[Syonyk]

Their last few movies have been... well "abysmal" would make some abysses unhappy to be compared to the movie performance.

Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M.

It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.

Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget.

They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs.

You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see. And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)

[toast0]

> It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.

It's hard to make anything at the box office when it was barely released to theaters[1]. Wikipedia says it ended up in three US theaters, some theaters in the UK and 12 overseas markets without Disney+. Otherwise, direct to streaming and discs.

[1] https://deadline.com/2022/01/turning-red-skips-theaters-disn...

[wlesieutre]

From the almost complete lack of theatrical release, might the goal of that release have been to drive Disney+ memberships?

[jahewson]

January 2022 was the peak of Omicron, so probably not.

[koheripbal]

It's cheaper to just buy exclusive rights from companies that actually make good movies.

[Syonyk]

I don't believe it performed any better in disk sales, though I can't say what it did for streaming one way or another.

You can drop it from the data set and it doesn't change the argument, though. Disney's been dropping some impressive flops lately.

[Waterluvian]

The old world metric was how much money a film made. The new world metric is how much engagement a film provides a paid service. I think this is why Netflix often makes films that are critically panned but keeps making sequels, or why they drop critically acclaimed shows.

Disney will probably never want to share the truth about which of their films were business flops or not.

[dawnerd]

Really it's just a Disney+ movie, no one really buying it on disk.

[acchow]

Disney has been making bad movies for a while, but for whatever reason Marvel sold well despite repeating the same storyline every time... Same writing, same style, same jokes, same flair.

After the MCU reset, I don't think Disney has any idea what to do.

They could probably use ChatGPT to make better scripts tho

[hulitu]

> for whatever reason

kids _love_ violence. The story is simple (Disney TM).

[sensitivefrost]

Why would people buy it on disk when it was released onto Disney+? It has other metrics of success - it was one of the most streamed programs in March 2022.

[10729287]

I guess for some kids it's easier to pop a dvd in the player than navigating menus. Also, kids tend to watch the same movie again for ever, maybe it's safer for some parents to buy the actual thing, even more during the streaming war where parents switch from service to another.

[mcphage]

> I guess for some kids it's easier to pop a dvd in the player than navigating menus

I can't speak for all kids, but for mine it's the opposite—the main TV remote they use controls our Fire TV Stick, and has a button for Disney+ built in. Plus, our iPads have Disney+ apps. Whereas our optical drive is a PS4, so they'd need to use the TV remote to switch to a different input, plus the PS4 controller. I'm not saying they couldn't figure it out if they wanted to, but for them, navigating menus to Disney+ is much easier.

[toast0]

Cars (vans mostly) with rear entertainment systems are mostly using discs, I'd guess.

[eigenvalue]

As someone with a 2 year old child, I can attest that these movies sucked. Compare them to, say, Ratatouille, which was made using much more primitive rendering/animation, but the story and voice acting are great (and the graphics still very good), and it's no surprise that no one wants to see them. My child would rather watch the older, better movies 10+ times than one of the new ones even once.

[Syonyk]

My wife and I started Turning Red and Turned it Off halfway through. I haven't even tried the others.

Favorites in our place with the kids are Cars and Planes (though more Cars lately). We're on an old musicals kick lately, and it's just fun watching some of the big budget musicals from the 60s - when they wanted to get a whole street of people dancing, they went out and got a bunch of people trained to dance in the street. They also were a good bit longer, and generally had more room to breathe. The story didn't feel rushed at the end like a lot of the more modern one do (Encanto is a particular offender here, as far as I'm concerned).

[gambiting]

Funny, I don't feel this way at all - Encanto is probably one of my favourite recent disney films, I must have seen it 100 times now(partially because of my kid watching it all the time, but that's the funny thing - despite pretty much knowing every single line by heart now, I still like it. The story is good and the songs are great).

Turning Red is equally great - as someone who has also grown up in the 90s the film just gets so much right, it's a delight to watch. The story turns into absolute nonsense by the end but meh, the joy of watching teenagers figure out how to get money for a concert they want to go to is worth it.

[eigenvalue]

Yes I will say my daughter absolutely loves Encanto (and also Moana). Also the Good Dinosaur (but we had to cut back on that because she started growling like the feral child in the movie and that seemed like a bad development!). The music in Encanto is good.

[fishywang]

Since you mentioned Cars, there's an interesting thing I noticed when Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was in theatres. At that time, when I try to search the movie on IMDb, typing "three" (and I have to emphasize that I typed "three" not "3"), IMDb's first search suggestion was "Cars 3" instead of that Oscar winning movie that was playing im theatres at the time. I'm pretty convinced that Disney payed IMDb for that placement or something like that.

[Animats]

> We're on an old musicals kick lately, and it's just fun watching some of the big budget musicals from the 60s - when they wanted to get a whole street of people dancing, they went out and got a bunch of people trained to dance in the street.

Oh, for that you have to go back to the 1930s and Busby Berkeley. "Footlight Parade" is probably the best of that genre. At least see "Shanghai Lil".

[Syonyk]

I'll add those to the list, thanks!

[toast0]

> We're on an old musicals kick lately,

Are you streaming these? what service have they landed on? I haven't been able to find them on the services I have accounts with.

[Syonyk]

They're not.

We keep a DVD-based Netflix account around for a lot of this stuff, and I've purchased quite a bit of physical media on eBay or at local thrift stores over the years. It's rare to pay more than $5 or $6 for a good DVD of stuff we're looking for, and then into Plex it goes. Most of it can ship Media Mail if I'm not in a hurry.

As far as I'm concerned, streaming services are good for "I want to watch something; I don't care what." They tend largely trash for "I want to watch this specific thing."

[frakt0x90]

My wife and I really enjoyed Turning Red but she also grew up in that culture so maybe it resonated with us better.

[cloverich]

I enjoyed it much more after reading a bit about the cultural background, but was genuinely confused about its intention before. Probably the case for many folks who grew up similarly (unstructured, low expectations), which is perhaps more common in the US (but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

[silisili]

Going back even further, mine loved Jungle Book more than anything recent. Now that's staying power!

Anymore, we'll just wait for them to hit streaming. As GP mentioned, the latest movies just haven't seemed very good. Not up to par with the likes of Moana and Frozen, at least.

[edanm]

I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that. While my kids certainly like some older movies, a lot of them are incredibly slow and boring. Especially for me! Jungle Book, a movie I loved as a kid, has nothing on most of the newer releases, which are far more entertaining IMO.

[justinator]

Man, I still sing the, "Bear Necessities" song to myself as a 40 y/o and it's been so long that I can't even remember seeing the original movie. Didn't they put out like 2 additional Jungle Book movies? I can't think of a reason to watch them.

Having grown up with Tail Spin also very much helps the staying power of anything Baloo.

[edanm]

I still sing the "Bear Necessities" song too! But when I tried to watch the movie with my kids, I got incredibly bored. :shrug:

[linuxftw]

That was the nice thing about older movies. It wasn't an intense dopamine rush for 90 minutes. It was a story.

[JohnFen]

The original Jungle Book holds up extremely well for me. I can't think of very many movies that are better.

[gambiting]

Sure, and as an adult I would prefer it over most of the other modern productions. The richness of the backgrounds, the characters, the voice acting, the songs = absolutely top notch. But my kid just finds it boring - and he's right to an extent, it's very slow paced, and many scenes are just of characters walking along and talking with each other. Those scenes obviously make a lot of sense from the story telling perspective, but a kid doesn't find watching the congregation of wolves and their discussion about what to do with the man-cub even slightest bit interesting.

[silisili]

She just loved the singing and dancing, and -loved- the way Baloo talked. Which is interesting because during the movie I was wondering what accent he had, and how that accent doesn't seem to exist anymore.

[linuxftw]

That's what most mid-southern accents sounded like up until quite recently. A 'southern' accent you hear now is mostly a caricature of an Alabama accent.

[frant-hartm]

Ratatouille is a Pixar movie, not a Disney movie.

[cronix]

> Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar

[Brendinooo]

>Pending the Disney acquisition of Pixar, the two companies created a distribution deal for the intended 2007 release of Ratatouille, to ensure that if the acquisition failed, this one film would be released through Disney's distribution channels. In contrast to the earlier Pixar deal, Ratatouille was meant to remain a Pixar property and Disney would have received only a distribution fee. The completion of Disney's Pixar acquisition, however, nullified this distribution arrangement.

Ratatouille was a Pixar movie. "Pixar was responsible for creation and production, while Disney handled marketing and distribution." Ratatouille was released after the merger was complete but I'd imagine the story was largely locked in.

[LightBug1]

Ratatouille was released in 2007, so would have been in production long before.

I guess, one of the last movies to have Pixar DNA through and through.

[pastor_bob]

Turning Red and Lightyear are both Pixar movies

[justinator]

Disney owns Pixar.

[edanm]

I'm a huge fan of the Disney movies that came out when I was growing up (Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast are my favorites). My kids like those movies a lot too.

But I think some wonderful movies have been made in the last ten years, most notably Encanto and Turning Red. They're both massive successes, and I think they are in many ways better than those movies I grew up with.

Not to mention Frozen, Moana, Inside Out, etc. These are all wonderful movies.

(Ratatouille is also great, btw, don't get me wrong!)

[Hayvok]

I’ve got four kids (ages 2 - 10) so I’m likely prime target demographic for Disney.

Didn’t take my kids to see any of these, haven’t streamed them.

Before 2020 we probably saw every Disney and Pixar animation movie since 2012 with our kids. Some of them multiple times - Inside Out was genius, and I still hum Moana to myself.

We had zero interest in these movies from the trailers, and once we learned they would come with great big ice cream scoops of propaganda and eye-rolling allegory it was easy to say “no thanks” and keep our money.

[toast0]

> once we learned they would come with great big ice cream scoops of propaganda and eye-rolling allegory

Is that new for Disney? Or is it just you don't like the current flavor of propaganda and allegory?

[koheripbal]

I don't recall the propaganda in my kids' previous favorites - Cars, Frozen, and Up.

What propaganda was there in those?

My former favorites as a kid were the Little Mermaid and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Did I miss the agenda in those?

[tzs]

"Frozen" drew a fair amount of complaints in right-which Christian circles for being pro-gay. They see the "Let It Go" song as about coming out. Also the sauna at the trading post. There was a man and 4 kids in the sauna, and the only other person we saw who wasn't just someone stopping in to trade was the owner, also a man. So apparently that clearly makes the two men a gay couple with some adopted children.

An interesting place for movie reviews, regardless of your political or religious leanings, is the entertainment section at christiananswers.net. I'm an atheist but find it quite helpful.

In the reviews themselves they rate the movies both on moviemaking quality and moral quality, and cover both aspects in the review. They are quite willing to rate a movie 5 out of 5 on moviemaking quality and praise its story, acting, cinematography and so on, while at the same time rating it as extremely offensive and telling you in detail why seeing it might put your soul at risk.

There are comments there too which are almost never useful, but are often quite amusing. For example on one of the Harry Potter film reviews one of the commentators went on about how the film is actually promoting real witchcraft, and explained that before she became Christian she was a witch, performed real spells that worked, and the Harry Potter books and movies are an accurate portrayal of that real witchcraft and the spells that she use to use.

[mcphage]

> Also the sauna at the trading post. There was a man and 4 kids in the sauna, and the only other person we saw who wasn't just someone stopping in to trade was the owner, also a man. So apparently that clearly makes the two men a gay couple with some adopted children.

In the musical, they turn that scene into a giant naked chorus line singing about hygge.

[toast0]

You didn't hear about all the propaganda in the Little Mermaid?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-the-religious-right-attac...

(not to mention the general princess propaganda)

Up is clearly pushing narratives of scouting organizations, and the balloon agenda.

Not sure about Frozen (I managed to not see that one), but Cars is obviously glorifying internal combustion engines, and unsafe and unnecessary speed.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is clearly propaganda from ant and other insect activists.

[themitigating]

Your actions affect others The need for self-control The power of sacrifice Don't judge a book by its cover Love takes time and is built upon sacrifice and caring

https://www.ksl.com/article/29097698/5-moral-lessons-from-di...

[themitigating]

1.Your actions affect others

2.The need for self-control

3.The power of sacrifice

4.Don't judge a book by its cover

5.Love takes time and is built upon sacrifice and caring

https://www.ksl.com/article/29097698/5-moral-lessons-from-di...

[AussieWog93]

Encanto's pretty fun. No dodgy propaganda, and the music is even better than Moana.

[themitigating]

Dodgy propaganda?

[AussieWog93]

The parent was complaining about modern Disney films containing (I'm assuming "woke") propaganda.

Encanto was just a really relatable story about a family.

[VBprogrammer]

Oh come on, the level of wokeness was off the charts! It had a female body builder and the lead character even had glasses for crying out loud. /s

[samwillis]

Disney Plus is eating any traditional cinema revenue, looking at box office ticket sales no longer really works in this new world.

Disney, as a company, is in the middle of a mutation. The traditional block buster is dead, part of that is restructuring the company behind a new production and distribution process.

[stuckinhell]

I think Dreamworks shows the traditional blockbuster isn't dead look at Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. My kids made me take them to see that 3 times, and each time I thought it was pretty decent for a kids movie.

Disney just isn't making good movies anymore.

[JeremyNT]

Disney is a truly massive company. Looking at the performance of children's movies to gauge the overall health of Disney the company is sort of like looking at Whole Foods to gauge the overall health of Amazon.

[deanCommie]

Keep in mind, financials are extremely difficult to get to ground on:

1. Budgets tend to not include marketing which are all over the place - big movies TEND to have a marketing budget of almost the same magnitude as the filming budget

2. But at the same time, movie theaters keep half of the box office gross.

So in the worst case, a movie needs to make FOUR times it's "budget" to be profitable.

But movies keep making money after the initial box office - either on home media, or streaming, though exactly how studios attribute individual streams to revenue from a monthly subscription is opaque and impossible to uncover.

By and large though, you're probably right - all 3 of these are failures.

[orra]

Plus there's Holywood Accounting. Hollywood filmmakers are famous for their film expenses being as fictitious as their plots.

[gamblor956]

The marketing budget being the same magnitude as the film budget is actually a large part of Hollywood Accounting. At least for the major studios, most of the "marketing budget" for a big film is in cross-promotional efforts with related entities that don't cost them actual money, or for tie-ins or licensing deals which their marketing partner is sharing some or all of the costs.

Also, movie theaters don't get half the box office gross. For big budget films, the distributor gets a declining share of ticket sales, starting with 90% for major films (Marvel, Fast and Furious, Mission Impossible, anything by James Cameron), and declining each week down to a low of about 10% after 2-3 months (depending on the specific contract between the distributor and the theater). This is a large part of why studios are now so focused on first-weekend gross: it's also their most profitable weekend.

[deanCommie]

Today I learned!

[etempleton]

Almost all of their best movies have had heavy involvement in the writing / directing role by a couple of key players and most of those individuals have either graduated to a producer role or have moved on from Pixar.

Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Up, Inside Out, and Soul were all written and/or Directed by Pete Doctor.

Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, and Wall-E were written and directed by Andrew Stanton.

There are multiple writing and directing credits on all of their films, but these two have writing and directing credits on almost all of the great original ones.

One thing I have noticed is some of the more recent Pixar movies don't feel like Pixar movies at all. They feel like Disney movies: Lot's of musical numbers, a lot more slap stick and silly, more cheap laughs. Have to wonder if Disney has been asserting too much influence on the company.

[tzs]

> One thing I have noticed is some of the more recent Pixar movies don't feel like Pixar movies at all. They feel like Disney movies: Lot's of musical numbers, a lot more slap stick and silly, more cheap laughs

Which Pixar movies had lots of musical numbers? Of the ones I've seen (all but Lightyear) I only recall zero to three (depending on what counts as a musical number) that I'd count as having musical numbers. Have I forgotten some?

"Turning Red" had a some scenes where characters were singing, but they were singing for in-universe purposes. When I think of musicals what comes to mind is shows where the singing is not for an in-universe purpose.

Similar for "Soul" and "Coco". They had main characters that were struggling musicians and their music played a major part in their lives. All the music I recall in those was in that context (although it has been a long time since I've seen "Coco" so I could have forgotten music that was not in-universe.

[gamblor956]

Turning Red was released on Disney+ instead of in theaters due to Omicron, so the fact that it still made $20m in theaters is actually quite an accomplishment. It apparently did quite well on Disney+; at the time of its release was the 2nd-most watched movie on [edit] streaming in general for 2022.

Disney didn't brag about the viewing numbers for either Strange World or Lightyear, so those films didn't appear to do well in theaters or streaming.

[tzs]

"Turning Red" was streamed by 2.5 million households on its opening weekend. It was the most watched program across all streaming services in the US that week and the next week. For 2022 it was streamed about 114 million times.

That suggests that people did in fact want to see it.

[tomatotomato37]

One thing I've noticed is DreamWorks, which had a "second-rate Disney" feel in the early 2000s, has really been stepping up lately. Almost gives me AMD/Intel kinda vibes

[Animats]

Disney had their own in-house "second-rate Disney". The Crap Sequels Division was called DisneyToons, dedicated to producing low-budget sequels: Cinderella II/III, Mulan 2, The Lion King 1½... That unit was shut down in 2018. Crap sequel production continued under a different part of the organization, with somewhat larger budgets.

[munificent]

Puss In Boots 2 was easily in my top five movies of the past few years. It's just so much better than any animated sequel of a spin-off centered on a joke character has any right to be. It's an excellent film.

The fact that the entire narrative arc depends on it being a sequel makes it even more impressive.

[BryantD]

Other than Avatar, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Thor… at worst you can say that animation’s been a bit rocky, although Turning Red was a streaming release.

[Syonyk]

I don't believe any of those have been Disney, though...

[BryantD]

Yeah, Marvel is Disney, and the cuts happening this week appear to be company-wide rather than focused on animation.

That said, I tend to agree that both Animation and Pixar are floundering a little bit and it’s a problem. Marvel could be healthier too and certainly Star Wars isn’t doing what Iger wanted. However, I am more inclined to point at Chapek’s reorg as the cause: you’re going to affect creative satisfaction when you remove the ability to control your movie’s creative destiny.

Iger is working to fix this and that’s a good thing.

[geoffpado]

All of them are Disney. 20th Century (Avatar) and Marvel (the rest) are Disney properties.

[kbar13]

marvel is disney

[matt-attack]

> Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see.

Disney just released Avatar Way of Water which made $2.3B at the global box office and became the third highest grossing movie of all time.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

Also considering that every MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) movie made since 2008 is a Disney movie it's hard to agree with that particular statement. According to [0], the budget for all MCU movies since Disney purchased Marvel has been a little over $6B and the "worldwide box office" sales have been over $28B.

To be fair to the parent commenter, however, "Disney is making movies nobody wants to see," (the converse of the actual statement) seems like a less controversial statement which may be closer to their intended meaning.

[0] https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinemati...

[mcphage]

> that Disney is simply not making movies anyone wants to see

I can't completely discount what you're saying, since I have no interest in Lightyear (the toy from Toy Story, but it's not a toy? Why?) or Strange World (it looks fine, but their ads didn't make very clear anything about it).

But I will say that Turning Red was wonderful, and my family has happily watched that a number of times. Not surprised it flopped in the theater, though, given I didn't even know it was in the theaters. As far as I'm concerned it went straight to Disney+, like Pixar's previous 3 movies. It's been one of my favorite things about the service.

[conanbatt]

> It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.

Turning Red was surely a hit on Disney+. Hard to see from the consumer side what the impact was, but disney+ is a money machine and the can easily double the price.

[Syonyk]

> ...but disney+ is a money machine and the can easily double the price.

The very same Disney Plus that lost 2.4M subscribers in Q1[0]?

That doesn't seem like "You could easily double the price" sort of performance. They still have plenty of subscribers, but they're not going "up and to the right" on the subscriber graph anymore.

It's hard to make the case that Disney is doing anything but "dropping flops on a public that doesn't want to see them."

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/disney-q1-2023-earnings/

[jefflinwood]

If you dig into those numbers, they lost 3.8 million subscribers in India due to losing streaming rights for cricket matches.

I don't think that's a reasonable lens to be looking at how Disney's cartoon movies are doing.

I do think it might be worthwhile if you wanted to decide if Disney should have decided to keep the streaming rights, and whether the economics of that decision make sense.

[bigfatfrock]

"Disney’s Direct-to-Consumer revenue for the quarter rose 13%, to $5.3 billion, while its operating loss increased 78% to $1.05 billion"

...

"due to higher content and technology costs at Disney+ (with higher average costs per hour of programming, which included an increased mix of originals) as well as higher content costs and lower ad revenue at Hulu"

Not exactly the money machine I was envisioning!

[Syonyk]

Nope.

For comparison, a recent movie that performed well at the box office was Top Gun Maverick.

$1500M box office on a $170M budget - that involved flying and filming an awful lot of hours in "rather expensive to run jets."

[BryantD]

That’s a movie that performed in the top 5 all time domestically, so probably better not to use it as a target.

[marcosdumay]

I think the GP's point is to compare the costs. At least, that the most interesting point there.

[marcosdumay]

Well, for it to be a replacement for the theaters, it would have to be quite expensive and wouldn't ever become mainstream.

If they are going for a mainstream service, Netflix style, it won't be able to replace theaters.

Disney seems to want both, so they targeted their service at neither.

[notafraudster]

Crucially, Turning Red was _not_ released in theatres in most countries due to COVID-19. It may or may not have been a money loser, but there's very little reason to believe executives think it's anything about the movie that made it that way.

[nohaydeprobleme]

Yes, Turning Red's low revenue was primarily a cause of the film not being in theatres, rather than the quality of its story.

I personally liked the story of Turning Red very much (though I'm biased to like it because it's set in Toronto), but more objectively, the film is a step above Strange World and Lightyear in terms of ratings.

Turning Red's ratings: 95% on the Tomatometer of Rotten Tomatoes (RT), 7.0/10 on IMDb, and 3.7/5 on Letterboxd

Lightyear's ratings: 74% on RT, 6.1/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd

Strange World's ratings: 72% on RT, 5.6/10 on IMDb, 3.0/5 on Letterboxd

[munificent]

I'm neither Canadian nor an immigrant, but I absolutely loved Turning Red. I felt it was 10x better than Encanto. But the latter has catchy meme-worthy tunes, so here we are.

[ultrasaurus]

According to Wikipedia it did pretty well: ...the most-ever for a Disney+ original title... the most watched program across all streaming services in the U.S. ... continued to hold the top position ... the second most-watched movie on U.S. streaming services in 2022.

I don't know how it could've cost $175MM, but it's a quality movie and deserves kudos for giving us some diversity in protagonists.

[nightski]

We saw all these on Disney+.

[hintymad]

I don't get how Marvel's movies are getting worse too. Take Black Panther, for instance, why would people even not consider it premise insulting? Maybe Americans thought it was perfectly normal to depict Wankanda like that, but let's imagine a similar story about China: China is a closed society with a highly advanced civilization and a technology level that surpasses the rest of the world. The country is ruled by tribal chieftains who use swords, spears, and what not to fight for succession of chieftain. Many Chinese people are passionate about foot-binding. The chieftains live in the palace that are extravagantly rich and the level of medical technology is almost miraculous. The magnetic levitation trains are like magic. IN the same time, ordinary Chinese people live in huts and spend their days feeding rhinoceroses (or, to fit the local customs, pandas), as there are barely any road in the country.

If you were to show this movie in China and tell us that it praised the Chinese people and culture, I'd say you're being insulting

[havblue]

I mean, the new movies and shows in general aren't very good, but I'm surprised how good Bluey is. I think I like it better than my kids.

[evan_]

Bluey is licensed, Disney doesn't have any part in it except distributing it.

[john1633]

> I think I like it better than my kids.

You would choose a cartoon over your kids?

:)

[evan_]

some days...

[gambiting]

I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I absolutely can't stand Bluey. I'd rather watch cocomelon than bluey, and cocomelon is actual cancer for eyes.

[havblue]

It might have something to do with the fact that so many episodes revolve around some elaborate game the kids play. Or, it might be related to how the parents have infinite time to skip work and indulge their precious kids.

I mean, obviously your opinion is incorrect, but that might be why. On the plus side, at least you didn't have to correct me about Disney not being the company to develop the show, as if I thought Disney had a secret Australian animation division. So you have that going for you.

[PenguinCoder]

Bluey is an amazing show and one I'm happy to have the kiddos watching. It also has nothing to do with Disney. They just distribute it basically.

[themitigating]

2022 box office numbers are down 40% across the board compared to 2019

[yowzadave]

Turning Red was a great movie—my daughters love it and have watched it repeatedly. I put that one in the category of wonderful box office bombs: miracles that they managed to exist, in spite of being obvious box office failures, like The Big Lebowski or Blade Runner.

[magic_hamster]

I wouldn't point to a couple of movies as the cause for this. Disney is a gargantuan machine with many, many divisions. The parks, streaming, gaming, movies, merchandise, resorts, real estate, etc. These days even if a movie doesn't do well in the box office, it's still a major asset for streaming (which I can only assume is very worthwhile).

[stonogo]

You can blame their "going broke" performance on whatever you want, since they're demonstrably not: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/gross-p...

[gedy]

I'm still blown away at how CGI movies cost this much to make, market, and distribute in the digital age?

[paws]

I don't have any inside knowledge, but in case you didn't already know Hollywood is famous for, to put it charitably, 'unusual' accounting practices [1].

Maybe the authorities chase after some of the cases, but as far as I can tell the status quo remains sketchy AF.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

[olivermarks]

Some of the film production money laundering rumors I've heard about make the fabulous Mel Brooks film 'the producers' look run of the mill..

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I was going to ask the same thing. How does Turning Red have a budget of 175 million? Is most of it advertising? Its CGI and I don't remember any celebrity voices in there that would cost that much.

[recursivecaveat]

The quoted budgets for films don't include marketing. I believe that's because that cost actually belongs to the distributor, not the producer of the film. A rule of thumb is that a big-budget movie or game has a marketing budget roughly equal to it's production budget apparently.

[illiarian]

> Its CGI

As if CGI was cheap or easy to make.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

When I was but a little boy, Terminator 2 had CGI and cost brazillians. We have entire movies made with humans basically just standing in front of green screen. You cannot seriously claim it has gotten harder or more expensive.

[illiarian]

> When I was but a little boy, Terminator 2 had CGI and cost brazillians.

And it has very few CGI shots compared to modern movies. It only had about 50 CGI shots in total.

In comparison, Everything Everywhere All at Once which had tons of practical effects and budget constraints had 500. A modern blockbuster movie pushes the number of CGI shots beyond 2000.

> We have entire movies made with humans basically just standing in front of green screen. You cannot seriously claim it has gotten harder or more expensive.

Again. For some reason unbeknownst to me you keep assuming that CGI is cheap and easy. Especially given the amount of CGI, resoultions and the details that have to be there.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Hmm. Allow me to rephrase. Clearly, we are assuming two different current states. I indicated that T2 was made almost 30 years ago with MASSIVE improvements across just about every facet of computer generated visuals. That movie cost 100 million to make ( about twice that in today's dollars adjusted for inflation ) and it had some stars in it ( Arnold reportedly being paid cool $15M ), which easily explains some of the cost.

I am not assuming its cheap and easy. I am assuming it is both cheaper and easier than it was and noticeably so.

All that said, I think we may be just approaching it differently. Let me share my thought process.

Cameron suggested the actual CGI scene count is 42[1] ( we can do 50 for easier math, but 42 will favor your position so lets assume 42 ). According to wiki[2] CGI budget was 15M-17M ( and lets assume 17M to account for the upper cost to accommodate your view of CGI cost ).

At $17M for 42 an instance of CGI comes to $404k a pop for T2. Unfortunately, this is misleading as it does not give us a good way to compare against Turning Red as its all CGI, so we need to compare in minutes ( tr is 1h40m or 100 minutes ). Without doing any real analysis, I have to rely on net again[1], where we learn that:

"all the work required to bring the T-1000 to life, costing $5.5 million, and taking eight months to produce, which ultimately amounted to 3.5 minutes of screen time. "

5.5M/3.5 = $1.571M per minute for Terminator 2 ( or about ~3M USD adjusted for inflation ).

In other words, adjusted for inflation re-running TR assuming the same cost as T2 results in 300M ( 100 minutes * 3M per minute ) projected CGI cost for TR ( almost double TR's budget, which we know was not all CGI ). In other words, CGI has gotten almost 100% more efficient, partially because I seriously doubt entire $175M TR budget went to CGI ).

I am not arguing its peanuts ( although I am sure argument could be made what with current AI tools ), but it is definitely more cheap.

To be fair, it might not be more easy ( that I have zero knowledge of ).

[1]https://computeranimationhistory-cgi.jimdofree.com/terminato... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_effects_of_Terminator_...

[KRAKRISMOTT]

Their marvel line seems to be a money printer.

[phpisthebest]

Their Marvel line was a money printer... There is some inertia left in the properties but you can see it dropping like a rock...

Same with Star Wars... They are killing their golden gooses

[babypuncher]

Star Wars hasn't even had a new movie since before the Pandemic

[phpisthebest]

Yes, They killed that before the Pandemic just like they Killed Marvel....

That last Star Wars movie was terrible.... I would rather watch 2 hours of nothing but Jarjar Binks than that movie...

[lbotos]

Andor is pretty great IMO (surprisingly)

[red-iron-pine]

That would be worse than the fabled X-mas special

[r00fus]

Book of Boba Fett is claimed to be worse than the X-Mas special.

[Loughla]

>Same with Star Wars... They are killing their golden gooses

How is this true of star wars?

[phpisthebest]

Rogue One, and Seasons 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian are the only Post George Lucas Stars Wars worth watching

[EE84M3i]

I really enjoyed Andor, perhaps more than the Mandalorian which has far too many callbacks to the original movies.

[r00fus]

Andor is like Rogue One, but better.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

How did it cost $175M to make Turning Red?

[alistairSH]

Probably "Holywood Accounting" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Various sub-entities of the parent (Disney) charging each other service fees to jack up production costs and lower profit (and therefore tax obligations).

[BLKNSLVR]

They need to make one called Turning Green

[Kyrio]

I'm sure Disney was disappointed in Lightyear's performance given its marketing push and brand appeal, but I don't think you're listing the movies that are central to Disney's strategy anymore. Ever since COVID, Disney has pretty much banished Pixar to Disney+, not as "premium" releases that cost extra, but just included day one on the service. If they had theater runs, they were limited or international-only. That includes such films as Soul, Luca and Turning Red, whereas Encanto from their other animation company (Walt Disney Animation Studios) got a wide and successful theatrical run. Turning Red's box office returns are irrelevant because of this. However, due in part to people going back to theaters and (largely) to the film's brand recognition, Lightyear became the first Pixar film since 2019 to be given a real theatrical release. And the main reason it bombed was, I believe, because everyone and most importantly families had gotten used to being able to watch those movies on Disney+ for a lot cheaper. Even if that one waited two months to come to the service.

As for Strange World, it was widely observed that Disney didn't give it any marketing push and a majority of people weren't even aware of its existence. To me, the main reason is that Disney doesn't bother to hype up movies that they don't really believe in. Strange World was one such film, a WDAS movie that isn't a fairytale or a musical (and isn't safe from the kind of conservative hate campaigns that Disney tends to avoid). Disney has a long history of letting their studios make films outside of the cookie cutter but release them with little fanfare. They can now easily be written off as Disney+ fodder.

Disney absolutely still relies on their animation studios for blockbusters, but they've noticed which formula works best for each. Pixar is never as successful as when it does sequels. WDAS routinely hits the 1 billion mark when it makes new additions to their fairytale canon, or bombastic musicals (see Encanto's massive success). It's no surprise then that they're now pushing WDAS, a notoriously sequel-averse studio, into making a third Frozen and a second Zootopia, and that a _fifth_ Toy Story is suddenly in the works at Pixar alongside... Inside Out 2. Any other project is bound to get buried in the release schedule or dumped on Disney+.

So what kind of movies are core to Disney's strategy? Star Wars is on a kind of hiatus and lives on Disney+. We have Marvel of course, which isn't in the healthiest state but still produces frequent hits. Avatar is now a big one. Any animated movie that fits their preferred formula. And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark, and I've no doubt that their lifeless Little Mermaid clone will do the same. I think Disney is now suffering from the same "we grew too big, too quick" realization as every other tech and entertainment giant, and they're definitely reeling from a few recent failures, but I wouldn't use Strange World or Turning Red as the poster children of their troubles; they never bet much on those anyway.

Unfortunately, when Disney makes the most bland and forgettable nostalgia bait, they still make the "movies people want to see".

(Apologies for the wall of text, I've had thoughts about the state of Disney for a while!)

[mcphage]

> And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark

Live action Aladdin was surprisingly good—it was best went they stepped away from the original animated movie, and switched to remaking Hitch.

[HervalFreire]

They have some good stuff. Spider Man: No way home.

Mandalorian is pretty good, Star wars: Andor was the best Star Wars I've seen in a while. I guess a lot of people missed out on Andor given that almost everything Star wars has been mostly crap.

I think part of the explanation for your list involves the fact that people don't like movies that much anymore.