Company turns 100: There are concerns for Disney’s birthday

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When Disney celebrates its 100th anniversary, the company can celebrate dozens of major successes, from Mickey Mouse to “Avengers.” But the entertainment giant is grappling with waves of change that could shake up its business on its anniversary.

The decline of once-profitable cable television in the US, fierce competition from streaming heralds a creative revolution through artificial intelligence: Disney boss Bob Iger must chart the course that will decide the company’s future.

Flow causes high losses

This also has consequences for what we experience as cinema and television viewers and theme park visitors. Iger announced there will be fewer expensive Marvel and “Star Wars” productions as the company wants to make its Disney+ streaming service more attractive.

Disney’s problem: Streaming results in high losses. It led to operating losses of half a billion dollars in the second quarter of 2023 alone, even after austerity measures. Meanwhile, the once reliable source of money that was supposed to fund competition with Netflix and the like is drying up. More and more American households are giving up on expensive cable TV contracts. Instead, they stream — but while the cable package guarantees revenue for all channels, you have to fight for customers for months with Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Paramount.

Iger said in the summer that the cable business was deteriorating faster than he expected. And it brought a radical change to the conversation: Maybe over time, classic TV channels like ABC would “no longer be part of the core” of Disney. The first potential buyers quickly appeared. It remains to be seen whether Disney’s streaming audience would be forced to give up series on its ABC schedule following a potential sale.

Pioneer in the fan products business

100 Years of Disney is the story of a company driven by creativity, inventing new business models, and growing into an empire. Founded as an animation studio by brothers Walt and Roy on October 16, 1923, Disney has repeatedly taken risks to realize artistic visions.

In 1928, Mickey’s cartoon “Steamboat Willie” became the first animated film to be set to music. In the 1930s, Roy is said to have feared that Walt’s ambition to spend years working on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” would ruin Disney. The first feature film was also financially successful, but it was followed by several loss-making films. To finance the construction of the first Disneyland park in the 1950s, Walt Disney sold his home in Palm Springs.

At the same time, Disney discovered how lucrative the business of fan articles based on popular characters could be in the late 1920s. The company also realized early on how valuable it was to have a constant presence in living rooms with televisions. Animation was supported first by films and then by our own television channels. Under Iger, Disney acquired computer animation pioneer Pixar, Marvel Studios with “The Avengers,” George Lucas’ “Star Wars” universe and the film and television business from Fox.

Film productions are changing

The acquisitions brought together an unprecedented creative arsenal, but it also came at the cost of billions of dollars in debt that now burdens Disney. Iger, meanwhile, is pushing ahead and wants to invest $60 billion (56.6 billion euros) in the expansion of his theme parks and cruise business over the next decade. The 72-year-old had originally retired but returned after growing dissatisfaction with his successor, Bob Chapek. Iger now wants to stay at the top of Disney until 2026. He is “extremely optimistic” that the group will be able to cope with the change.

At the same time, film and TV series productions are made differently today than before. Particularly in many superhero movies, actors are cast mostly in blue studios, while the environment is added to the computer later. In shows like “The Mandalorian” on Disney+, a huge LED screen provides the backdrop for many scenes, which is much cheaper than filming outdoors.

A months-long strike by writers and actors in Hollywood was also fueled by fears that studios might eventually allow artificial intelligence to write scripts and replace people in the background of scenes with digital characters. (SDA)

Source :Blick