Disney's disastrous year

[FitzTheRuke]

Marvel movies used to be an event; when was the last time you felt you had to see an MCU movie in the theater?

This is a big thing for me - I haven't seen The Marvels yet because I expect it to be on D+ in a couple of weeks. Why bother going out? I expect to like it, but not be overly wowed.

And this is coming from ME, who has seen every single one of Marvel's films in the theatre before now. (Marvel-Marvel, not Sony or Fox Marvel - I skipped quite a few of those!)

I don't believe in "Super-Hero Fatigue" - but I DO believe in "You haven't changed your formula in 10 years, and we're getting bored of it".

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Plus an audience appreciation score of 84%. Record viewing figures and high viewer satisfaction sounds like a resounding success to me. It takes some effort to take the available data and twist that into some kind of ‘failure’.

Yeah, that Doctor Who was awesome. Even the parts that were silly or dumb were awesome.

 

[Ryujin]

Yeah, that Doctor Who was awesome. Even the parts that were silly or dumb were awesome.

Silly and dumb is part of the awesome.

 

[Ryujin]

The interconnectedness between Experiences and content (and other licensing) means it would be really hard to disentangle all that.

OTOH, linear seems like an easy out. However, it appears that they are trying to hold on to the sports part of the licensing (ESPN) and try to leverage that with streaming. But a lot of the contracts with ESPN and the leagues also benefit from the ABC tie-in ...

I don't envy the position they're in. There's a lot of options, but ... it's not clear what options are good options. Obviously, if content starts tossing off cash again, it would solve a lot of problems, but it doesn't resolve some of the underlying tensions.

I was mostly being facetious about the ad budget thing. Mostly. But the disparity in the levels of income can't be ignored.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Silly and dumb is part of the awesome.

Exactly! If it were too "perfect", it wouldn't be good Doctor Who!

Isn't the saying "Perfect is the enemy of good" talking about Doctor Who? I think it is!

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Being a fan of a POS billionaire is pathetic. And incels have been trying (and failing) to boycott Marvel/Disney at least since Captain Marvel came out. I highly doubt that a few thousand bootlicking losers on Twitter whining will be responsible for any change at Disney.

Yes, recent Disney movies and shows seem to have lost a lot of money. Yes, they will probably have to change direction in the future. Muskrats won't have anything to do with that.

For the record I'm a fan of no Billionaires.

And Incel is an offensive and sexist term and even worse encourages folks to view themselves in nilistic and bitter ways that can lead to violent radicalism if adopted as a self image, usually inflicted upon themselves, but occasionally upon others.

Try to have more compassion for others please.

 

[Umbran]

It's a value for the money consideration, not an economic one.

I mean, one hopes that economics is largely based on that, yes.

In the grand scheme of things, $15-$20 isn't a lot of money. Most people can afford the price of a ticket. (Many people will drop $1,000 on an iPhone and not even blink).

Comparison to an iPhone is sketchy, at best, as you are comparing 2 hours of entertainment to a durable item you use every day that you can expect to last you at least a couple of years.

$15-$20 isn't a lot of money. But that's per person, not counting concessions. With concessions, it is more like $60 total for a couple, and $120 for a family of four. And yes, it becomes a value for cost question - but that question is asked in comparison to other forms of entertainment.

As in, "I can pay $60 to watch this movie now, or I can watch something at home on a streaming service for a fraction of the effective price." Or play videogames for a fraction of the effective price. Or play a boardgame for a fraction of the effective price. Or read a darned book for a fraction of the price....

Oh, and that movie will come around to the streaming service fairly soon anyway, where they can see it with cheap soda and snacks. What, exactly, then, is the pressure to see it in the theater?

This last is a reality that studios have to face - covid forced people out of theaters, and drove them to streaming services. And, now that they have those services, they don't feel so much of a need to go back to that theater, in general.

The quality of the movies hasn't actually changed. We are just comparing the increased cost of the theater experience to the low cost of the home experience. If, for the very same film, the theater experience is insufficiently superior to justify the expense, then ticket sales will suffer.

The issue is whether people want to spend their time and money on something they may not like. (e.g. if you went to two Disney movies and didn't care for them, you are less likely to spend money to see a third one.)

I think you are missing the reality I explained above. It isn't that movies are bad today. It is that the theater experience is not so much better than the home experience to bother. The need to see things in the theater has largely dissolved.

 

[nevin]

This is a big thing for me - I haven't seen The Marvels yet because I expect it to be on D+ in a couple of weeks. Why bother going out? I expect to like it, but not be overly wowed.

And this is coming from ME, who has seen every single one of Marvel's films in the theatre before now. (Marvel-Marvel, not Sony or Fox Marvel - I skipped quite a few of those!)

I don't believe in "Super-Hero Fatigue" - but I DO believe in "You haven't changed your formula in 10 years, and we're getting bored of it".

I do believe in superhero fatigue and I'm a long time comic geek. But before we had superhero fatigue we had reboot fatigue, the superhero movies gave us a break, (other than the endless rebooting of batman). Now they've burned us out on superhero's, amped up the reboots and sequels and attempted to do it with more CGI, more special effects, and at one point I would have said shoddy writing but I recently read that the current thing on movies is to make the plot fluid till the movie is finished so that if the director, the marketing team or anyother person in the chain decides they need a cool tie in to a book, a theme park or an opportunity to tie it to a toy they can just change up the ending or any other main plot point without reshooting scenes. So yeah Shoddy writing and generic story lines that are easy to change on a whim.

I do think a discussion could be had over whether it's superhero fatigue or "the universe is going to die" fatigue. I think there is still a market for superhero's saving thier friends, cities, local hangouts etc, that are fun and not a crawl through glass to get to Thannos or the next BBEGI.

 

[nevin]

I mean, one hopes that economics is largely based on that, yes.



Comparison to an iPhone is sketchy, at best, as you are comparing 2 hours of entertainment to a durable item you use every day that you can expect to last you at least a couple of years.

$15-$20 isn't a lot of money. But that's per person, not counting concessions. With concessions, it is more like $60 total for a couple, and $120 for a family of four. And yes, it becomes a value for cost question - but that question is asked in comparison to other forms of entertainment.

As in, "I can pay $60 to watch this movie now, or I can watch something at home on a streaming service for a fraction of the effective price." Or play videogames for a fraction of the effective price. Or play a boardgame for a fraction of the effective price. Or read a darned book for a fraction of the price....

Oh, and that movie will come around to the streaming service fairly soon anyway, where they can see it with cheap soda and snacks. What, exactly, then, is the pressure to see it in the theater?

This last is a reality that studios have to face - covid forced people out of theaters, and drove them to streaming services. And, now that they have those services, they don't feel so much of a need to go back to that theater, in general.

The quality of the movies hasn't actually changed. We are just comparing the increased cost of the theater experience to the low cost of the home experience. If, for the very same film, the theater experience is insufficiently superior to justify the expense, then ticket sales will suffer.



I think you are missing the reality I explained above. It isn't that movies are bad today. It is that the theater experience is not so much better than the home experience to bother. The need to see things in the theater has largely dissolved.

Also more and more money is being spent to upgrade the theatre's and offer, alchohol,dinners, better food etc , taking a family of 4 to theatre and buying dinner and then you are looking at something close too or more than a 200 dollar bill. or pizza at home and a movie fora total of 60 bucks.....Everything they've done to help attract people to the theatres is to bring in the white whales who will dump 300 dollars to see the movie not fix the issue that watching the movie at home is increasingly the better deal.

 

[wicked cool]

how did it fail?
single coherent post
instead short sentences
Burma-Shave

It failed in ratings which equals money spent. There is real apathy now for dr who. You lost over 2 million viewers from the capaldi return of mysteries and tenant is you dr who all Star