Between its fight with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the increasingly poor storylines and quality of its content, and messages in that content that some parents, generally conservatives, find objectionable, Disney has had a hard time living up to its former reputation and notching wins rather than losses in the movie industry.
Particularly with its fight with Governor DeSantis, Disney took a massive public relations beating from conservative media, and its problems picked up. What followed from the conservative outcry and residua problems from Covid was record-low holiday attendance at theme parks for the summer, a cratering stock price that hit lows not seen in decades, and a series of flops at the box office.
That led some to expect, especially after Disney brought back CEO Bob Iger to replace CEO Bob Chapek, under whose “leadership” many of Disney’s problems began or picked up steam, that the company would return to producing high-quality, generally apolitical content meant to entertain rather than preach and collect gobs of money at the theater rather than start fights online.
Instead, the studio is on track to lose, according to Breitbart’s John Nolte, an estimated three-quarters of a billion dollars across 13 woke offerings. The losses are impressive, and the franchises are recognizable. The only clear winner was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and that can largely be attributed to conservative star Chris Pratt.
Aside from the lone Guardian’s of the Galaxy offering, Disney’s year was generally bad. Some of the losses include the live-action “Little Mermaid” which lost an estimated $40 million; “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which lost roughly $158 million; “Haunted Mansion,” which stands to lose $141 million, and the most recent release, “Wish,” which is estimated at around $175 million in losses right now.
Of course, these films will stand to gain some of the losses back with streaming and overseas returns, but so far the box office results for the films appear to be quite poor, particularly domestically. So, even if Disney manages to make up some lost ground with overseas ticket sales and its streaming service, the year has hardly been a great one for it.
However, Disney largely has itself to blame. Even the return of former CEO Bob Iger didn’t help. Just three months after taking the helm, he announced huge cuts across the board. He said the studio must “reduce costs on everything that we make because, while we’re extremely proud of what’s on the screen, it’s gotten to a point where it’s extraordinarily expensive.”
Cutting costs will likely help some given the bloated budgets of many movies, and the opportunity retrenchment affords for cutting away poorly performing, over expensive content, but Disney will also have to fix the other side of the equation and produce entertaining content that doesn’t anger half the country if it wants to return to its heyday. It remains to be seen if the company can do that, or if the lower quality and generally left-leaning content it is now known for producing is here to stay indefinitely.