they own coming of age tales or intrepid children feeling out of place. Disney thinks they own the things they paid to create during the operation of their business.
the daycares Aren't making up their own stories, theyre directly benefiting by using Disney's products without licence or permission. this is the exact opposite of seeking.
> Do people think companies really behave this way?
An interesting anecdote from the Steve Jobs biography:
Finding Nemo had just been released to critical acclaim and Pixar were in renegotiation talks about their deal with Disney.
(Disney's) Michael Eisner had one powerful trump card. Even if Pixar didn't renew, Disney had the right to make sequels of Toy Story and the other movies Pixar had made, and it owned all the characters from Woody to Nemo. Eisner was already planning -- or threatening -- to have Disney's own animation studio do a Toy Story 3, which Pixar had declined to do.
The threat had teeth not because Pixar would lose control of some of their characters, but because Disney's animation studio had been releasing flop after flop. After ten years of The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, there were ten years of rubbish. As a company, Disney had been creatively brain-dead for a decade.
(Pixar's) John Lasseter was aghast at the prospect of breaking up with Disney. "I was worried about my children, what they would do with the characters we'd created," he recalled. "It's like you have these dear children and you have to give them up to be adopted by convicted child molesters."
Effectively, Disney's negotiation tactic was "re-sign with us, or else we'll spin up a shitty division to make shitty sequels of your movies!"
> Disney naively thought they could just serve up old classics while wringing the life out of Marvel and Star Wars IP and people would happily continue to pay.
Wringing the life is a pretty mean way to put it. They tried to use the IP to make money. Their movies and shows sound like propaganda with Twitter quips and they aren't good. Marvel and star wars peaked under Disney the same way that Apple peaked from Tim Cook in terms of profit, only apple products are still good.
authors/creators of content don't exist; content springs fully formed from centers of large corporations, especially if that corporation is named Disney.
Like Walking Dead with top-notch production value.
I don't watch Disney content much but I own their stock because they really know how to milk every drop from the franchise. When they can't milk no more, they wait few years and they restart. With young audience it's just endless source of new minds to corrupt. It's like junk food for the mind.
> "Disney is ridiculous. I say this despite the fact that I have a good bit of stock in the company."
I don't want to make this personal and/or sound troll-y but where do their ridiculousness end, and you being hypocritical begin?
I'm not defending Disney. But if they're obligated to serve shareholders, and you feel they're failing then sell. But to finance them and in turn mock them, well that's why Disney, Amazon, et al continue to do what they do.
This reminds me of Robin Williams. Disney did roughly the same thing to him. He did Aladdin (highest-grossing of 1992) with the proviso that Disney couldn't sell merchandise. They did. He didn't sue but he refused to work with Disney again and created quite a storm in Hollywood. Disney eventually publicly apologized (but only after Katzenberg left).
They sure milked the premise during the early days.[0]
My biggest 'Disney problem' is their abusive use of copyright, and the fact that they got away with it largely due to the use of Disney material as pro-National propaganda.[1]
I feel like yourself and the other poster saying Eberts review is bad are missing the point.
Given that the owners of the IP are filthy rich, they could have done a better job. Indeed lots of other production companies produce kids shows that are better and they make shit tons of money on merch: Star Wars, Frozen, Toy Story, all the Marvel stuff, basically most of the Disney stuff. All the Studio Ghibli stuff (actually I don’t know how rich Ghibli are).
> 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.
> Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney+ are just a few of the highlights.
How much of the absurdly poor quality content that made to screens, were projects left in the pipe by Iger though? Iger is also the CEO that failed to reign in the woke agenda at Disney which has become the guiding principle of most of Disney's content.
I would also argue that Chapek didn't bungle the Parental Rights in Education Act, he just inherited a company that is extremely aligned with a single political party in the US, and those values don't translate well outside of that one political party. Do you think Japan or China disagree with Florida's stance on the issue for example? Those two countries represent 3 of Disney's resorts, literally half of the entire portfolio.
Don't get me wrong, Iger has ran Disney for decades and importantly, he's ran Disney through business cycles that aren't just Congress and the Fed going nuts with stimulus. He knows what it means when consumers are suddenly squeezed for pennies and you know it's bad when the de-facto Prime Minister of Canada uses cutting Disney+ as an example of consumer cost-cutting[1]. What I'd be worried about, is that he's not necessarily the best person to reign in the woke and return to universal values, which is a key pillar of why people consume Disney.
My argument against this point is simple: few of those were original content conceived by Katzenberg/DreamWorks/Disney. They were existing stories (most already successful as books). The only things I can see in his filmography that are possibly original and hugely successful are Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar, Road to El Dorado, and _maybe_ Chicken Run.
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