"Wish" bombed. "The Marvels" crashed. The less said about "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," the better. The studio that was the first to have five $1 billion movies in one year, back in 2019, was supposed to be celebrating its centenary in 2023. Instead, its box office fortunes have been so poor that Disney is estimated to have lost over a $1 billion on its 2023 movie slate.
Before I get any further into this, I want to point out that the entertainment business is cyclical and Disney has been in this position several times before - in the 40s, the 80s, and the mid 2000s. You could almost say that the studio is right on time for another stint in the wilderness. However, Disney's never experienced such a steep fall from such lofty heights before. The 2010s were dominated by Disney blockbusters from its Marvel, "Star Wars," PIXAR, and Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS) brands. This year, with the exception of one Marvel movie and one PIXAR movie, everything underperformed - sometimes outright bombing.
The severe downturn in Disney's fortunes across all of its filmmaking units was due to the convergence of a lot of different factors. There was the overspending, the oversaturation, the overconfidence in franchises and Disney branding, behind the scenes leadership difficulties, and an unfortunate mindset of quantity over quality. When you look at why so many of the 2023 films failed to impress, it almost always came down to rushed productions and corner cutting. Pumping out content for Disney+ was a massive misstep that changed consumer behavior in unpredictable ways. COVID was an absolute wrecking ball and the dual strikes last year piled on the pain. Every Hollywood studio has been suffering from similar blows, and Disney is far from being the one in the most trouble right now. Things could get much worse - I'm worried about Nelson Peltz worming his way onto the board of Disney and potentially becoming another David Zaslav.
One element I've been chewing over is that the alt-right has declared war on Disney over some of their DEI measures, and has been taking credit for their bad year. There was also the whole tiff between Disney and Florida governor Ron DeSantis that got so much press in 2022. A paranoid part of me is worried that this might be indicative of the whole American culture taking a hard turn to the right, the way it tends to after major national crises. However, despite a few outliers like "The Sound of Freedom," the beneficiaries of Disney's misfortune have been movies like "Barbie," "Super Mario Bros.," "Wonka," and the latest "Hunger Games" movie - all just as progressive as any Disney product that came out in the last year. Anti-Disney campaigns are nothing new, and while the latest ones may have had some impact, clearly it was only to exacerbate the deeper underlying issues that were already in play.
Frankly, people are exhausted of the MCU. The most recent animated films look lackluster next to the competition. The live action remakes of the animated films have worn out their welcome. "Star Wars" has spent several years floundering, and doesn't look to right itself anytime soon. All of this is perfectly normal and foreseeable, especially considering how hit-or-miss these movies have been since 2020. The bad luck was that multiple Disney franchises and brands hit their low points in the same year. "The Marvels" and "Wish" bombed in the same month. After years of successes, people forget Disney's long history of box office disasters like "John Carter" and "Prince of Persia" and "The Lone Ranger."
But if Hollywood history tells us anything, it's that Disney will be back on top eventually. They're not even doing all that badly right now. The superhero boom may be over, but it doesn't mean that Marvel films are all going away - just that they can't be counted on to be bulletproof anymore. I expect that we'll see Marvel refocus on its "X-men" and "Fantastic Four" characters over the next few years. PIXAR actually broke its streak of box office duds with "Elemental," and I expect both PIXAR and WDAS will reorient and adjust with the times. The animation slate is currently sequels as far as the eye can see, which I'm not happy about, but it'll buy them some time. Somebody will get "Star Wars" right again, eventually, even if Jon Favreau's "Mandalorian" movie is a bust.
This is a dip, not a nosedive, and recovery is very possible. There will be fights (proxy and succession) behind the scenes, restructuring, reorganization, and possibly regime change. It's probably going to get pretty ugly, and there's going to be way too much "Moana." However, in the end the Mouse isn't going anywhere.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment