[imglorp]

I have to wonder realistically how long a character/canon has traction in order to pay back a $4 billion investment.

Something like Mickey Mouse is probably past the end of its lifetime now, but Star Wars franchising is going strong and was probably a good buy for Disney. Things like He-Man were barely blips.

[dpeck]

Mickey Mouse is anything but past the end of its lifetime. He and his associated characters are refreshed often. Mickey and the Roadster Racers is a relatively new show and quite popular with my own child and those of our friends, and we're far from the over the top "Disney people".

[nightcracker]

Mickey Mouse will be public domain in 5 years from now.

[lotsofpulp]

Assuming Congress doesn’t extend copyright terms...which they repeatedly have throughout the course of history.

[megaremote]

Thanks to Disney and Sonny.

[ceejayoz]

The company's a lot more than just Peppa Pig, though.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/24/peppa-pig-on-t...

> The character is owned by Entertainment One, which makes and distributes TV and films including Grey’s Anatomy, Spotlight and The Hunger Games. The company said Peppa pulled in more than $1.1bn in retail sales, adding that it struck 500 new or renewed deals with TV and product licensing partners in the year to the end of March.

[echelon]

Is Mickey in the public domain now? Can other companies start using him and the other early Disney characters in new content?

As an aside, people are awfully enamored with "Star Wars" and other big tent pole series. However, if the costs of writing and filmmaking were low or non-existent, I believe the market would be flooded with new creativity. There would be tons of new stories in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, and the value of any single brand or series would plummet.

All of that to say, I don't feel like people are necessarily attached to "brands" or "licenses" like "Mickey" or "Star Wars", it's just that there aren't enough choices available. It's too expensive to create new entries. Copyright enshrines these brands, companies seldom want to invest in creating new ones, and the barriers to entry make it hard for competition to arise. Experiments are risky.

Imagine a world with substantially lower cost to produce. In the limit, there would be so many stories that we'd be hearing about new experiences in content from our friends on a daily basis. We couldn't explore the entire graph. Discovery would be ephemeral and happenstance, and very few things would ever rise to the cultural prominence of Marvel, simply because there would be worthwhile novelty everywhere you look.

Imagine when our computers can dream up stories to tell us. That excites me.

[wmeredith]

The acquisition is of Entertainment One a huge company with a portfolio of properties and content. They make $1 billion per year.

[arcticfox]

> Something like Mickey Mouse is probably past the end of its lifetime now

Is that true? I only know a few toddlers but they love Mickey

[veidr]

Yep, my 2-year old too, despite my vigilant efforts throwing every Disney toy/gift/book he or his brothers received directly into the trash before exposing them to it... they absorb it from their adjacent kids via something like osmosis.

    (T_T)

[flarg]

There are many episodes and the target audience continually renews as they land in the age range for the show. Plenty Hasbro can do to improve product lines I guess, but there's also the opportunity for more theme parks, there's only one in the UK (quite wonderful, full of toddlers mobbing the main characters).

[ivanhoe]

They'll pay it off just by selling toys and t-shirts... and realistically it's one of the better cartoons for toddlers, fun, smart, non-violent...

[SaltyBackendGuy]

> Something like Mickey Mouse is probably past the end

Anecdotally, that's not true in my house. My daughter loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

[didsomeonesay]

My daugther loves to watch it, too. But what a terrible series that is. The characters resolve every problem they run into by calling this magic gizmo that resembles ... a slot machine? What's that about? I try to avoid it now and offer other options.

[bitwize]

Disney is in the process of setting fire to the Star Wars brand's value. Their new SW theme park was a colossal flop by Disney park standards, and after the boondoggle that was The Last Jedi, Solo failed to make anywhere near its projected numbers.

[krapp]

The Last Jedi made over a billion dollars worldwide... less than prior films but still hardly a "boondoggle."

[bitwize]

And a lot of those filmgoers eager to see it, left the theater disappointed in the story and soured on the brand, which contributed to the franchise fatigue Solo suffered at the box office from.

[krapp]

The Last Jedi was divisive, but plenty of people liked it as well.

Solo was a film that no one was really asking for, and that also failed on its own merits.