[rs23296008n1]

This explains the recent Star Wars movies then. Well, possibly except one.

Belt tightening like that is usually the sign that the MBAs took over. This is fine up to a point except when they start running a financial services enterprise instead of ... whatever you'd call they had before. Animation media entertainment company?

I wonder when the rot set in. The creativity out of Disney is now matching Hollywood baseline and that has been dropping significantly. They're buying major franchies rather than creating them. I think this strategy is biting them. Too much financial analysis. They are losing the sharp creative edge.

Or is this my view, not based on insider knowledge, and completely inaccurate?

[throwaway86442]

Oh, absolutely spot on. I remember tuning in to one of Disney's internal talks about how they make a movie, and they were so proud that they audited every movie scene to make sure they were min-maxing profitability on the scene. If the scene wasn't considered profitable enough (such as not enough product placement or focus on marketable characters), the scene would be cut (or even denied to be filmed if possible). They would do things like take all the scenes of a movie/script, critical or not, and stack rank them on profitability.

[swsieber]

That explains Frozen II. My wife: "I don't understand why those scenes were left out. The movie would have made a lot more sense".