Potiki

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.

I think the implication is that working on that much influenced quality as people in the studio were stretched thin, rather than a flooding the market take. Which I think most would agree MCU and Star Wars have been hit or miss in terms of audience reception to the shows/movies with some being well received whilst others are more mixed. If quality was high people would probably still be more accepting of a larger amount of shows/movies.

More interesting to me that Linear has reached the point in that they are looking to get out of the business, still bullish about ESPN (Live Sports) but even there they are looking at strategic partnerships. It is possible they sell (either fully or a part of) ABC or close certain cable channels, probably FXX, Nat Geo Wild, Disney XD etc. that are more duplicate channels, and save money although Iger didn't go into great detail. Streaming will eventually turn a profit but Linear is on a steep decline for the last 18 months or so and given Iger's comment it has probably gotten worse recently, quite the turn round from 6 months or so ago when they were planning on riding Linear out for it's profits but then again a lot of things have turned more negative in the media landscape this year.

Just catching up on the CNBC interview now and this is wrong, the increase in movie and introduction of TV was diluting the focus and attention of the people in the studio (not audience), thus why they have pulled back and partially why they slowed down releases from Marvel, Lucas (and more quietly WDAS and Pixar) but also to slow spending as well. From the 41 second mark: "we ended up taxing our people way beyond, in terms of their time and focus way beyond where they had been. Marvel is a great example of that, they had not been in the TV business in any significant level, not only did they increase their movie output but they ended up making a number of Television series and frankly it diluted focus and attention"

The least shocking news of all time, I knew this would happen when he came back.

You have a source? I haven't heard anything like that is going to happen, I know the studios are slowing releases and going more into unscripted but that impacts Broadcast more than Cable or Streaming. Also just want to say whilst I haven't posted in this thread I'm 100% in support of the writers and it would seem actors who are striking and hope they get a great deal.

1. Fallout 2. Ghost Protocol 3. MI2 4. Rogue Nation 5. MI1 6. MI3 I think the reason I'm higher than the vast majority of people on MI2 is because I watched a fair amount of John Woo films such as A Better Tomorrow and Hard Boiled growing so I appreciated the film more, same goes for Face/Off. Didn't get into Mission Impossible until around the time Ghost Protocol came out but it is one of my favourite franchises now along with Star Wars and Pirates. Looking forward to Dead Reckoning which comes out tomorrow here but probably won't watch it until next week as my mates are busy and this is a film I enjoy watching with a good sized group and talking about how crazy the stunts/action was afterwards.

source: https://deadline.com/2023/07/disney-2023-box-office-summer-marvel-indiana-jones-1235431049/ All of I removed was some fan war nonsense between Marvel/DC and the normal streaming is bad talk that Anthony does so you are not missing much if you don't click the link LOL.

Major Studios YTD Box Office Domestic: Disney - $1.35B Universal - $1.13B Sony - $589m Paramount - $398m Warner Bros. - $264m Worldwide: Disney - $3.4B Universal - $2.89B Sony - $1.1B Warner Bros. - $898m Paramount - $871m source: https://deadline.com/2023/07/disney-2023-box-office-summer-marvel-indiana-jones-1235431049/

Streaming is a bit of a profit suck but I feel people are missing the fact the Pay TV collapse happened and 2013/2014 was pretty much peak cable 100m+ subs, even in 2018/2019 before Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock launched Pay TV was already down to 85-90m subs and in an accelerating decline. On top of that advertising was relatively stronger in 2013 than late 2022 into this year, Box Office was bigger in 2013 than it is now, theme parks were closed in some places last year and limited capacity in others last year (although they were still probably the bright spot in terms of profit they still could have been bigger), largely worse foreign exchange rates with a strong USD and COVID added to cost of producing film and TV over the last few years. Just a bunch of bad shit to deal with not all of which is related to streaming.

Agreed, I hate the removal of shows/movies and think yes it will lead to more piracy and distain of streaming services. I'm glad I watched Crater when it first came out as it was a pretty good mixture of coming of age young adult film and Sci-fi film, wild that as you mentioned it was only Disney+ for not even 2 months before being taken down. I really hope all of this is short term but feel that once WBD started this it really opened pandoras box and we may just be stuck with this now. This feels like what happened in gaming with internet delivered patches giving companies there an excuse to deliver a game that isn't finished/broken and fix it post launch, just a terrible proposition for the people that engage with these services.

I know people are throwing out that this flopped but I think it is performing very well for what it is, to be honest I personally expected worse. This is a film that isn't based off an existing IP and those have been doing awful this decade (2020s) I mean it has a very good chance to be the highest grossing Hollywood original film this decade. I know there is debate what constitutes and "original" film but below is what it has to beat. Top 5 Original Hollywood movies worldwide since 2020: Tenet $365m Free Guy* $331m Elvis* $287m Encanto $256m The Bad Guys* $250m *Questionable as Free Guy liberally uses existing IP, Elvis is a Biopic and Bad Guys is based off a children’s book. Should get to first in my opinion; also I feel looking at the list Encanto got unfairly treated as a huge failure in the short time before it was deemed a mega success on streaming, song sales etc. without looking at the broader picture of how original films are struggling. I still think Pixar and WDAS are going to go heavily into sequels as I have been saying for some time and there has been a lot of confirmation that they are ramping up production on a lot of those, I think financially that is that right call, however this is a huge positive for original animated films just need to get budgets down if they are to rely heavily on theatrical which seems to be the Disney game plan. Maybe for Pixar at least they could shift doing R&D costs only on sequels and make original films just using the existing tools (this is a oversimplification but hopefully you get what I am saying)

The company that publishes GQ (Condé Nast) is also owned by a company (Advance Publications) that seems to have an 8% share in WBD. At least that seems to be the likely culprit of the quick retraction. Wikipedia page of Advance Publications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications

Yes plenty 2 series in the last decade, 3 in the last 15 years. The most recent series ended in 2020 but had a film continuation on Netflix last year.

No was never that short, originally they had the Premiere Access which was day and date for a charge but then shifted back to 45 days starting with Free Guy internationally/Shang-Chi worldwide and 30 days for Encanto and Strange World which had thanksgiving releases theatrically and Christmas releases on Disney+. Only film that had a 2 week window to digital (as in Apple, Amazon storefronts) was Onward but that didn't come to Disney+ for 28 days after theatrical releases but if they are including that it is a huge outlier due to the world and cinemas essentially shutting down.

When did they ever do this? Is he conflating the Universal/WB PVOD window with Disney+ windows which at minimum had been 30 days and that was only 2 titles most had 45 days and this year it has been at 90+ days for Disney+ with PVOD at around 60-75 days.

I love this stuff, always an interesting watch this season's whilst a little delayed is still great. Everyone comes off looking great here but Bryce Dallas Howard I think, on top of directing great episodes, just understands Star Wars (her route early on about blending storytelling with pushing the medium of filmmaking forward nails it) I would love to see her direct a film or her own series (similar to Deborah Chow on Kenobi) in the future.

Decade old news https://variety.com/2013/film/news/disney-acquires-indiana-jones-rights-from-paramount-1200927216/