Opinion Disney CEO Bob Iger says company’s movies have been too focused on messaging

[HenryFlower]

Only the 1st article gives an estimated break even. The next 2 don't give any details on profit or break even so they're essentially worthless. According to the first article the estimated breakeven is $450M and slim on details. Also doesn't bring up the nearly 70/30 split in international to domestic split. Even with that breakeven profit is $45M. Which isn't a hit on a $200M budget. It would be a moderate success. Elemental had a terrible opening weekend but legged it out of bomb territory to a small loss thanks in large part to the Asian market of which the studio gets a smaller cut of the profits. Some blogger on Collider a click bait site putting out an estimated breakeven with little actual analysis of how they arrived at that number isn't going to change anything.

just admit that you were wrong about Elemental & move on. you’re straight up talking out your ass at this point, fumbling for excuses. for starters, studios get a smaller revenue cut from only the China market—the rest of the Asian market is the same cut as all other OS box office revenue. now that that we have that cleared up, i’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that China’s BO gross for Elemental was only 10% of the domestic gross.

 

[Poatan Power]

Well, without reading what he said at all: some movies are intended and made to promote a message. In order to convey the message in a GREAT way, you have to make GREAT content. If you make suboptimal content to give a ham handed message, you'll suffer the consequences.

LOTR's WW1/WW2 messaging as a book and a universe was done very well. Animal Farm was done very well.

The all female Ghostbusters? Where they do reverse misogyny to the extreme and have the script written by 7th graders?

If you care about Disney you are surely gay, so there's that

Aside from your take being unintelligent, Disney is a huge global institution, and maybe the most powerful in the entertainment industry by a wide margin. Caring about its direction/success/messaging is not only prudent for those of us who care about general society and culture, but it also has huge political aspirations. And if you have children and they go outside the house, Disney has long reaching prongs of influence.

Or, you could just tweet bumper sticker slogans on Sherdog.

 

[Morning Star]

just admit that you were wrong about Elemental & move on. you’re straight up talking out your ass at this point, fumbling for excuses. for starters, studios get a smaller revenue cut from only the China market—the rest of the Asian market is the same cut as all other OS box office revenue. now that that we have that cleared up, i’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that China’s BO gross for Elemental was only 10% of the domestic gross.

just admit that you were wrong about Elemental & move on. you’re straight up talking out your ass at this point, fumbling for excuses. for starters, studios get a smaller revenue cut from only the China market—the rest of the Asian market is the same cut as all other OS box office revenue. now that that we have that cleared up, i’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that China’s BO gross for Elemental was only 10% of the domestic gross.

International split is normally standard 60/40 with the theaters getting the larger piece. China and Russia usually get a even more favorable split. The fact that you don't know something so basic and have to post internet blogs with zero numbers or in the case of 1/3 an actual account of how they arrived at those numbers it just shows how clueless you are.

So using the most liberal of estimates from an Internet blog Elemental made $45M million on a $200M budget, using a more conservative estimate it lost money. Meanwhile a movie like Puss in Boots 2 made $484 million on a $90M budget with more money made in the US. So even using the most conservative estimates it made over $250+ million profit. Only one of those movies was a "hit" financially. Simply making some money is not the same as making a lot of it. When you spend $200M to make a movie you expect to make Coco/Inside Out money.

 

[Jballer]

Yes, but they’re a publicly traded company.
Their stock was as high as 200 a few years ago and is around 90 today.

It’s certainly not the first time their stock has struggled, and it won’t be the last. Safe to say they’ll bounce back.

 

[HenryFlower]

International split is normally standard 60/40 with the theaters getting the larger piece. China and Russia usually get a even more favorable split. The fact that you don't know something so basic and have to post internet blogs with zero numbers or in the case of 1/3 an actual account of how they arrived at those numbers it just shows how clueless you are.

So using the most liberal of estimates from an Internet blog Elemental made $45M million on a $200M budget, using a more conservative estimate it lost money. Meanwhile a movie like Puss in Boots 2 made $484 million on a $90M budget with more money made in the US. So even using the most conservative estimates it made over $250+ million profit. Only one of those movies was a "hit" financially. Simply making some money is not the same as making a lot of it. When you spend $200M to make a movie you expect to make Coco/Inside Out money.

so clearly you didn’t even bother reading my last post, probably because you’re so mad you can’t even think straight right now. you made a mistake dude—it happens. there’s no need for these apoplectic responses full of gobbledygook nonsense when you can just move on & shrug your shoulders at the fact that Elemental performed better at the box office than you initially assumed it had. even i was surprised! it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes.

 

[Jesus X]

Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged his company has focused too much on movie messaging and not enough on quality storytelling.

That sentence alone would have saved them billions of dollars if they had realized this like in 2019. I'm guessing they already knew this by maybe 2021 but had to save face and couldn't course correct once the ESG and DEI stuff had gained momentum.

 

[HenryFlower]

That sentence alone would have saved them billions of dollars if they had realized this like in 2019. I'm guessing they already knew this by maybe 2021 but had to save face and couldn't course correct once the ESG and DEI stuff had gained momentum.

billions?! do you think they’ve lost billions of dollars on these movies?

 

[Jesus X]

billions?! do you think they’ve lost billions of dollars on these movies?

Yes they lost 300 million on captain marvel alone they have flopped several TV shows and disney movies. You also have shows and movies that disney might be behind but folks don't even know like stuff on abc or even espn.

 

[LeonardoBjj]

There is always social commentary in the movies. And will always be. He just said they were focusing on that. In the end, there will still be social issues, but entertainment at the forefront

- Every Disnery movie has a lesson. But a entertaining one. I love cartoons. Still re-watch Peter Pan from Disney a get myself singin this song all the time:



I think Disney did lost their touch.

 

[Fluffernutter]

I'm going to bring the kids to the new Godzilla movie this evening. It cost just $15 million and all of the critics said very good stuff.

You don't need to spend nine figures to make a good movie.

Personally, I think Disney should buy the rights to all of the Newbery Award winning books and make movies about all of them....and stick to the books.

 

[Flower2dPeople]

 

[Helden]

Willow,the witcher and the last season of GOT should have been good took a lot of incompetence to mess those up

Don't know about Witcher or Willow.. but GoT was heading downhill since season 5-6.

With how bad Season 7 was, there was zero hope for finale to be anything but abysmal garbage

 

[Senzo Tanaka]

More like Disney has activists take over their animation. They are pandering to marginalized groups. It's not messaging - it's the type of messaging. Disney is supposed to appeal to everyone regardless of background. They've instead, tried to appeal to specific groups while alienating everyone else.

That might be the future though. Snow White is an ancient tale and you have people like Rachel Zeggler calling it out of fashion and creepy. I guess there isn't a universal message anymore thanks to these Zoomer weirdos.

 

[Beechwood]

Disney has lost their way. Seems like Iger has been blaming everyone else for why Disney has been doing poorly. The buck stops with him though. Disney could do better if they parted way with Bob Iger I imagine.

 

[Natural Order]

Disney has lost their way. Seems like Iger has been blaming everyone else for why Disney has been doing poorly. The buck stops with him though. Disney could do better if they parted way with Bob Iger I imagine.

Didn't they bring him back in to clean up the mess? Seems he's allowed it to keep piling up but he was supposed to be the guy to right the ship based on past successes.

 

[Loiosh]

Yes, and one of the reasons that the most successful huge corporations continue to make money is that they are run by people like Iger who realize when a business strategy needs to be altered in order to maximize profitability.

Thus...probably less preaching social lessons and more focus on good storytelling going forward just like their CEO said.

The content that bothers part of the American public is as ridiculous as the stuff the American public laughs at Disney for censoring because of China.

For some Americans, the only appropriate protagonist is straight, white and male. There have been some huge exceptions, but that's because there's actually a pretty big market for it and those stories were good enough to blast through those expectations. Does that reinforce the idea that story is the most important thing? Sure, but let's not pretend that the bar isn't MUCH higher for diverse characters. And gay characters? They make up a big chunk of the population and yet are mostly banned in Disney, any characters who lean gay always generate a ton of outrage.

 

[Bojka]

The content that bothers part of the American public is as ridiculous as the stuff the American public laughs at Disney for censoring because of China.

For some Americans, the only appropriate protagonist is straight, white and male. There have been some huge exceptions, but that's because there's actually a pretty big market for it and those stories were good enough to blast through those expectations. Does that reinforce the idea that story is the most important thing? Sure, but let's not pretend that the bar isn't MUCH higher for diverse characters. And gay characters? They make up a big chunk of the population and yet are mostly banned in Disney, any characters who lean gay always generate a ton of outrage.

I can recall quite a few female and even animal protagonists from my childhood. Then there were Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Jungle Book, The Emperor's New Groove, and Mulan. Far fewer than half of Disney movies from the 1900s had straight white male protagonists. If you only consider human protagonists then around half of them were female.

 

[Loiosh]

I can recall quite a few female and even animal protagonists from my childhood. Then there were Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Jungle Book, The Emperor's New Groove, and Mulan. Far fewer than half of Disney movies from the 1900s had straight white male protagonists. If you only consider human protagonists then around half of them were female.

There are plenty of places people can look that can illustrate that isn't true, and even when it's true male characters get 70% of the dialogue and push the majority of the action.

Walt Disney has been accused of being a racist, sexist Nazi sympathizer for most of a century. This isn't a new or modern liberal position, as you're probably aware.

Have you forgotten all the controversies when Aladdin was released?

Also, are you disputing Disney's gay ban? Any time they even consider dipping a toe into that water chuds howl at the moon.

 

[Bojka]

There are plenty of places people can look that can illustrate that isn't true, and even when it's true male characters get 70% of the dialogue and push the majority of the action.

Walt Disney has been accused of being a racist, sexist Nazi sympathizer for most of a century. This isn't a new or modern liberal position, as you're probably aware.

Have you forgotten all the controversies when Aladdin was released?

Also, are you disputing Disney's gay ban? Any time they even consider dipping a toe into that water chuds howl at the moon.

There are countless example of Disney movies with a female protagonist who gets the most screen time.

I don't recall any controversy from when Aladdin was released. Nor am I aware of any Nazi sympathizing on Disney's part in my lifetime although I suppose it's possible that there was some nearly 100 or so years ago.

Quickly remembering why I more or less stopped posting on this sub-forum. lmao.

 

[Loiosh]

There are countless example of Disney movies with a female protagonist who gets the most screen time.

I don't recall any controversy from when Aladdin was released. Nor am I aware of any Nazi sympathizing on Disney's part in my lifetime although I suppose it's possible that there was some nearly 100 or so years ago.

Quickly remembering why I more or less stopped posting on this sub-forum. lmao.

Well, you're wrong. Even when a Disney film is about a female character the men do most of the speaking and push most of the action. There are isolated exceptions but on the whole it's overwhelmingly straight white male.

Watch Aladdin now, there's a disclaimer due to the insulting stereotypes. it's not quite Song of the South but it's pretty bad.

Gay people make up 7% of the US population, why can't they be in Disney films?

This is a discussion of racism and sexism, of course it's going to be unpleasant. That doesn't mean it can't be polite.