The year 2023 is not an ideal time and shows the clear success of world cinema. Even Disney – the most powerful film empire in the world – has entered a period of “struggle” in almost every aspect, from movies, personnel to even sales outside of theme parks.
It is necessary to clarify that Disney is still the leading name and the second most active in the film industry at present with films that receive large investments, are released and “take over” regularly. However, considering the company’s own path and battles, the Mouse House is clearly facing a “regression” situation as it tries to diversify and reach more and more deeply to many audiences and stories. The company suffered even more failures. Worse, it happened on the 100th anniversary!
Loss of more than 21 trillion… in one summer
Since the beginning of the year, Disney has regularly released projects from animation, live-action movies and expanding the Marvel cinematic universe. But unlike the situation in every previous year, Disney in 2023 faces loss after loss, even though the projects all have an investment level of about 200-300 million USD.
Calculated from 2 flop projects are Lightyear and Strange World By the end of 2022, Disney had around 10 movies released and most of them failed. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Little Mermaid, Elemental, Indiana Jones 6, Haunted Mansion, The Marvels and the latest is Wish All have disappointing revenue, at best just enough to break even and not explode. This is also the year that Disney has not had any movie reach the billion-dollar revenue mark. The only movie that is considered a success is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 with 845 million USD in global revenue, but that is not enough to offset the loss of up to 900 million as of last summer’s movie season (according to Daily Mail).
Wish had the worst opening in Disney history with just over 80 million USD worldwide in the first week
The Marvels had the MCU’s lowest opening since 2008
Despite the situation of theatrical movies, the Disney+ platform is no better. According to Forbes, Disney+ has lost 11.7 million subscribers – a record number after the second quarter of this year, despite the continuous launch of quality products not only in Hollywood but globally. Projects that are rated as good as: Loki or Korean movies Moving not enough to “hold” viewers to stay. In addition, Disney’s increase in the price of some subscription packages also somewhat affected the audience’s mood.
Loki is praised but not enough to “carry”
Not to mention, subsidiary companies such as Searchlight, 20th Century Studios… are not better off when key projects such as The Creator, The Boogeyman… both have poor reputation and achievements. On the other hand, aspects such as stocks (fell to the lowest level since 2014), and the number of theme park visitors (dropped to a record low on National Day compared to previous years) are in an equally precarious situation. Crisis surrounded crisis, even Disney’s president could not hide his grievances.
Disney CEO: I’m exhausted and can’t breathe
As revealed by The Wrap, current Disney CEO Bob Iger is extremely pressured by the company’s continuous failures. He shared that he felt “suffocated and exhausted” when the results were not worthy of the level of investment. In addition, the resignation of director in charge of “content diversification” Latondra Newton in June is said to have a major impact on Disney’s upcoming direction.
Bob Iger was discouraged when he returned as CEO of Disney after declaring “no return”
Recently, Disney had to cut staff many times, at one point up to 7,000 employees and the budget savings was 5.5 billion USD. These moves show that even the “leader” of the world film industry is facing a major crisis, leading to an unfortunate decline and decline.
However, Bob Iger is still hoping that Disney’s situation will improve in 2024. The company is trying to “narrow” losses each quarter, as well as boldly promoting key films such as Deadpool 3, Inside Out 2 or even Snow White. However, that is still just a “theory” and the future of the Mouse House is still very difficult to predict when the form and direction remain the same as before. Audiences have completely lost hope with Marvel, and live-action projects are fiercely controversial (case Snow White similar Mermaid).
Looking at Snow White’s situation, Disney is not sure it can “swim upstream”
Standing on the brink of the end, will Disney throw himself down as a villain and pay a heavy price after a series of mistakes, or will he find a new way out as a powerful main character?
