I mostly agree, but to be fair on some of those points; Star Wars and Indiana Jones had released movies that were pretty meh to me before they were acquired by Disney so its not like that’s Disney’s fault. It’s also entirely likely that I view the older movies differently because I was a child when I saw them and rewatching them now with those wonderful rose-colored lenses of nostalgia make it so much easier to ignore their faults compared to watching the later releases as an adult. So yeah.. I’m just probably not the target audience for a lot of this.
All true.* But I think that the trouble with a lot of the Disney discussion we see on this board is that most of the people here aren't actually discussing Disney as a company, but just Disney as "The Company that makes the certain Nerd Culture content that I like."
It's best to think of Disney as three different companies that are all inter-related.
There is the Disney as content producer (films, DTC (Disney+, Hulu), licensing deals, content sales - which includes movies, etc.).
There is Disney as steward of older legacy media- linear networks ABC, ESPN (and other sports) and associated cable channels.
Finally, there is Disney as owner of the most successful branded "lifestyle/parks" brand (parks, cruises, destinations, vacations). They call them "Experiences."
I'm breaking this out slightly differently than the Q4 earnings, but in Q4, we see the following-
Experiences is the largest part of Disney, in terms of revenues, growth and profits.
Legacy is second-largest part of Disney, It is highly profitable, but is in decline.
Content is actually the smallest part of Disney. It operated at a loss in Q4, given DTC (Disney+) and the movie issues. You can see this once you break out the linear networks from the "Entertainment " category.
So when people talk about Disney struggling (and they have recently), they aren't really talking about the issues that the company faces overall. Here's the real issue-
Experiences is a cash cow. Period. But it also will require additional long-term investment.
Legacy is also a cash cow, but is in decline. They need to do
something with these asset. Spin them off for cash? Maybe. The free cash is great, but it's not a viable long-term strategy for the company to continue to hold on to these declining assets.
Content is volatile, but they've put their eggs in the DTC (Disney+, Hulu) basket. This needs to work at this point. If they get this to profitability by Q4 of next year, which is what they are predicting, then it should be a reliable money-maker moving forward. Unfortunately, it appears that DTC is, at least in part, hurting the content sales (movies).
The problem that they have is that they will need further capital expenditures in the near future. And there aren't a lot of great options- the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (with the exception of sum of the legacy parts). The overpay for Fox is hampering their financial options.
What would really help them is if they could get a lot of free and easy money from theatrical releases- but as we've seen recently, that isn't likely to occur.
So what they have done is to try and cut costs, raise prices in certain areas (Disney+), and try to re-think the creative side to move it to profitability.
But if I had to look at just one factor that was responsible for the decline in content, it would be overproduction and oversaturation ... all of which occurred at the same time as the launch of D+ (leading people to assume that they could just watch there things on streaming) along with the decline in the movie industry (along with the strikes). Movies can still succeed (see, e.g., Barbie/Oppenheimer). But Marvel movies used to be an event; when was the last time you felt you
had to see an MCU movie in the theater?