one MEEN Ag said:

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A good question I saw a while back was, "What even is Disney anymore?" It seems to be a mediocre management company of popular IP it had to buy instead of create.

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Agree completely.

I remember seeing a commercial for Walt Disney World that featured storm troopers marching through the Grand Floridian, and my first thought was: "Wow, way to dilute the brand."

What in the world are storm troopers doing in a hotel themed after Victorian-era beach resorts? How does that make any sense other than you've acquired the IP and now have to use it?

It's only gotten worse since then.

It's entirely possible for a company to get too big via acquisitions and lose focus on how they got successful in the first place. Disney has chased lucrative IP for short-term gains, but at what long-term cost?

Frozen?

Disney got rid of the John Lassitters and kept the Kathleen Kennedys.

If they were to actually try to not be woke they still don't have the actual in-house talent anymore.

Squadron7 said:

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Disney got rid of the John Lassitters and kept the Kathleen Kennedys.

If they were to actually try to not be woke they still don't have the actual in-house talent anymore.

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They ought to turn Lucasfilm over to Jon Favreau

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Disney has chased lucrative IP for short-term gains, but at what long-term cost?

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And they mostly acquired those by borrowing the money. They are heavily leveraged already.

Fwiw (admittedly not much!), I saw the Indy film yesterday - i liked it a lot. The young Indy in the film tells a lot about future film making (e.g., our favorite actors will live on forever). The movie reminded me of Raiders. If it's Harrison Ford's last, good for him. If it flops, it'll be because of the pox on Disney and not so much on the film itself.

It's a mystery

BQ78 said:

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Frozen?

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Came out a decade ago. Feeling old?

aggiedata said:

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It's a mystery

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Get on Twitter and wait for an ad for a Dsiney cruise to pop up.

Then read the comments.

The people posting for Disney probably have the same PTSD as the ones posting for Bud Light.

My toddler granddaughters of 10 years ago and now both love it.

Old is relative, not feeling it yet but it is coming, current toddler granddaughter wore me out this week.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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aggie93 said:

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I think part of it is Wokeness but I think the bigger issue is they aren't actually focused on what their customers want and making money. Disney could make a dozen projects that are just good, family friendly entertainment and people would lap it up. They could make ESPN about sports. They could write stories for Star Wars and other franchises based around compelling and interesting topics true to the original storylines. They could stop trying to fight with the State of Florida over what they teach their kids in Elementary school.

I mean that all makes way too much sense though so they should just keep up the other garbage until eventually it all crashes down. No brand is invincible.

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I think this is pretty close. TLDR, they're creatively lost.

Their biggest issue is that they have essentially caved to their creators and are letting them create art instead of mass market content. At Pixar, that used to be a good model and was a big part of how they made their name. The problem is that the artists have changed. 20 years ago they had artists and creators who were liberal, but they wanted to create emotional films that were appealing and relatable to everyone. Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, Cars, etc were all movies that everyone could relate to and find enjoyable. Beyond that though, they were all incredibly well made. Now they have very woke artists and creators that want to create edgy films for specific audiences without appreciating that Pixar is still a business: Unlike a starving artist, it can't crash on someone's couch when their edgy art isn't widely appreciated and bought. If you're in the business of art, your art had better be good enough to sell.

Disney is running into much of the same issues. They have lost focus on mass appeal and creating something for everyone in lieu of letting their artists and creators make things for more specific audiences and tastes. They've also run into the problem of beating franchises to death. Marvel has been worn out, and they've done themselves no favors with how she of it has been cast and written. I straight up stopped watching Agents of SHIELD after a couple of seasons because it fell into all of the woke tropes and became unwatchable. I haven't seen a Marvel movie since End Game because of the laughable, "She's got help," scene that was so iconically bad it was parodied in The Boys.

And look at how badly Star Wars had been managed. The hyper focus on inclusion and the complete lack of vision, continuity, and consistency in the sequel trilogy really damaged the brand until The Mandalorian rescued it, but then they started trying to make 20 different Star Wars projects and made a laughingstock of themselves. So far all they've gotten right, IMO, is Andor.

Now they've made another Indiana Jones no one asked for, and surprise surprise it is not doing so great. It may not recover its budget, much less all the other associated costs. A lot of their projects lately reek of desperation because they're basically recycling older, successful IP or throwing everything at even the mildest success.

Beyond all that, their messaging and branding on D+ has seriously made me question my choice to continue a subscription. I simply don't have the need or desire for a platform with groupings and categories for black history month, her story, pride month, etc. I don't care that the movies or content in these categories exist, I just don't see any personal utility in having them thrown in my face by being defaults that I have to wade through. Classics, Star Wars, Shorts, Pixar, etc are far more useful and entirely objective/neutral.

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Another great example is National Treasure. They had 2 solid if unspectacular films to work with. They created some horribly written series filled with woke that was just stupid and unwatchable. It's amazing how they have taken so much good content and made it into total crap.

one MEEN Ag said:

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BQ78 said:

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Frozen?

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Came out a decade ago. Feeling old?

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I remeber Halloween that year. The Night of a Thousand Elsas.

BQ78 said:

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My toddler granddaughters of 10 years ago and now both love it.

Old is relative, not feeling it yet but it is coming, current toddler granddaughter wore me out this week.

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I'm not saying that they're bad. The movies are good. But 10 years, thats how far you have to go back in time to think of a non pixar/star wars/marvel smash hit that disney's core identity has put out.

If your company had come out with a hit 10 years ago, loaded up on debt since, and fumbled converting it to long term gains, your stock price would look very similar to Disney's as well.

Squadron7 said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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BQ78 said:

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Frozen?

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Came out a decade ago. Feeling old?

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I remeber Halloween that year. The Night of a Thousand Elsas.

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Thats a long time to hold on to that.

You should let it go.

one MEEN Ag said:

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Squadron7 said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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BQ78 said:

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Frozen?

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Came out a decade ago. Feeling old?

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I remeber Halloween that year. The Night of a Thousand Elsas.

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Thats a long time to hold on to that.

You should let it go.

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Elsa what?

Elsa you get concrete shoes

CDUB98 said:

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Not sure this specific write down has to do with their wokeness.

Maybe tied together via a reduction in net working capital, so they needed to offload some recurring expenses?

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Anecdotal evidence says that it is. I'm sure that there are people dropping it because of cost cutting and that is the only reason.

But everyone of my friends that has dropped it is because of the agendas that they are openly pushing in children's shows.

captkirk said:

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When is the write-down of Pixar and Lucasfilm coming?

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Disney, after removing dozens of shows and movies from Disney+ and Hulu last week, said it will incur a $1.5 billion impairment charge for the June quarter.

In an SEC filing Friday, the company said that on May 26, 2023, it removed "certain produced content" from its direct-to-consumer streaming services. As a result, Disney will record a $1.5 billion impairment charge in its fiscal third quarter financial statements "to adjust the carrying value of these content assets to fair value."

Disney said it's continuing to review content on streaming platforms and "currently anticipates additional produced content will be removed from its DTC and other platforms, largely during the remainder of its third fiscal quarter." As a result, Disney currently estimates it may incur further impairment charges of up to about $400 million related to produced content.

On Disney's earnings call last month, CFO Christine McCarthy had said the company expected to take a write-down in the June quarter of $1.5 billion-$1.8 billion from removing content from its streaming platforms. By writing down the value of the content assets, Disney can remove those from its balance sheet to avoid having to pay ongoing residuals and to reduce its tax bill.

In its content purge last week, the media company pulled off more than 50 titles from Disney+ and Hulu, including series "Willow," "The Mysterious Benedict Society" and "Dollface," and movies such as "The One and Only Ivan."

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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/disney-1-5-billion-content-204715614.html

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I liked season 1 of the mysterious Benedict society. Never saw season 2 cause we canceled Disney+

BQ78 said:

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Elsa you get concrete shoes

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Note to young'uns: This is how you do a "heavy".

Demosthenes81 said:

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New press release from their marketing department:

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Disney is a bombad company and knows what isa do. Desa will be successful now and into dha future.

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Reminder that an Aggie was responsible for that abortion.

Saw the icon for that and didn't even bother watching the trailer

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Saw the icon for that and didn't even bother watching the trailer

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I was actually kind of excited because I thought the first 2 were interesting with a lot of cool history. This one had all kinds of weird messaging. Main character was some Mexican girl who was a DACA kid that of course got into Harvard but couldn't go because of money (which if anyone knows anything about Ivies they know is total BS). Her Mom was a Prof but for some reason decided to come as an illegal. Had the Black girlfriend who was all about racial injustice. Lots of white man bad and evil rich people and capitalism.

Mainly though the writing and acting was just terrible. I mean they could have gotten a couple of kids from our HS and put them up there and they would have been much better. They kept trying to make all these Woke storylines that made no sense and the plot was just lost.

Point though is you start off with something like that which is a solid story and a cool idea. Have a huge budget to work with. Yet you make complete crap. It's just over and over Disney doing that now.

Pinochet said:

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Future recurring residuals would not have been capitalized. This is the problem with people jumping to conclusions without understanding what's going on.

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No one ever said they were. What was said is that they are looking to limit their exposure to future residuals, along with other costs, and that's why they're cutting all this content and taking the impairment charge.

Disney was offering a resubscribe $2.99 a month for 6 month deal last month that I did not accept. I feel like I am helping with this financial downfall.