Potiki

There is over 1 million Polynesians here in New Zealand alone, close to 1 million in the US as well I believe, 200k+ in both Australia and Samoa, then probably another 500k or so in the other Polynesian islands. Probably be close to 3 million worldwide. As for Moana it certainly over performed here locally I believe the 4th or 5th highest grossing film of 2016-2017 (it was a December 26th release which is why I included both years) after Hunt for the Wilderpeople, The Last Jedi and Thor Ragnarok and maybe Finding Dory. It also would have over indexed in Hawaii and certain parts of Australia as well.

Sorry if I'm late and someone else already worked this out but I'm assuming this was using the fact that it on track to be the highest grossing digital release for Disney domestically and tried to extract global numbers from that, although not sure were they get the $1B+ for Endgame either. Source: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/app/uploads/2023/08/Q3_FY23_Earnings_Presentation.pdf (page 5)

Barbie Japan replied saying the essentially saying US Barbie account replying to the fan made poster was uncalled for.

2nd episode felt like more classic Futurama, I liked it more than the first and a very nice call back to an earlier episode of the show.

Was meant to be having a break but this is very interesting, unfortunately Puck has hard paywalled their site now so can't read the details but the byline gives a little detail: "Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs have both been engaged individually to consult with Iger, ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro, and others at Disney." These are two of possible CEOs during Iger's first run, they could both be possible contenders for Disney CEO along with Dana Walden in 2026 or later.

First episode of the new season won't go down as one of the classics but it is nice to have this show back. Hopefully the next 9 episodes are at least as good as this first one or even better.

In case you can't see the twitter link, it is from Andrea Goh (who works at Pixar) in reference to a queer moment with Priya: "My first Cultural Trust credit: The team already knew what to do since they ARE those characters, so it’s more just tweaks for specificity here and there. I am proud of this moment because as nerve wrecking as it was, I asked for a slice of queer representation anyways. #priya" If that still isn't enough feel free to just cut it out of my list, I have also edited in an additional 15 films for a top 25 now.

The Handmaiden (2016) Dir. Park Chan-wook Happy Together (1997) Dir. Wong Kar-wai Farewell My Concubine (1993) Dir. Chen Kaige Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) Dir. Abdellatif Kechiche Crush (2022) Dir. Sammi Cohen Tokyo Godfathers (2003) Dir. Satoshi Kon Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994) Dir. Stephan Elliott Turning Red (2022) Dir. Domee Shi Booksmart (2019) Dir. Olivia Wilde The Half of It (2020) Dir. Alice Wu The Birdcage (1996) Dir. Mike Nichols Saving Face (2004) Dir. Alice Wu I Love You, Phillip Morris (2009) Dirs. Glenn Ficarra, John Requa Potrait of a Lady on Fire (2020) Dir. Céline Sciamma Heavenly Creatures (1994) Dir. Peter Jackson My Own Private Idaho (1991) Dir. Gus van Sant Boys Don’t Cry (1999) Dir. Kimberly Peirce Brokeback Mountain (2005) Dir. Ang Lee How o Survive a Plague (2012) Dir. David France Tangerine (2015) Dir. Sean Baker Show Me Love (1998) Dir. Lukas Moodysson Shiva Baby (2021) Dir. Emma Seligman Farewell My Queen (2012) Dir. Benoit Jacquot The Fallout (2021) Dir. Megan Park Moonlight (2016) Dir. Barry Jenkins Edit: Top 25 now

Yes, Josh Peck got sexy.

I mean if you are a sick fuck who enjoys playing with nuclear weapons I guess...

Hopefully I will get to see Barbie next weekend, glad it is doing great though. @Eric Bainbridge is going to be 2 from 2 with his "nostalgic toy commercials" between this and Mario likely being the top 2 of the year

Translation: "Actually, in the "Star Wars" series, there is a character modeled after San from "Princess Mononoke". Her name is Ahsoka Tano. A legendary warrior who fights for the hope of the galaxy." I did not know this but that is awesome!!!

Probably a lot of the latter as people churn off and come back when a show they want to watch is on, or as people rotate between the various streamers, with Hulu and Disney+ integrated that may help boost bundle subs come the end of the year as well. Internationally will be tricky with, possibly less by all indications, foreign programming to acquire new subs as a lot of beloved content in Europe, Asia and Latam is local/regional, but at least they already have the equivalent of the Hulu integration internationally in Europe and Asia with the Star brand, which has broadened the service in terms of US and some international programming.

Nothing from Disney themselves but US data from Antenna Data is fairly reliable. Disney+ is generally the 2nd best churn in the business (~3-5% per month) after Netflix (2-4%) although that is only for monthly subscribers, Yearly and Bundle (Hulu+Disney+ or Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+) are obviously lower. This is outdated (although they haven't publicly released churn data recently that I can recall) and Netflix would have spiked again recently with the password sharing crackdown although new signups offset that. Edit: new data from seemingly a month ago (Churn rates) Disney Bundle: 2% Disney+: 4% Hulu: 5% ESPN+: 7% Netflix: 3.3% They also say half of subs in the US are Bundle subs. So Disney+ monthly churn could be weighted at 3% without accounting for yearly subscribers which would also improve that figure. So slightly better than Netflix in current times although I could see Netflix churn improving again once the password sharing surge contracts. Source: https://www.indiewire.com/news/analysis/disney-bundle-cost-churn-rate-netflix-1234876494/

You are lucky that someone last year claimed WB could sell DC for $30B otherwise you would have the award for most outlandish DC valuation on this forum lol. In all seriousness Batman merchandise/licensing and The Batman and Joker sequels would easily be enough to give it at minimum a $4-5B valuation in my opinion. Now is not a great time to sell but Universal, Netflix and Paramount would likely be keen for DC I have to think especially Netflix as that would propel their merchandise and licensing division and give them another revenue stream. However I doubt DC is for sale and would be a bad time to sell not only in terms of costly debt for buyers but in terms of brand perception, you should never sell low and DC is at an all time low ... hopefully Joker 2, The Batman 2 and Superman Legacy get them back on track.

Not that much any more a very small cost even for small businesses and I assume Disney gets a hefty discount being such a big player. I think now that Azure is a massive player and Google as well as Aliyun still involved AWS prices have come down pretty dramatically, that and tech infrastructure has improved which would have cut costs Disney+ film rights payments may very well have come down now they have returned to longer windows, which would make sense as it could be easily argued the films as worth less due to the longer time it takes to come to streaming and the additional VOD release pre-streaming. I don't have any confirmation if that is the case though, I believe Disney was paying around $200-250m per title post theatrical for Disney/Pixar/Marvel titles in 2020 through at least last year which is a notable bump from the $150m or so they got from Netflix (and other global licensed entities) in the 2016-2018 period. All that said if you just look at total quarterly revenue $5.514B minus programming and production costs of $4.145B Disney streaming would be very profitable. The issue is additional costs, a big one is Marketing which now that Disney have launched in all major markets and are less aggressively chasing new subscribers can come down and that does seem to be the case as selling, general, admin and other costs have come down from $1.7B to $1B in the last 6 months and could possibly drop even lower. Disney will absolutely turn streaming profitable, I would guess likely in their original timeline of 2024, as they are heavily cutting costs (some of which like removing shows and movies I feel is too aggressive but alas) to hit profit. However to do so I feel they are removing some upside they would have had, had they continued to be aggressive with local programming to challenge Netflix they could have possibly been the top player worldwide, Disney though seems to be comfortable being in the 2 or 3 spot globally when it comes to streaming.

Global ARPU (average revenue per user) isn't even half that for Disney+ at $4.44 in the most recent quarter if you subtract the Hotstar (India and SEA) subs which makes $0.59 a month you get the Disney+ Core making $6.47, even if you only do domestic they make $7.14. Will they eventually get to $10 per sub, probably but still plenty of run way. If you look at overall streaming for Disney though they are making $5.5B and subtracting Hulu Live which is roughly $1.2B they are at about that figure of $1.4-1.5B a month.

Wrong Avengers film I hope Barbie does great though, hopefully we have another Mario on our hands after a pretty so-so Summer.

Didn't know that the local Army Corps are super into Barbie! Can just use ANZ or Oceania, ANZAC is related to war time stuff or the biscuits that relate to that group. Getting back on topic, Elemental still looking strong and MI7 doing decent but I had hoped for better (although that seems to be the case globally for the film, hopefully legs are decent)

Soundtrack release seemingly. US release will likely be September at the earliest.

This has been a rumour on and off for 5+ years, I wouldn't read too much into it, could it happen? sure. Will it happen? I would say very unlikely. I also doubt Apple would want WBD, they wanted HBO at one point but there is too much junk to deal with for a WBD deal. Paramount is probably more likely if they want to get into the media space, although still feel some form of Universal-Paramount merger would be better synergy wise.

Yeah no problem, was only mildly disagreeing with you anyway but I largely agree that most will be happy with Disney and by extension Iger if they are making things that they like but feel like the online complaints will continue to persist from those who are more informed. ---------- As for the discussion happening above about streaming ruining Disney I very much disagree. Disney studios have not been the big money earner of the company since the parks became a big deal or if you want to limit it to film/tv then it is since they acquired ABC/ESPN in the mid 90s. Apologies in advance for the long ramble. The main concern for Disney is not streaming, theatrical or the parks it is the decline over the last decade or so of linear networks and broadcast (the decline has speed up in the last 5 or so years) which takes away both revenue and profits, a substantial amount of both, they had managed to keep it flat to small growth over the last few years until last year when the advertising market started to weaken. If they didn't move into streaming revenues would be way down right now and whilst losses are happening in streaming that was to be expected and what Disney forecast back in 2018/2019, before Disney+ launched, that a breakeven/small profit would not happen until 2024. Disney streaming will eventually be profitable* and likely decently so, although I disagree with some of the cost cutting that is going on (short term will help, long term will hinder in my opinion) as I feel they are the one company that could have challenged Netflix and been a big global player with very nice margins compared to good margins they will likely have in a few years. Theatrical costs have been up due to COVID, they should retract some (although the strikes may also add costs) but I think more important is the return of theatrical revenues and this year it will likely be a decent amount more than last year, already at the Domestic box office they will likely beat last years total of ~$2B full year as they are at $1.5B year to date, Worldwide was ~$4.9B full year and this year is at ~$3.7-3.8B year to date. So while far from 2018-2019 should still be fairly healthy going forward, I feel they can probably get back to 2015-2017 totals of about $6-7B or so worldwide each year. Theme Parks are struggling a bit at this moment with inflation, cost concerns from the general public and less so with global raising temperatures but they should be fine long term. Traditional TV (broadcast and Pay TV) is the business that Disney is clearly the most bearish (negative) on. Iger talked about selling ABC and keeping ESPN but with a distribution partner. I think the one thing about pulling back on streaming and not trying to compete with Netflix, signalling they are comfortable being the number 2 or 3 player in streaming, has meant that sports are less important in my view so wouldn't be shocked if they changed their mind and used ESPN to boost a sale of television networks. Put this way there would be very little interest in ABC by itself but a combo of ESPN and ABC would likely garner a lot of interest even with the struggles that traditional television is currently going through. *I feel like the ramp in streaming is unprofitable talk is a studio tactic in negotiations with the writers and actors to keep residuals down, although if it is true that the guilds want to base payouts on Parrot Analytics and Revenue earned that is also a bit bonkers so hopefully there is a middle ground there somewhere, hopefully one that skews the benefits towards writers and actors.

I feel personally I goes deeper than the shows/movies are not as good (which I have liked a bunch of stuff from both eras) I just disagree with the logic of a lot of the business decisions and feel stuff like layoffs were handled in a way that was mean spirited and the recent wording in relation to the writers/actors strike was poor (which was a common Chapek problem) and that has soured me on him a bit, which is a wild thing for me to be saying. But yes it is possible some may forgive more easily if they like the shows and movies that Disney is putting out, also I feel most of the general population do still like most of what Disney has been putting out recently and very few could likely name Iger as CEO even though he is one of the most known CEOs globally (he is not at that Steve Jobs level but I don't think any current CEOs are, maybe Musk and Zuckerberg but not for the same reasons as Jobs lol), people on this forum and people that deeply follow media/box office are going to be more knowledgeable and opinionated but I think that is minority of people. Not dealt with like how Chapek got rid of Peter Rice but quite a few who got to 2nd/3rd in command left the company due to Iger extending his tenure as CEO the first time. Tom Staggs and Jay Rasulo and the two most prominent that come to mind, also somewhat Kevin Mayer who was passed up due to Chapek being chosen.

I don't like the English title but it isn't going to stop me from watching the movie. Hopefully it doesn't take too long to come out here in ANZ but with Wild Bunch sorting international distribution I have a lot more confidence than Crunchyroll who handled Suzume awfully outside of Asia.