Disney: Currently the biggest, most powerful, smartest and (??)most safe(??) movie company in the world.

[That One Girl]

My biggest problem isn't that they're making unoriginal films.  It's that they're making unoriginal films that have no reason to exist.  Each SW and Marvel entries are each unoriginal, but they're good, so I don't have an issue.  With movies like BATB however, I do have one.

[drdungbeetle]

10 minutes ago, tribefan695 said:

As far as future releases where no one really has a clue how good the movie's going to be, I think what cinephiles really want more of are auteur-driven movies; whether they're original or not. Blade Runner 2 probably would've sounded like an absolutely stupid idea if it didn't involve someone like Denis Villeneuve (or Ridley Scott); but as it is people are really excited for it. I'm definitely more interested in A Wrinkle in Time with Ava Duvernay as opposed to a yes-man visual effects supervisor.

 

 

Cinephiles for non-Nolan, non-Tarantino directors are virtually nonexistent.

[RandomCat]

I think their is something inherently disingenuous calling WDAS or Pixar "Brand" films, but not anything made by the Big D itself. If it slaps a castle with tinkerbell flying over it, it's got a big ole brand on it's rear end screaming "WE'RE A DISNEY MOVIE"

 

Zootopia and Inside Out are "brands" only by the fact they were made by studios. So anything Disney puts out is a brand.

 

So I also wonder why Disney doesn't make non-brand movies anymore.

[Barnack]

5 minutes ago, RandomJC said:

So I also wonder why Disney doesn't make non-brand movies anymore.

 

That pretty much the interesting question of this thread (not why they are doing the 10 franchise movie a year they are doing, that answer is obvious to everyone) but why not have at least a Fox Searchlight equivalent (Say reviving Touchstone to do it), and buy / make / release a couple of stuff on the side, it could be a nice way to make a deal with director to attract them on their franchise, we give you one touchstone passion project with full control if you do the next Marvel movie without final cut kind of deal.

 

Some theory:

1) Just became too irrelevant on the bottom line, if that division does well or not it does not matter for them. Unlike other studio with lover profit for who the 40 million profit on their specialty division is a really nice and large part of their total 270 million profit of the year, When a Sony classic picture make 5 to 20 million they care, Disney probably would not know, lost in rounding error.

 

Specially when you consider those movie would not sell merchandise or help sell ticket at Disneyland with attraction.

 

It could just be a bad allocation of capital, the 200m spent on smaller release is just a 200m not spending on the next giant one and movies ROI are not that good versus Disney average return, movies is not that good of a business margin wise, Disney movie are.

 

Now movie studio are often under control of a media conglomerate that will not care about movies and can even take decision to help their cable division that would hurt the movie studio, that why some studios can be seem has if they pushing to remove the theatrical studio even if that would hurt them, it would help AT&T selling monthly subscriber if they had new movie release to their package.

 

2) Competition to themselves, all the attention put to them and all the screen Disney non franchise movie would take would only be competition to their own more profitable Disney franchise movie, they do not want starting to think about not pissing a big name director off because is movie award season release got buried by the last Star Wars. A bit like IMDB getting rid of is message board, it would too much energy and trouble for too little. For an example of that Apple didn't release a smaller Ipad mini until they didn't had any choice, the reason was simply that it would be the biggest competition to their own bigger, more expensive with better margin large Ipad.

 

3) Overall, the tent pole studio finance smaller movie and make them possible (often said, it is because of those Transformer that the studio is making those small artistic movie) is probably mostly a myth for most studio (not for Annapurna obviously but the MPAA ones). Every type of movies, every category of movies, every movie specialty division of movies they make need to be profitable on their own (with money directly and reputation to attract directors) and would need to still exist and be profitable even if the blockbuster would not be made by that studio. Otherwise they would not be made, there is no "charity" of studios diminishing there bottom line with the smaller one. Sony classic success rate was not much smaller than the Sony studio release. All of them would start favoring the type of movie that make more if they could do it almost all the time.

 

 

[RandomCat]

2 minutes ago, Barnack said:

 

That pretty much the interesting question of this thread (not why they are doing the 10 franchise movie a year they are doing, that answer is obvious to everyone) but why not have at least a Fox Searchlight equivalent (Say reviving Touchstone to do it), and buy / make / release a couple of stuff on the side, it could be a nice way to make a deal with director to attract them on their franchise, we give you one touchstone passion project with full control if you do the next Marvel movie without final cut kind of deal.

 

Some theory:

1) Just became too irrelevant on the bottom line, if that division does well or not it does not matter for them. Unlike other studio with lover profit for who the 40 million profit on their specialty division is a really nice and large part of their total 270 million profit of the year, When a Sony classic picture make 5 to 20 million they care, Disney probably would not know, lost in rounding error.

 

Specially when you consider those movie would not sell merchandise or help sell ticket at Disneyland with attraction.

 

It could just be a bad allocation of capital, the 200m spent on smaller release is just a 200m not spending on the next giant one and movies ROI are not that good versus Disney average return, movies is not that good of a business margin wise, Disney movie are.

 

Now movie studio are often under control of a media conglomerate that will not care about movies and can even take decision to help their cable division that would hurt the movie studio, that why some studios can be seem has if they pushing to remove the theatrical studio even if that would hurt them, it would help AT&T selling monthly subscriber if they had new movie release to their package.

 

2) Competition to themselves, all the attention put to them and all the screen Disney non franchise movie would take would only be competition to their own more profitable Disney franchise movie, they do not want starting to think about not pissing a big name director off because is movie award season release got buried by the last Star Wars. A bit like IMDB getting rid of is message board, it would too much energy and trouble for too little. For an example of that Apple didn't release a smaller Ipad mini until they didn't had any choice, the reason was simply that it would be the biggest competition to their own bigger, more expensive with better margin large Ipad.

 

3) Overall, the tent pole studio finance smaller movie and make them possible (often said, it is because of those Transformer that the studio is making those small artistic movie) is probably mostly a myth for most studio (not for Annapurna obviously but the MPAA ones). Every type of movies, every category of movies, every movie specialty division of movies they make need to be profitable on their own (with money directly and reputation to attract directors) and would need to still exist and be profitable even if the blockbuster would not be made by that studio. Otherwise they would not be made, there is no "charity" of studios diminishing there bottom line with the smaller one. Sony classic success rate was not much smaller than the Sony studio release. All of them would start favoring the type of movie that make more if they could do it almost all the time.

 

 

 

I applaud you in a very deep and thoughtful post.

 

I only wish it wasn't in response to a bad joke I made.

[rukaio101]

 

1 hour ago, alisson23 said:

 

I'm not going to answer a post as disrespectful as this. Shame on you.

 

 

 

[expensiveho]

 

"Tomorrowland was a bad movie, but at least they tried something new" is probably the worst argument I've seen in this forum.

 

Also, does Disney have blank spaces in their schedule to release a bunch of low profile movies? They release tentpoles every 3 weeks and the dumping grounds are still dominated by their old releases (January - Rogue One / April - BATB) 

 

Why would anyone want dumps like The Finest Hours or Queen of Katwe? Or huge tentpoles that have bomb written all over it? They still get bad press from John Carter, Lone Ranger, Tomorrowland, etc

[Plain Old Tele]

1 minute ago, expensiveho said:

Why would anyone want dumps like The Finest Hours or Queen of Katwe?

 

/raises hand

 

Me. I like variety.

[expensiveho]

33 minutes ago, Tele Came Back said:

 

/raises hand

 

Me. I like variety.

I meant from their perspective. Why would you finance a bunch of films to dump them in the worst weeks and barely promote them so they don't even have a chance to make its money back. 

 

It's not realistic with all the franchises Disney owns at the moment

[Plain Old Tele]

3 minutes ago, expensiveho said:

I meant from their perspective. Why would you finance a bunch of films to dump them in the worst weeks and barely promote them so they don't even have a chance to make its money back. 

 

It's not realistic with all the franchises Disney owns at the moment

 

Well, the counter-answer is you actually bother to promote your movies and get them to consumers. Sight unseen, there's not a lot of difference between FINEST HOURS and something like HIDDEN FIGURES.

 

Bring back Touchstone and give them the resources to deal with it if Disney proper doesn't want to.

[That One Girl]

Disney barely marketed Finest Hours, Katwe, or Light Between Oceans.  That's on THEM, not the audience.

[EmpireCity]

I haven't read the thread, but it is pretty simple.  Disney is the backbone that keeps cinemas open so A24 and Annapurna and many others can fill with great film.  

 

As a bonus, Disney makes these big movies of a high quality for the most part.  They should get nothing but praise for the most part.  If it wasn't for them and a few others theaters would collapse or be much less quality or accessible than they currently are. 

Edited May 2, 2017 by EmpireCity

[cannastop]

19 minutes ago, Tele Came Back said:

Bring back Touchstone and give them the resources to deal with it if Disney proper doesn't want to.

What do you mean? Who would give them the resources, if not Disney proper?

[Barnack]

15 minutes ago, expensiveho said:

I meant from their perspective. Why would you finance a bunch of films to dump them in the worst weeks and barely promote them so they don't even have a chance to make its money back. 

 

 

That sound like a false dilemma, obviously no one is suggesting to make movie just to dump them, but yes to elevate the release we can see in lower box office season.

 

Quote

They release tentpoles every 3 weeks 

 

Disney release less than a movie every 3 weeks (that would be about 16/17 movies), they have released just one fiction and one documentary in 2017 and we are in May. It will be week #19 of the year when Disney will have release is second non documentary movie of the year, they seem set to be releasing a bit less than a movie a month in the near future

 

2018 for example has 11 planned release:

Black Panther	2/16/18
A Wrinkle in Time	3/9/18
Magic Camp	4/6/18
Avengers: Infinity War	5/4/18
Untitled Han Solo Star Wars Anthology Film	5/25/18
The Incredibles 2	6/15/18
Ant-Man and the Wasp	7/6/18
Untitled Disney Live Action Fairy-Tale (2018)	8/3/18
Mulan (Live Action)	11/2/18
Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2	11/21/18
Mary Poppins Returns	12/25/18

 

 

They could easily have an October and a September release instead of a 2 month hole, same this year with February and April.

[Barnack]

1 minute ago, cannastop said:

What do you mean? Who would give them the resources, if not Disney proper?

 

A bit like when Disney owned Miramax, Disney was not involved into their production at all it was all Weinstein, they gave them some money/loan line guarantee, distributed the movies they liked if they R or less, it didn't impacted Disney slate of movie much (if at all).

[Walt Disney]

43 minutes ago, Barnack said:

 

A bit like when Disney owned Miramax, Disney was not involved into their production at all it was all Weinstein, they gave them some money/loan line guarantee, distributed the movies they liked if they R or less, it didn't impacted Disney slate of movie much (if at all).

But they closed down Miramax because they werent making a lot of money from it. If Miramax made them a lot of money then they wouldnt have shut it down.

[Barnack]

15 minutes ago, Walt Disney said:

But they closed down Miramax because they werent making a lot of money from it. If Miramax made them a lot of money then they wouldnt have shut it down.

 

Well sure once the Weinstein went away after the big fight surrounding Michael Moore movies I imagine it started to become a money looser (it had accumulated a nice value in is movie collection thought, it was sold a bit over 600 million). But Fox Searchlight is still running, Focus Feature, Sony Classic, etc... Many studio did keep theirs Division created during the 90's indie craze.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Barnack

[Jason]

I get that we all want there to be more films out there that we like, and that Disney's live-action slate isn't cutting it for some of us. Hell, there hasn't been much of it that has or will interest me. Pretty much just A Wrinkle in Time, Mulan and Star Wars. Mulan in large part because it sounds like they're going to be taking it in a different direction than the animated film (which I love, but would be more interested in seeing a different take if it's going to be made in live-action).

 

What I don't get is why it's so important that Disney distributes more original live-action films or whatever it is that floats your boat. It's absurd in my mind to think that distributors like A24 are going to start buying up franchises and stop distributing original films just because that's what Disney is doing. A24 was founded in 2012, well after franchise blockbusters (from any major studio) started dominating the box office, and also after Disney mostly gave up on original live-action. They are clearly doing their own thing, serving and specializing in a different niche of the market.

 

Also, it's not like Disney distributing films like Arrival would have turned them into massive blockbusters. A lot of original live-action films (of the kind that some of us would like to see more of) have a fundamentally more limited audience, and Disney can't change that. Or anyone else for that matter. It's not Disney deciding which films make the big bucks at the box office, it's the market. Which generally favours adaptations and franchise films, from any studio.

 

2 hours ago, Tele Came Back said:

Well, the counter-answer is you actually bother to promote your movies and get them to consumers. Sight unseen, there's not a lot of difference between FINEST HOURS and something like HIDDEN FIGURES.

 

I think the latter had a much more compelling story for a lot of people to begin with. Certainly for the audience that did choose to see Hidden Figures (dominated by women and minorities, as far as I can tell). Don't think Finest Hours had a potential audience anywhere near that size.

 

1 hour ago, That One Valerian said:

Disney barely marketed Finest Hours, Katwe, or Light Between Oceans.  That's on THEM, not the audience.

 

Even if they had, I doubt very much it would have enough of a difference to make back the marketing costs. I ran my own one-man marketing team trying to get people I know to see Katwe, and it was an absurdly difficult sell. I had no success, and I can usually at least get my parents to watch something if I say "but it's based on a true story and has good reviews!". Basically, chess is a non-starter for a lot of people. (I have a suspicion being set in Africa didn't help either.)

 

And yeah, I know the dangers of anecdotal evidence. But at least some of the people I asked are more open to niche films than the general audience is.

 

In short, Disney isn't spending money on marketing that it doesn't think it will make back in increased revenue. Which I'm quite certain is what every major studio intends to do, and probably even the more independent studios as well.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Jason

[Plain Old Tele]

@alisson23, continuing this argument in the thread won't bring anything but more grief. Please give the staff the space to review the reported posts. 

[Plain Old Tele]

29 minutes ago, Jason said:

I get that we all want there to be more films out there that we like, and that Disney's live-action slate isn't cutting it for some of us. Hell, there hasn't been much of it that has or will interest me. 

 

I'm not sure why people continue to equate A24 with Disney. The two are dramatically different companies. With regard to your extended post, this snippet at the top sums up my opinion. Disney is merely the most extreme example of all the major studios. 

 

What's interesting is that the adult demo (and older demo) tends to be underserved these days and there's space there for a studio to target, if they won't so concerned with chasing the attention span of young audiences.