Disney - Death Of An Empire

there have been a number of Empires that have fallen throughout human history from Rome to the British Empire Japan and the Soviets and an argument could be made that in the Modern Age corporations are entities that yield more Global might than some of the biggest Empires to ever exist empires of the past have fallen because they weren't able to counter enough when a crisis struck in Disney a media and Global Empire in and of itself seemed destined to collapse even with centuries of examples to learn from yeah that shine can't stop me because I can read a major Cornerstone of modern Americana and one of the most recognizable brands in the world Disney has been on a downward trajectory in recent years especially in the areas of Cinema and television Disney's current Global position is in stark contrast to its upward momentum in the 2010s when it seemed like Disney could do no wrong at its height in 2018 when it accounted for 26 of the domestic box office with just 13 films released and seven films in 2019 crossing the billion dollar mark it had more than tripled its worth in total assets in a decades time but oh how fortunes change in a short span of a few years its domination at the box office has seemingly come to a halt with multiple films bombing losing money hand over fist as audiences have completely rejected anything Disney's pumped out in 2023 and punishing the hell out of them for poor products [Applause] in the last calendar year Disney has lost 900 million dollars on its last Eight studio releases and that's before including Indiana Jones in the dial of Destiny which is projected to be a bigger Financial loss than the flash the creation and push to turn their streaming service Disney plus into a Netflix competitor has had the bottom drop out from underneath it with millions of subscribers lost over the past few quarters and an investment of a billion dollars into the Star Wars themed hotel that lasted all of a year before becoming financially unsustainable is showing a company with more than just chinks in its armor it's getting force pushed around like a [ __ ] stop doing full force okay you [ __ ] a once great company Beloved the world over is slowly becoming unrecognizable like when anyone over the age of 25 listens to the radio and wonders what the [ __ ] music even is these days it's a stock price on the decline due to box office disasters absolute failures of its television slate Rising ticket prices to its theme parks keeping people away and shoving political and social fights up the asses of its consumers in Florida and across the globe that caused multiple firings and CEO changes in just a few years Disney is a superpower on the brink so what the hell happened you asked a Meme here that I put my stack and I lost but man does it say it all for starters how about creative bankruptcy a company known for animation innovation has snatched up multiple IPS to build its portfolio and milk some cow nips dry from Marvel Star Wars and Pixar to entire movie studios like 20th Century Fox Disney's become the Facebook of entertainment who wants to create new things I mean you can just buy and steal and who can forget the now tried and true practice of blaming the fans for the failures of a company's products you are nothing but garbage yeah nothing but garbage Guyana there's nothing quite like profiting off of a capitalistic Society while simultaneously shaming its very consumers for flexing their right to buy what they want now let's get into the nitty-gritty of this [ __ ] starting with the company's history but first a quick word from this video's sponsor you ready man wow man freaked out skillshare is an online learning community for creators it's known for classes in photography video editing and illustration but skillshare has hundreds of career-focused classes too and there is no goal that's too small I actually first heard of skillshare a couple years ago and watched a particular course by Ali abdal on building 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with the introduction of Mickey Mouse in 1928 the Walt Disney Company continued as a leader in Innovative production house into the 1930s with its first animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs due to that film's success the studio continued to expand into the 40s with massive hits including Pinocchio Fantasia Dumbo and Bambi in the 1950s the soon-to-be conglomerate continued to expand its operations by opening the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim California now it's worth mentioning the 2020s isn't the first decade where Disney faced trouble in the 60s Walt Disney passed away because the Dude smoked like a [ __ ] chimney but the company persevered in 1971 they opened the Disney World Resort in Orlando featuring The Magic Kingdom theme park and several other Resorts and Studios opened through the 80s and 90s with the Epcot Center Hollywood Studios and the animal kingdom it's through the 80s and 90s where Disney leadership switched to Michael Eisner and its Animation Studio continued to pump out Innovative and now classic films including the first animated movie to be nominated for an Academy Award for best picture Beauty and the Beast Disney had also begun Distributing films by an emerging Animation studio called Pixar and seemed to have a sort of love-hate relationship with them by the early 2000s it was Pixar that was innovating and pushing the boundaries of animated filmmaking with audiences endearing to a new kind of Storytelling and visual style Disney's legendary animation style had grown stale with audiences and no longer seen as Innovative but almost primitive reflected in the final box office total of one of Disney's last 2D animated features in 2004 titled Home on the Range costing 110 million dollars and grossing only 76 million worldwide meanwhile that same year Pixar released The Incredibles to the tune of over 600 million worldwide on a similar budget there isn't a particular moment that marked a turn from innovator to acquisition specialist but this might be it just a couple years after Pixar destroyed Disney at its own game at the box office in 2006 Disney decided to purchase Pixar for 7.4 billion dollars all in the purchase of the studio eliminated any competition while also building Disney's portfolio of valuable Assets Now it didn't need to create anything special it already bought it so what to do next keep on keeping on that's what by 2008 Marvel had successfully scraped itself back to life and out of bankruptcy it had filed in the 1990s gaining enough funding to start its own production company Marvel entertainment and they risked it all by producing and releasing Iron Man starring Robert Downey Jr distributed by Paramount the gamble paid off and the film was an enormous success and Disney came knocking not long after Disney saw the potential in the marketing value of superheroes the past several years saw the success of major comic book adaptations on the big screen from X-Men to Spider-Man and now lesser-known Heroes like Iron Man Disney officially purchased Marvel which included all its characters for the biggest steal in modern entertainment and a poultry four billion dollars while Disney owned the character of Spider-Man and they didn't own the production rights to his films due to Marvel selling off film rights to various characters to Fox Sony and Universal with Sony busy at the time making Spider-Man an abusive emo dance machine Jamie pull that video up yeah Peter Parker getting chicks that's it oh come on [ __ ] vicious you keep your [ __ ] voice yeah the year Disney released the first Avengers movie to Universal critical and audience praise an unbelievable box office numbers they made the next big coup buying lucasfilm for the exact same price they purchased Marvel for for Billy George Lucas couldn't say no to becoming even more Filthy Rich and signed off his beloved franchise to the house of mouse speaking to the New York Times Lucas said that he sold the films so they would have a longer life in future Generations could enjoy them 10 years and milking the Star Wars booby till it's a raisin later and I wonder if he feels the same way little did we know at the time though that Disney was essentially collecting its own kind of Infinity Stones Pixar Marvel lucasfilm meaning Star Wars Indiana Jones and Willow with Disney already owning ESPN it now had its fingers in the pie across the entertainment sphere at this point long gone were the days of creating new things now is the time for Acquisitions and expansion just like any good Empire here and for Disney that meant announcing a plan to not just release a new Star Wars sequel trilogy but spin-off films every other year that's right Disney's original plan was to release a new Star Wars movie every single year and the Marvel Cinematic Universe was absolutely exploding thanks to the Avengers films but there was something missing namely Spider-Man and the X-Men Disney was making plenty of Bank off the world's most profitable superhero Spider-Man merchandise alone topped a billion dollars a year so even without his film rights they were doing just fine but nothing would be a better cherry on top of their cinematic dominance than having the wall crawler Sony's Amazing Spider-Man film series was completely fizzled out and the MCU was red hot and it was soon announced that Sony and Disney had struck a deal to share the character and include him in the MCU Disney would produce the films while Sony distributed them and gave final approval with Disney receiving zero dollars from the box office of his solo films and Sony receiving nothing from his appearance in other MCU films like Civil War and Avengers the last Domino to fall was the X-Men and Fantastic Four which played into Disney's long game of entertainment dominance by the late 2010s streaming was the next big thing and everyone knew it countless streaming services would be popping up and Disney planned on taking a massive slice of that pie acquiring one of the major movie studios in the world to join them would be a massive boost to their future Digital Library along with hopes of extending the mcu's dominance by being able to bring in the X-Men and Fantastic Four a bidding war commenced with Disney coming out on top buying 20th Century Fox for an astonishing 71 billion dollars as a reminder Disney itself was worth 63 billion in 2008. by 2019 when the deal closed Disney's total assets were worth an eye-popping 196 billion now that's some [ __ ] cheddar cheese I really hate to be the dude that [ __ ] with us yeah think CEO Bob Iger was quoted saying Disney's and Fox's unparalleled collection of businesses and franchises will allow us to create more appealing high quality content expand our direct to Consumer offerings and international presence and deliver more personalized and compelling entertainment experiences to meet growing consumer demand around the world sounds good Bob how did that play out for you just as Disney was reaching an apex of market dominance in 2020 the pandemic would wreak havoc on finances across the world including Disney's but the decline can be traced back further when the company was still making billions at the box office is when the cracks started a show hindsight is 2020 but with the company's desire to move on from creating new things to acquiring and exploiting existing intellectual properties it couldn't go any other way in the mid-2010s the novelty of the MCU was in full swing in the appeal of new Star Wars films was intense Disney essentially traded the record for biggest opening weekend between itself when it would launch new Star Wars or Marvel tentpoles the force awakens open north of 240 million then Avengers Infinity War nearly 260 million before Avengers end game blasted off to 350 million but oversaturation of product meant the novelty was going to fade and God damn did it ever the launch of Disney plus during the pandemic seemed like it was going to soften the blow of movie theaters being closed instead of losing out on those IPS it guaranteed us more more and then more of the things we love the most more Star Wars more Marvel more Pixar mix over saturation with a terrible product and over Reliance on Nostalgia and you have the answer for how Disney got to a billion dollars per film gross to a billion dollar net loss in 2023 let's break down what happened by intellectual property lucasfilm saw the first sign of trouble by 2017 When the Last Jedi was released the excitement for new Star Wars was still at a fever pitch with Force awakens becoming a global phenomenon and Rogue one a Smash Hit so there was a lot of Goodwill toward Last Jedi until it came out that is divisive to say the least it set the tone for how Star Wars would be handled moving forward Last Jedi was the start of Disney's attempt to deconstruct past Heroes the force awakens use Nostalgia to draw in the older fan base but Disney had its eyes set on the future introducing new characters that they hoped a new generation of people would grow up with but this led to the deconstruction of Luke Skywalker and the destruction of his legacy in Story by making a new character smarter and better than him without actually following the hero's journey left fans absolutely pissed this would become a running theme throughout Hollywood but Disney owned the biggest eyepiece in town and would soon become the most egregious offender of this sorry Trope the effects were felt immediately with the second Anthology movie solo becoming the first Star Wars film to bomb at the box office they tried to study the ship by bringing JJ Abrams back for the third installment of the sequel trilogy but the damage was done and he did himself nor the franchise any favors by bringing Palpatine back the star Star Wars IP was meant to be a huge Boon for Disney but they dived into it without any actual plan other than content content and more content ending up with short-term gains but long-term negative ramifications with the MCU it almost seemed like the goose that would never stop laying golden eggs there was a ton of optimism for it post endgame but just like Star Wars the company seemed destined to misunderstand why the franchise worked so well the pandemic caused delays for their cinematic releases of phase 4 by an entire year so by the time Disney plus launched an entire backlog of product was dumped onto the public in a single calendar year the franchise went from having two or three releases yearly to nine [ __ ] releases in 2021 alone with the engine not slowing down with nine more in 2022 in two years the output of MCU product had almost matched the total of its previous 12 years which is absolutely insane if you think about it for half a second MCU Productions went from being events to something you completely ignore and the television shows that were supposed to be a Cornerstone of the Disney Plus subscription launch became an absolute joke in no time fast forward to the present and secret Invasion starring Samuel L Jackson got less viewers and a week than some YouTube channels get in a day it's an absolutely embarrassing situation and one that could have easily been avoided and Pixar has become a victim of Disney Plus in its own right in 2023 Pixar's Elemental has become a complete afterthought for moviegoers something that no one ever would have predicted for a Pixar movie just five years ago these films used to be events too something for an entire family to enjoy but it's almost like Disney absolutely hates Pixar for some [ __ ] reason like the company is purposefully sabotaging an animation studio that became Superior to their own besides that being hilarious it's also pretty sad Pixar has been the studio most likely to have their films end up on Disney Plus instead of the big screen devaluing the product and making it seem less bad special because of its immediate availability on a streaming service you can purchase for a fraction of the cost of a movie ticket while the films still maintain their astronomical budgets because Disney can't seem to decide whether Pixar films are Disney plus spotter or theatrical releases audiences seem to have given up with both cinematic Pixar releases the last two years absolutely bombing there is more to it than that but other things are company-wide issues that infect the entire organization that I'll get to momentarily besides the IP's Disney purchase the company's also been pillaging its past for more attempts at that sweet Nostalgia money with lower and lower returns live action remakes of its classic animated films have been a steady diet of consumers for years now with a few of the first ones making over a billion dollars because of novelty the quality of the films have been subpar at best and terrible at worst though leading to the latest live-action box office bomb The Little Mermaid with the acquisition of lucasfilm in Star Wars Disney began construction of a Star Wars themed hotel that opened relatively recently and is closing up shop almost as fast post pandemic the price gouging of tickets to Disney World and Other attractions has been a steady complaint from visitors which is drastically affecting what is a major part of the company's yearly income the Star Wars Hotel was hilariously overpriced costing a family of four nearly six thousand dollars for a two-night stay and for a couple five thousand dollars with some suites costing upwards of twenty thousand not including the price for the flight in literally any other expense Disney dumped nearly a billion dollars into the creation of the hotel in almost no time has decided to close up shop a microcosm of Bad Business decisions the company has been making over the past half decade so the question is what the [ __ ] is going on here how did a company that was doing so well start to stumble so dramatically dating back to the acquisition of Pixar Disney decided to stop innovating and start acquiring earlier I related it to Mark zuckerfucking Facebook the dude who can't create anything new whatsoever why make something new when you can just buy up the competition the purchases of 20th Century Fox lucasfilm Marvel and Pixar are great ideas on paper but you have to know what to do with those products they fired up the Star Wars engine without any formal plan and decided to push forward regardless they're over saturating the market with Star Wars property much like they're doing with Marvel killing what was so special about both franchises this is also crushing Disney's feature plans for the Marvel properties they got back with the fox purchase by the time they're able to get X-Men in Fantastic Four into an MCU production will there be enough people to care they are spending event status money on these television and cinematic Productions without an event level audience desire for them why do I care about this 300 million dollar MCU production when another 300 million dollar MCU production came out two months ago the outstanding production costs on these things also makes it more and more difficult for them to turn a profit Indiana Jones in the dial of Destiny might end up losing more money than Warner Brothers did this year Disney also seems to despise its own fan base or rather the fan bases they acquired along with their purchases see no one who was a Marvel or Star Wars fan was a Disney fan this just ended up being the company that owns the properties fans cared about so the focus shifts to what that company is doing with said product this interesting transactional relationship between a big-ips audience and a company that had nothing to do with it prior has become incredibly contentious Disney isn't the only company to fall under what it perceives as social pressure but it has in modern times ESG scores are kept on all major corporations to make sure they're following the latest Trend in supporting the most current thing which is directly contradictory to certain Productions bottom line Disney's focus on fulfilling diversity quotas instead of focusing on producing quality product has drastically impacted the amount of money each film and show makes so what do you think does it come in Black you certainly don't have to have your finger on the pulse of popular culture to even recognize what's going on people just answer the call with their wallets if it's the first movie to start a black paraplegic deaf and blind person without their sense of smell that's all well and good but did you produce a good movie or was it the focus of everything especially the marketing on the fact that it's the first movie starring a black paraplegic deaf and blind person without their sense of smell Hollywood itself has turned to focusing more on social justice issues instead of actually making anything good in Disney's right alongside their Studio counterparts and doing this there's no further proof needed than the literal diversity requirements the Academy Awards have issued if you want to be considered for a nomination moving forward the tension between Disney and its fans is palpable with each passing year someone in the production or one of its subsidiary Studios will cry out IST or ISM words for anyone who dares to criticize their product hiding behind some sort of Oppression Shield to blame its box office or viewership failings on its own audience it's truly amazing to watch this happen over and over again and with declining numbers month after month movie after movie and show after show it's hard to think fans aren't getting fed up with it Disney has also thrown its hat into the political Arena picking a fight with the governor of Florida over laws that have absolutely nothing to do with business but social issues a lack of desire to create new products buying up IPS and engaging in oversaturation focusing on social issues and forcing them into Productions instead of focusing on making a solid product engaging in fights with their own fans and over Reliance on streaming services that watered down its theatrical products and overspending on the production of ips people are steadily becoming disinterested in because of oversaturation of shitty products and price gouging at its theme parks has sent Disney as an empire into a complete tailspin this year alone the MCU has seen a film actually lose money Disney plus has lost 4 million subscribers a live-action remake of one of its classic animated films has flat out bombed a Lucas Film Production of Indiana Jones 5 has become a financial loser and a Pixar film was forgotten about in theaters meanwhile a Star Wars hotel at Disney world has shut its doors in record time after spending a billion dollars on its installation and the CEO was replaced in the last eight months with its stock prices cut significantly while said CEO actively engages in social justice battles with the governor of the state of Florida if anyone's trying to tell you Disney's in a healthy space just repeat the last paragraph to them there's a reason rumors of Disney being sold to Apple float around regularly Disney won't ever disappear entirely but Empires rise and Empires fall and we might be seeing this happen in real time ggs [Applause]

Channel: The Movie Cynic

Views: 837,471

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Id: vOiuv-P16LY

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023