According to box office analyst Valliant Renegade, Disney’s last eight studio releases have cost Walt Disney Co. nearly $900 million dollars in losses, and the media giant “is bleeding out.”
“‘The Little Mermaid’ live-action remake and, more recently, ‘Elemental’ from Pixar Studios are just the two latest entries in a long list over the last 12 months from the House of Mouse of box office disasters,” Renegade said.
(Video: YouTube)
Renegade tracked the losses of Disney’s last eight releases: “Lightyear,” (Pixar); “Thor: Love and Thunder” (Marvel Studios); “Strange World” (Disney Animation); “Black Panther,” “Wakanda Forever,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3” (all from Marvel Studios); “The Little Mermaid,” (Walt Disney Studios); and “Elemental” (Pixar).
“Disney continues to miss the mark from every studio that they have,” Renegade says, “and they’re not even done yet for this year, because Lucasfilm is on the table up next with ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,’ and as of right now, that’s going to be ringing up yet another loss for the Walt Disney Company unless something radical changes.”
According to the analyst, Disney spent $2.75 billion on the films and took in $1.86 billion, for roughly “$890 million in losses on these last eight films in the aggregate.”
“One of the things that we always talk about here, that is the perfect time to remind everybody, is that Disney consumes all of its own content post-theatrical,” Renegade explained. “Meaning that Disney that used to license their big content out, like the entire MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe], to places like Netflix for years — those were billions of dollars’ worth of third-party contracts that have now been taken off the table.”
“So not only do we need to consider how much money Disney has lost at the box office,” he continued, “we also need to consider how much money Disney has lost in economic-opportunity costs. You see, that’s how much money they could have made had they actually taken these films and licensed them to Netflix, or Amazon Prime, or even similar to what Universal does with a split Pay 1 window.”
“If Disney had just taken the Universal-type deal with those two major streamers, Disney would have a lot more money in its pocket. But they’ve chosen to keep it all home to support Disney+.,” Renegade stated.
As BizPac Review has reported, Disney’s streaming service, Disney+, doubled down on “woke messaging,” even amid Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger’s March announcement that he was hoping to cut at least 7,000 jobs.
‘Woke’ Disney to lay off thousands, orders managers to compile list of employees to cut https://t.co/zX8AmMd7EU pic.twitter.com/QrfwEOKxX3
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) March 20, 2023
“In Q4 this year their streaming business lost an eye-watering $1.5 billion. Not only is that crazy high, but it’s way more than the $630 million that it lost the same time the year before. The losses are also expected to continue for some time yet,” Forbes reported in late 2022.
Still, Disney elected to include girls among the Lost Boys in “Peter Pan,” Tinkerbelle is suddenly Black, and Snow White’s seven dwarves were no longer to be dwarves.
Meanwhile, Disney+’s “Proud Family” series was awash in Critical Race Theory.
Even so, the “Mouse House” will likely survive the staggering losses, Renegade predicts, “because, frankly, Disney has always made the largest portion of their revenues, at least for the last several decades, on theme parks and resorts, along with linear broadcast television, specifically live sports.”
“The profits that come in from those elements of the Walt Disney Company are what funds the production and marketing of these big movies,” he explains.
“But that can’t go on forever,” he warns. “It’s just simple numbers, folks. That’s where we are. The Walt Disney Company is just making all the wrong decisions, not only creatively, but in the distribution channels as well.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
Comment
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.