Potiki

it is 5pm here in NZ at the moment so tonight is about right lol

😂

I don't think theatrical trends will change much under Iger given what he said on CNBC at the end of 2021 and reconfirmed a couple of months ago in an interview with Kara Swisher. I'm fairly certain there will not be more volume under Iger but that is probably a good thing, 8-12 big hits is what lead to the Disney success in the 2010s, no reason to have 3 major releases (Black Panther 2, Strange World and Avatar 2) in a 5 week window like they currently do now. I quoted the link to the Kara interview earlier but here is a link to the CNBC stuff if anyone wants to read: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/27/what-disneys-bob-iger-thinks-about-the-future-of-movie-theaters.html

Doing the research on what this could mean and rewatching this interview tonight. If I remember correctly Iger predicted the struggles Cable and Broadcast are facing, also the challenges of theatrical but that is part of the post. Have to see if there are any nuggets of info in there that could explain what changes might be coming.

Bob Iger still owns a bunch of stock and I'm sure that will pop come Monday but even so I would go higher including certain bonus targets.

Only thing I doubt is this is only 2 years, no one in the company I can think of that will be ready to be CEO.

The GOAT is back!

Seems like a step up in budget this episode which I assume will carry over to the finale, looking forward to see how they are going to finish up the season and set up season 2.

I was thinking about this and the worst part of this compared to Fox/Disney layoffs is that there really isn't a lot of places for any employees who are let go from Disney (or WBD, Netflix, NBCUniversal etc.) to go as compared to 2018/2019 when Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Warner etc. were all ramping up in terms of getting all sorts of media employees. Also as I said in the Disney+ thread hopefully any layoffs are minimal.

How WBD came to be was AT&T spun off Warner (which means it become a seperate company from the rest of AT&T but still owned by AT&T shareholders) it was also merged with Discovery at the same time with a split of 71% of the company owned by AT&T shareholders and 29% of the company owned by Discovery Shareholders. As for the debt situation AT&T as part of the deal to merge Discovery with Warner was allowed to place some of their debt on the new company which is pretty much how Discovery/Zaslav “paid” for the merger. Here is a breakdown of how much they owe as of September 30th and broken down into how much is from each part of the company (Discovery, Scripps, Warner) and when the debt is due *note that due to some of the currencies being Euros and Pounds and also the interest rate that these figures will likely change but this gives you an idea of how much they owe and when: WBD present - 2025 - $12,202,747,924 WBD 2026-2030 - $10,503,446,000 WBD 2031 onwards - $26,937,902,000 Broken up into: Discovery present - 2025 - $3,147,971,000 Discovery 2026-2030 - $4,731,220,000 Discovery 2031 onwards - $6,745,121,000 -- Scripps present - 2025 - $23,408,000 -- Legacy Warner present - 2025 - $531,368,924 Legacy Warner 2026-2030 - $272,226,000 Legacy Warner 2031 onwards - $692,781,000 -- Warner Holdings present - 2025 -$8,500,000,000 Warner Holdings 2026-2030 - $5,500,000,000 Warner Holdings 2031 onwards - $19,500,000,000 Source: https://s201.q4cdn.com/336605034/files/doc_financials/2022/q3/WBD-Outstanding-Debt-as-of-Sept-30-2022-for-website.pdf source in image form:

There is at least one superhero genre film from Korea. It is from the director of Train to Busan, it is pretty decent as well.

Agree with this, the audience I was watching with loved a couple of the scenes he was heavily involved in, they could have done more with him.

Somewhere between a B and B+ for me, not as strong as the first film for me personally. They could have cut out 10-15 mins and not lost much in terms of the story/themes, the acting was great from everyone, a couple of nice surprise moments, action was solid and it had a very nice ending.

Was decent, not as good as the first and a bit overly long but had some great moments.

Going to be watching this in a few hours, have been trying to avoid reading reviews and watching TV spots. Going in with middle of the road expectations, not low considering I enjoyed Black Panther a fair amount (upper middle MCU ranking) but also not too high considering I know certain elements from the first film that I love like Killmonger won't be in the sequel.

I remember it at 7% when numbers were first posted but didn't follow it minute by minute as was busy reading the report so maybe missed it dipping into double digit territory. Parks were up slightly QoQ and way up YoY in terms of revenue, down a bit QoQ in terms of operating income but up YoY, the strong US dollar and having to shut WDW for a bit due to the hurricane hampered business, parks is still looking real good though above FY2019 in terms of revenue now. It was media segments that had the major losses with Linear Networks dropping nearly $900m QoQ and nearly $400m YoY, Content Sales and Licensing continues to lose a small amount, peak losses in streaming this quarter so was a bad look for all that to happen in unison. I'm still waiting for the 2022 full year report to see what we are looking at in terms of Pay TV subs but not a good story for legacy media companies that even Disney with ESPN is getting impacted negatively with lower affiliate fees and advertising, Linear Networks have been able to be steady for years for Disney but I worry FY23 will be fairly ugly.

Not as big a drop as Roku, WBD and Paramount (all were double digits) but down ~6% after-hours not great, erosion of linear networks and ad market weakness hurting the media sector.

Wouldn't say it is dead but not great either, it is super top heavy. Here is 2022 year to date top 10 Vs. 2019 and 2018 All of these are from the Kobiz website, you can see revenue share of the top film for 2022 The Roundup is 13.82% (it will come down some in the next 2 months) but that is crazy compared to Extreme Job at 7.29% and Along with the Gods at 5.65%, not exactly healthy for non blockbuster titles (be they local or Hollywood.) Also the local films doing the best this year are sequels/spinoffs much like most Hollywood films now so probably just a shift in viewership to something that is familiar in cinemas and the rest on SVOD which seems to be a mostly global trend at this point.

First off I get the frustrations with the studios/streamers particularly with what has happened in the last couple of months. Ideally I would like for the best parts of physical media and streaming to be combined but that seems an impossibility so having both is good, although I'd also like more support for both (more Dolby Vision 4K releases and more older catalogue titles on streaming.) My original comment was a bit of frustration at having 4 physical copies of the original Star Wars trilogy, 3 copies of the LoTR extended editions etc. just to stay up to date on the best quality release (and those weren't cheap.) Personally I have a very small collection of 4K Blu-rays because of being burned in the past by having a new format release the old one and most of the time the ease of streaming means I'll watch it there (although I know data caps are a big thing in the US that I don't have to deal with) I still prefer physical media for when I watch on a projector though, as streaming compression is much more noticeable (in particular HD/1080p) on a 150-200 inch screen. Also going back to Avatar the problem with watching Avatar on DVD or Blu-Ray is it doesn't have the upgrades of 4K HDR that the recent cinema release so if people that are wanting to see it for those improvements will have to wait for either Disney+, a digital upgrade on iTunes (or other digital storefronts) or 4K Blu-ray release, so it is not like physical or digital purchases solve that problem.

The king ... of making me buy movies every time they update the format! My VHS collection isn't getting much use and even if if I did get an HDMI compatible VHS player I'm not sure I would want to watch those on my OLED, same with DVD although much easier to watch admittedly. Blu-Ray and 4K Blu-Ray still look good though, although I would love to have more Dolby Vision support for 4K and a way to Rip a playable Dolby Vision version for preservation.

Maybe but given how beloved the films are that seems fairly risky. If WBD didn’t have a bunch of debt, I could have seen a Lucasfilm style big deal for full rights to Harry Potter but alas. Also not sure how much Zaslav is willing to spend up on films yet, Superman will be interesting to see who they get as a director, if it is McQuarrie (god I hope so) or someone of that stature I think a Harry Potter 8 (or 9) would be more likely (though still difficult)

Problem is more Dan/Emma than Twitter crowd, I think it would take a lot to get them to work with something that JK is heavily involved in again. Dan reconfirmed his criticism of JK only a few days ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-defends-speaking-out-against-j-k-rowling-controversial-comments/