Disney CEO Bob Iger: Marvel Diluted Audience's Focus and Attention by Making So Many Disney+ TV Shows (variety.com) 310
Disney CEO Bob Iger is citing the studio's output increase for Disney+ as one reason for "some disappointments" as of late. From a report: Speaking to CNBC's David Faber at the Sun Valley Conference, Iger admitted the studio screwed with audience expectations by offering up so much streaming content. The negative impact of that has been commercial disappointments in theaters, be it "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" not even reaching $500 million worldwide or disappointing openings for summer tentpoles "Elemental" and "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny."
"There have been some disappointments. We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better," Iger said. "It's reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond -- in terms of their time and their focus -- way beyond where they had been. Marvel's a great example of that. They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything."
"There have been some disappointments. We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better," Iger said. "It's reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond -- in terms of their time and their focus -- way beyond where they had been. Marvel's a great example of that. They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything."
STFU Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got other shit to deal with right now. Pay your actors and writers.
Re:STFU Bob (Score:5, Insightful)
*ding*ding*ding*
Villain looking for compassion, Iger is shameless
Stop making so many superhero stories? (Score:3)
Re:Stop making so many superhero stories? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what people would like to say if they don't examine the true cause, they've been producing really bad content since D+ launched. It's not just comics related content that's been terrible. They blame the fans but really need to look inward. What worked? What didn't work? What do audiences really want?
It's not super hero movies, otherwise Elemental and that Indiana Jones "thing" would have been total hits ... they were not.
Re:Stop making so many superhero stories? (Score:4, Funny)
D+ is the content grade.
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No this is clearly because they made a movie with a black mermaid.
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I was a bit surprised at first, I mean, a black mermaid in a Danish story?! But when I saw the trailer I thought it fit well, but... I didn't go watch the movie.
Black or white, I wasn't interested in yet another remake. I mean, there is an infinity of things Disney could have done. Why not leave the classics alone and do something that is not a remake of an adaptation? And not just The Little Mermaid, all of them.
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Well I have to say the question is how they ruined them. IE with what I've seen of the little mermaid, the part that jarred me wasn't the mermaid at all, but rather the sea creatures being the same hyper-realistic non facial expressioned type of talking animals that made the lion king a disgrace. Talking and Facial expressions have to go together.
Honestly there's a thousand flaws that jump to mind when looking at the disney remakes. But the fact that people are trying to blame "wokism" as the blame is si
Re: Black Mermaid (Score:4)
So a black girl playing a fictional creature destroyed a franchise?
Re: Black Mermaid (Score:5, Insightful)
Remind me again, is there a chart depicting the proper skin color of imaginary creatures?
Re: Black Mermaid (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m curious about this, they are destroying franchises in what way, with mediocre stories and writing? Ok.
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I'm a Brit so maybe my reaction to a lot of the Americanised gung-ho and identity politics stuff is different, but if I'm watching an action movie or a buddy cop show or a sci-fi or fantasy series, I'm probably doing it to let off some steam and relax. Some of the writing in these genres over the past maybe 5 years has become so horribly in-your-face-preachy that even long-running franchises that I used to enjoy have become unwatchable. It's not making some profound statement and educating society, it's jus
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When the KKK spread across the nation in the early 20th century, it instilled racists patterns of behavior that remain deeply seeded
So, just like people who are indoctrinated in Christianity find the urge to become "born again" and drift to the craziest Christian sect they can find, people who were indoctrinated with racism feel a re-awakened need to behave like giant douchebags and pretend that it is not latent racism driving their behaviors
Re: Black Mermaid (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, naturally all the racists are going to make as much noise as they can, and even try to create the impression that the number of people who agree with them is much higher than it is, as per the norm.
But there is also something special about this mermaid beyond the fact that she was played by a black actress: in the original story she was white. Maybe that shouldn't make a difference, but to a lot of people it does. If Disney made a shiny new movie with new characters and a new plot, so it clearly was not a remake of The Little Mermaid but was instead a completely different story, and THAT story featured black mermaids, it would have been much better accepted. Racists would still shout because that's what they are going to do, but they would have gotten a lot less agreement from the group of people who don't have a problem with black actors/actresses but DO have a problem with outright race-swapping of stories that already have well-established white characters.
Whether this is good or bad is separate from the fact that it is easy to understand why people would react this way, in this case.
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The director chose the actress because she was the best singer. Her race had nothing to do with it. https://screenrant.com/little-... [screenrant.com]
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I understand some of the backlash against "race swapping" the character. I think its stupid but I understand it. My question is would there be so much bitching if they knew what a real mermaid is supposed to look like? You know, according to myth.
Re: Black Mermaid (Score:4, Insightful)
My question is would there be so much bitching if they knew what a real mermaid is supposed to look like? You know, according to myth.
Mermaids obviously looked quite different in numerous myths across the world, but he Hans Christian Anderson short story which the movies are based on was described as being white with blue eyes. His story was clearly based on European myths, which had their origins in both Greek sirens and Teutonic undines. The undines were probably the largest influence on Anderson, because their myths included that they lacked an immortal soul unless they married a human, which is the whole plot of The Little Mermaid.
So while I don't see why the myths and source materials should always drive our depictions of these creatures going forward (mermaids/sirens originally were human/bird hybrids until the classical Greek period), The Little Mermaid is clearly a fair skinned white woman in the source material.
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Matt Walsh had a problem https://www.dailykos.com/stori... [dailykos.com]
Re:Stop making so many superhero stories? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Iger is right: it's fatigue, not quality. There are what I will call "super consumers" and "selective consumers."
The "super consumers" watch everything. They saw Loki, Wandavision, Hawkeye, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Ms Marvel. This is the kind of person who has a second monitor playing a TV show while they work. On the Star Wars side, this hypothetical person watched The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Andor.
The "selective consumers" wait for the reviews from the super consumers and pick one. But if the "selective consumer" falls behind then they aren't as engaged with the universe, so they might give-up. Could it be that the selective consumer would consume *more* media if there was *less of it* because then they would feel like they are always caught-up?
I suspect the "super consumers" are over-represented in online discussions. The "super consumers" are hyper-critical, but they go back anyway so quality doesn't matter. They will say every new Star Wars movie is crap, but watch it the day it comes out. I suspect this is because it is about the *universe* more than the *movie*.
Take a look at all the series that came out either simultaneously or in rapid succession. [wikipedia.org] It's really cool that they did this while the actors are all at the right age and it is consistent with the movies, but it was certainly more than I could watch.
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I think Iger is right: it's fatigue, not quality.
You might be onto something there. I know one person that would be "super consumer" of super hero movies. He lives for them, can't get enough of them. Meanwhile, everyone else I know, including me, after Endgame just stopped giving a fuck about them.
Re: Stop making so many superhero stories? (Score:2)
Re: Stop making so many superhero stories? (Score:2)
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The "selective consumers" wait for the reviews from the super consumers and pick one.
And/or they can wait until those shows are available on TV or the one (or two) streaming platform(s) they subscribe to.
*ANY* release will dilute it (Score:2)
Sort of true, but quality also matters (Score:4, Insightful)
I would absolutely agree that Marvel threw out too many TV shows, that helped people tire of Marvel content quicker....
But he's using this as an argument as to why Quantumania didn't make money at the box office. That I would argue, is false - simply put it was a bad movie.
I for example, have skipped most of the Marvel TV shows. I didn't skip going to the theater for Quantumania because I had seen too much Marvel TV, I skipped because that movie, and indeed pretty much the whole current Marvel phase, has generally been really bad, and I heard not great things about that movie in particular. To the extent that even with it being free on Disney Plus, I've still not seen it and have no real plans to do so.
If they want to reduce quantity and focus on quality I am all for that, but I really hope they don't throw out the baby with the bathwater because TV shows CAN be great, then just need to be done with quality - like Andor.
I would say if you are a Marvel or Star Wars fan though, Iger's comments are painting a grim picture for future projects.
Re: Sort of true, but quality also matters (Score:2)
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Marvel and Star Wars are kind of interesting contrasts. Disney screwed up the Star Wars movies pretty bad but have improved things a bit by focusing on just TV for a while. Marvel on the other hand was fine in theatres but became over-saturated when they started doing multiple TV series as well. Same thing happened to Star Trek in the late nineties; multiple concurrent TV series and movies (of ever decreasing quality) wore down the fans until they needed a rest from it. Disney is used to kids content wh
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But he's using this as an argument as to why Quantumania didn't make money at the box office. That I would argue, is false - simply put it was a bad movie.
Based on the previews, I was leery to see that movie in theaters. So I waited until it was streaming. That was a good call for me. However, I did see the last GotG in theaters and loved it, and was glad I didn't wait until it streams.
In a similar vein I waited for the latest Avatar to stream, and could only get through 1/2 of it before I gave up on it and walked away (and I was also streaming it in 1/2 segments because I couldn't stomach it).
then just need to be done with quality - like Andor.
You may have liked Andor, but I thought it was drier than 3 day
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This. So much this.
I'm pretty much over the MCU, with two exceptions.
1. The Spider-verse stuff. Good solid writing.
2. Deadpool 3. Because Ryan Reynolds.
But beyond that, I'm burned out on it.
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why Quantumania didn't make money at the box office
I already paid my annual Disney+ subscription fee, why would I pay even more to drag the family to a dirty theater with overpriced snacks, rude people on their phones and kicking my seat, waiting in line to take a pee, etc. AND pay an additional $75 for the tickets? We can just wait for for a few months for the movie to be on streaming.
Haha. Disney wake. (Score:2)
Time to have a wake for Disney. The stuff you was sellin', we wasn't buyin'.
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I'm skeptical this is an either/or situation (Score:5, Insightful)
In my view, the movie theater experience is dying in part because of exorbitant pricing at the theaters. In the SF bay area, seemingly all the mainstream theaters have ripped out the smaller seats and replaced them with much larger, unasked for seats, coupled with outrageous prices. To take my two sons out for a 2 hour movie, we have $14.50 each + popcorn and sodas costing perhaps another $20. Now we're in for about $63.00 which buys me about 4 months of Disney+ with all that lovely original content AND the movie that was in the theater just 3-4 months earlier.
I don't think streaming services are the cause of poor theatrical performance. Rather, they are a response to a fundamentally broken theater industry.
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I kind of agree with that.
If you want a streaming service, you need content for it that people are willing to pay for. Frankly, the Marvel TV shows have been pretty good overall. (Loki was fun; Falcon and Winter Soldier was great; Wandavision was weird in a good way; Ms Marvel was refreshing.)
Each show has been running for about 6 weeks and they have been running about 3 or 4 per year. That's the volume you are going to need if you want marvel fan to subscribe to Disney plus. I am not going to subscribe to
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In my view, the movie theater experience is dying in part because of exorbitant pricing at the theaters. In the SF bay area, seemingly all the mainstream theaters have ripped out the smaller seats and replaced them with much larger, unasked for seats, coupled with outrageous prices.
You're missing a piece of the puzzle. Rent prices. Commercial real estate has gotten so expensive its almost impossible for theaters to make money. A typical movie theater is 25,000 square feet. At $25 a foot + $10 NNN fees it's going to cost them $73K a month in rent. Now you do the math and figure out how many tickets they have to sell and at what price. (And we haven't even added labor, marketing, film costs, etc.)
Moralizing instead of entertaining (Score:5, Insightful)
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Critical Drinker recently made a video [youtube.com] about how one aspect of The Message - in this case Hollywood's idea of The Strong Female Character - is fundamentally incompatible with narrative structure.
Star Trek (Score:4, Insightful)
When the show writer's priority is to push The Message,
People said the same thing about Kirk kissing Uhura. Doesn't that feel silly now?
I'm not suggesting they should actively push agendas, but I do wonder who's pushing said agenda? The film company or the people getting offended who should not be in the first place.
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What message are you eluding to?
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Diluted Audience Focus (Score:2)
Diluted Audience Focus = "We completely ran out of ideas after Thanos and have been coasting as long as we could on the possibility that we might recreate the magic again..."
Still drifting after Endgame (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes too many shows is an issue, and yes Marvel ahs engaged ins ome cringe triggers for the culture war but really for myself and many other people I have talked to and read from is that the air is sucked out of the whole concept at the moment and there doesn't seem to be a clear direction narratively or in terms of characters.
We had a ten year build of stories and characters that came to an actually really solid crescendo with Infinity War and Endgame,pretty much ending with the stakes being "literally half of life in the universe is gone/dead". Huge stakes with a huge cathartic relief for the story and the swan song for the two most charsimatic and fan favortie characters over that 10 year span.
How do recapture attention, how do you rebuild stakes on top of that? In my opinion they haven't done it. There's been some interesting idea played with, some nice side characters stories but the larger arc of Marvel now, what is even happening? Who is the big bad after Thanos? What are they threatening that is bigger than what he did? Who are the main characters we can rally around now?
As much as I like Paul Rudd, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anthony Mackie and Oscar Isaac but they absolutely are not replacements for RDJ or Chris Evans, both in story function or charisma. Add in that basically GotG is over and theres not a lot of meat left here.
I think had a chance at the end of "phase four" or whatever to kinda step back, rethink, regroup and give people some time to breath and reflect and let go but they kept pushing it. Now the "multiverse" is a convulted mess, we have no main characters but yet too many characters and in the face of so many entertainment options it seems like a lot of effort to keep up with. Doesn't help that Marvel and superhero movies in general have a very difficult time with compelling villains. They basically got one good for two films in Thanos and that's really it.
Kevin Feige is to blame (Score:2)
Who approved them? (Score:2)
Marvel may have made all the TV series. But who green-lighted and paid for them?
It's quality, not quantity. (Score:2)
You could give me a new superhero movie every week and it would never grow old anymore than any other genre if they're quality movies and tell different stories. The problem is when you dump a bunch of crap ones with on the market that are almost all following the same fairly strict formula. Then given marketing practices I can't really tell if the next one is more of the same or not. That really lowers the urge to see another movie pretty damn quickly.
I am looking to be entertained with some escapist stu
Re:It's quality, not quantity. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's why I liked Rogue One and absolutely hated The Last Jedi. Rogue One was a serious film, in its Death Star/blaster kind of way. There was gravitas there; real and comprehensible stakes. Steal the plans to the Death Star to get it back to the Rebel Alliance. Like all the best war movies, it doesn't shy away from the violence and sacrifice (if it was too bloodyminded, I wonder what the original cut must have been like for Disney to have a meltdown and order rewrites and reshoots). These were identifiable, and just as importantly, pretty damned flawed characters; a collection of, well, rogues. It's the scifi descendant of the Seven Samurai and the Dirty Dozen.
The Last Jedi, on the other hand, was just a confusing series of scenes where half the time you had no idea what the hell was going on. And what you could figure out ended up basically being "Battlestar Galactica, except Star Wars!" It was a script cobbled together from the spare parts of previous stories. They even made Princess Leia seem superfluous and a bit bananas. And let's not even talk about the character assassination of Luke. But it all boils down to no one quite knowing what the film was supposed to be about, and just basically robbing the tomb of Star Wars' past. People like to blame Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson, and surely they have to take a lot of responsibility for the absolute mess the movie was, but this kind of disaster is the product of many people's screw ups.
Am I missing something? (Score:2)
He seems to be saying that the company produced too much content and it diluted the focus and attention of their staff? Am I wrong? It doesn’t appear that he’s blaming audiences for Disney’s poor performance.
No, they diluted the disney personnel (not viewers (Score:2)
Hire Story Tellers. (Score:2)
Part of that story telling is also make something new instead of retreading old franchises or a superhero of the week. It just gets boring.
leave them wanting more (Score:2)
Disney seems to have forgotten that a key part of entertainment is to leave the audience wanting more. Instead we are bludgeoned with ever worse content.
Meh (Score:2)
Ok Bob, now do Indiana Jones and the Destruction of Legacy.
Lots of Indiana Jones shows on streaming these days?
The $300 million budget didn't focus them? (Score:2)
Dear Golden Goose, (Score:2)
Dear Golden Goose,
We would like to say we miss you and want you back. We are so sorry that we altered the deal and can't get another Golden Egg from you.
You are so special, to share your gift with the whole wide world -- and not just yacht and limousine dealerships -- is why we cut you open to find the source of your gifts.
We did not realize you could not handle it and are willing to continue as things were before. We promise to keep the cleavers out of sight and only use them when needed.
Please accept o
The shows are crap... (Score:2)
What an Idiot (Score:2)
"The problem is we made too many great products"?
Fuck off.
Shit scripts, bad direction, re-writes by people that hate the source material, and movies that are anything up to an entire hour longer than they need to be. Not to mention the depiction of women as perfect god-like beings that never fail unless it's because of some man, which manages to be incredibly sexist to men and women at the same time!
But, no, the audience just had too many fantastic offerings from Disney to decide what to spend their money o
The TV shows have been better than the movies... (Score:3)
I think that the TV shows have been better than the movies, because the lower budget allows them to take more creative risks. For example, both Andor and The Mandalorian were much better than the recent Star Wars movies, because they could tell original stories instead of essentially remaking Star Wars again. And similarly the MCU TV shows were much more creative and original than the MCU movies. That says to me that the problem isn't so much that creative folks are stretched too thin but that the movies are too controlled by the corporate finance folks. And they've been marketing Disney+ to the detriment of the theatrical releases. When people know they can wait not very long and watch the movie for free on Disney+ that's great for Disney+ but bad for theatrical ticket sales, which are a lot more money.
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I think that the TV shows have been better than the movies, because the lower budget allows them to take more creative risks. For example, both Andor and The Mandalorian were much better than the recent Star Wars movies, because they could tell original stories instead of essentially remaking Star Wars again. And similarly the MCU TV shows were much more creative and original than the MCU movies. That says to me that the problem isn't so much that creative folks are stretched too thin but that the movies are too controlled by the corporate finance folks. And they've been marketing Disney+ to the detriment of the theatrical releases. When people know they can wait not very long and watch the movie for free on Disney+ that's great for Disney+ but bad for theatrical ticket sales, which are a lot more money.
I'd agree with this. It's been a while since there was a good Star Wars film, Rogue One for sure, maybe Solo (much better than I expected), but the series have generally been great.
As for the MCU I think the movies are starting to get trapped by their own formula. I felt one of the better recent MCU movies was Eternals, but I think that struggled with audiences from straying too far from expectations. The TV Series give them more narrative freedom in that regard.
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the claim here is that there is no quality deficit, and the only problem is that they have produced too much top-quality entertainment. They are so awesome that they have overdone the level of awesome and their audience just can't handle that much awesome!
Of course there is nothing wrong with any of these movies that performed poorly. Of course there are no quality deficits or writing deficits or culture-war-triggers or anything at all bad about them. They are perfect! Really we did nothing wrong and the only problem here is the audience: they are all to poor to afford the raw amount of awesome that we can produce for them. That's not on us, that's on them, but still we should do the right thing and just produce slightly less content. That will fix everything right up.
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:5, Insightful)
Be careful not to mention the REASONS the masses weren't flocking to the poopoo they were producing. That is verboten.
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the claim here is that there is no quality deficit, and the only problem is that they have produced too much top-quality entertainment. They are so awesome that they have overdone the level of awesome and their audience just can't handle that much awesome!
Hahaha, what? It's like you're replying to a completely different post. The above poster never said these bombing movies didn't have quality issues.
What they're actually on about is that most of the time when a certain demographic has a problem with anything Hollywood does they instantly start raving about woke nonsense whether it actually fits the word or not. For instance, the all lady Ghostbusters wasn't a shitty movie "cause woke" (not a correct usage of the term), it was a shitty movie because it had a shitty script and was poorly made.
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So, the claim here is that there is no quality deficit, and the only problem is that they have produced too much top-quality entertainment
Please show me what in the prior post they are replying to with this statement
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I can't wait until you people find something new to whine about. I mean, at least the D&D causing satanism thing from the 80's was funny.
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A lot of what you mention is just reinforcing my own point, it was just a plain bad movie. After that, did you not notice the fact that the all lady Ghostbusters was near university disliked? If the movie was in fact good and the only problems were you culture war issues you post here it would have been only you idiots who didn't like it.
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:5, Insightful)
What you cannot discount about the original Ghostbusters films is that four of the actors (Ramis, Aykroyd, Murray and Moranis) were Second City alumni, and had known each other and worked in various combinations on Second City-related projects (like SNL, SCTV and various films) for years. The director, Ivan Reitman, had piloted a number of the SNL spinoff films (like Meatballs and Stripes). In other words, a good portion of the writing team, director and actors were basically part of the same comedy club.
Aykroyd had originally envisioned John Belushi to play Peter Venkman, and one can only imagine what Belushi would have done with the part. I don't think anyone can argue that Bill Murray's cheerfully cynical take on an academic con man in many ways made the film, and largely proved to Hollywood that he was a unique actor that could balance the utterly absurd with a sardonic and understated sense of humor. This was pretty much Murray's making, because the Venkman character could literally be transported into any story.
So the writing is top notch, the directing is surefooted even with all the special effects nonsense, the core actors had known each other and worked with each for years in various projects. Trying to replicate it would be a damned hard job even if everything else had been equal. It would be like trying to find three actors to replace Bridges, Goodman and Buscemi in a reboot of The Big Lebowski. Odds are it would be a horrible failure, even if everything was good, because what really made these films work was the one thing that ultimately is mysterious and often accidental; chemistry.
That everything else about the 2016 reboot was faulty; a terrible script, actors who really didn't seem to be into the material, the failure of the CGI (frankly the special effects were terrible), doesn't mean that even if these issues had been fixed, that it wouldn't have been a failure. And then, to top that all off, you're competing with one of the most beloved and well-respected films in Hollywood history.
I know Aykroyd had been working for years to try to get a third film made. Bill Murray wouldn't play ball, largely, from what I can tell, because he just wasn't interested in reprising his role. Ramis's death basically killed any real possibility of a third installment, and that was when "plan B" was hatched. Frankly, Ghostbusters 2016's failure is endemic of what's wrong in Hollywood; an unwillingness to take the kinds of chances that had made very successful films like Ghostbusters and Back To The Future possible. They are mainly interested in cookie cutter films, plug new actors into existing formula, find compliant director who basically functions as a proxy for the studio, shove money in the machine and out comes a film. Hype it up with McDonalds toys, and ---- PROFIT! Except it isn't working now, and with the slow collapse of the old theater and TV model, they're running out of runway.
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:4, Informative)
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:4, Interesting)
It's plausible that they produce too much quality content that is repetitive and Disney accidentally competes with itself. I've worked at tech companies that made multiple similar product lines that rather than capturing more market share just shuffled the the set of customers between different business units.
On the other hand I'm skeptical of what a Disney executive considers to be quality content. Formulaic shows for licensed franchises that are as much about selling geegaws to fans as it is about the films and programs. That's quality in the sense that the corporate goals are met, but does it has artistic integrity, offer the viewer some novelty, or otherwise provide a notable experience to the viewer? Probably not unless you're into power fantasies.
Re: WOKE ALERT (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing about audience not having money is very real. Just because theres 3x the movies or the company spent 3x the money making a movie doesn't make the audience have 3x the money to give to disney.
Disney keeeps making shit that should be 30 million tops - and spends 300plus doing it.
Re: WOKE ALERT (Score:4, Interesting)
Well it's not really just about money, it's also about available free time. There's some correlations between free time and free money, but there's usually a hard limit on how much more of the former you're gonna get, and it doesn't necessarily scale linearly with increased money. Lots of high-paying jobs also come without that 40-hour-per-week cap; just ask anyone who has worked in the gaming industry. But, that said, if the writer's guild drags on any longer I think we're going to see a slow but steady rise in popularity of all this backlogged streaming content.
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...if the writer's guild drags on any longer...
...if the writer's guild strike drags on any longer...
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:4, Insightful)
"There were three Pixar releases in a row that went direct to streaming, in part because of — mostly because of COVID,” Iger said. “And I think that may have created an expectation in the audience that they’re going to eventually be on streaming and probably quickly, and there wasn’t an urgency. And then I think there was some, I think you’d have to agree that there were some creative misses, as well.”
He called the studio’s decision to put three Pixar films on Disney+ in a row “a mixed blessing because we’ve trained audiences that these films will be available for you on Disney+. And it’s more expensive for a family of four to go to a theater when they know they can wait and it’ll come out on the platform.”
So this is them, on a business news show, explaining why the Disney business is underperforming, because they are not positioning it to audiences correctly and suggesting they haven't figured out the balance of streaming.
But hey, I get it. This is Slashdot, where the average poster's reading comprehension is barely above 3rd grade level. I know I'm an exception where I actually read articles and try to understand what they're saying and react to that, and not my preconceived notion of "all corporations are greedy jerks".
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:4, Insightful)
So, the claim here is that there is no quality deficit, and the only problem is that they have produced too much top-quality entertainment.
Not their claim.
Of course there are no quality deficits or writing deficits or culture-war-triggers or anything at all bad about them. They are perfect!
So based on the comment you're replying to you're arguing against wokeness. Yet the first, and only time, you reference it in your argument is as the 3rd item in a list of potential issues.
Really we did nothing wrong and the only problem here is the audience: they are all to poor to afford the raw amount of awesome that we can produce for them. That's not on us, that's on them, but still we should do the right thing and just produce slightly less content. That will fix everything right up.
The weird thing is you're not only supposedly arguing against wokeness (without actually making that argument). But you're also seemingly arguing against Bob Iger... yet you don't actually seem to have read the summary far enough to get his argument either.
There's two parts to it, first:
Speaking to CNBC's David Faber at the Sun Valley Conference, Iger admitted the studio screwed with audience expectations by offering up so much streaming content.
The article has more details, but they think some of their lost ticket sales was due to movies hitting Disney+ almost instantly during the pandemic. Post-pandemic people were used to that pattern and may have expected the movies to hit Disney+ a lot sooner than they did.
The second part:
"It's reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond -- in terms of their time and their focus -- way beyond where they had been. Marvel's a great example of that. They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything."
So yeah, Bob Iger literally said they tried to produce too much content and weren't able to maintain the quality. The same thing you're basing your argument on, expect you decided to shove "wokeness" into it.
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Criticize all you want, but that doesn't mean they're not right. Ask Target and Bud Light about that. Focus on your products not on politics.
The arguments for Disney quality dropping because of focus on wokeness and the troubles Target and Bud Light had were very different. The claim is Disney quality actually dropped, not just that people are boycotting Disney because of their move towards more diversity. In Target's and Bud Light's case there is no claim that their quality dropped, they just tried marketing directly to LGBT audiences and ran into significant bigotry. There shouldn't be anything political about it, except one political party is
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Well, in Bud Light's case, anyway, there really wasn't much room for their "quality" to drop, regardless.
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No, they tried to expand their market beyond just "regular" guys, and offended their base.
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"In Target's and Bud Light's case there is no claim that their quality dropped, they just tried marketing directly to LGBT audiences and ran into significant bigotry" In Bud Light's case they tried to use a man dressed as a woman to sell to men. So what they "ran into" was men who don't buy into that image. Normal, decent men.
The problem with that is that Bud Light didn't drop their other, more traditional, advertising. Those "normal, decent men" (and others) just couldn't deal with the thought that people not like them might also like Bud Light. Those men need to un-bunch their panties, so to speak.
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So what they "ran into" was men who don't buy into that image.
Not "buying into that image" doesn't even begin to explain the hysteria on our political right over this. Companies use spokes people who fail to attract the audience they want all the time and yet to hear Fox news talking heads talk about it you'd have thought some one shit on both the American flag and the bible and then set them both on fire.
This level of hysteria is not at all normal in the context of a failed media spokesperson.
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:5, Insightful)
More than anything though, that the Mulvaney incident turned into a boycott shows the power of the conservative media - conservative media was bored and needed a new target, so they blew it up in to a whole big thing.
Personally I don't like Bud Light and it gives me a headache whenever I try it.
But to be clear, the whole incident should be a story about the power of conservative media in getting its viewers to buy-in to the outrage of the moment and to behave in a certain way in response to that outrage no matter how manufactured or invented it is.
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Criticize all you want, but that doesn't mean they're not right. Ask Target and Bud Light about that. Focus on your products not on politics.
Target and Bud Light were trying to advertise/appeal to a wider audience because of, you know, "capitalism and profits" and it was a narrow-minded segment of the total audience that turned it into politics and hate.
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Bud light managed to piss off both sides.
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Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought conservatives were against cancel culture?
Only when they're the ones being canceled. Otherwise, they're happy to "cancel" anyone unlike them. One big, self-inflicted, problem with that is the criteria/judgement always tends to get stricter and narrower over time, and the members acceptable to that group gets smaller and smaller ...
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And to be fair, 99% of the time it IS them being cancelled, not the woke activist.
Maybe they should spent some time looking in the mirror to try and figure out why that is.
Just sayin'... there's probably a pretty good reason for it.
"Woke" isn't a bad thing.
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Wait until black people and other minority groups start doing open carry patrols. We'll have swift gun control measures in no time. Check out what happened when the Black Panthers started to do open carry in California. Governor Ronald Reagan and the NRA were so scared they immediately made it illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:WOKE ALERT (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you expect that lot to do with their garish and demonic dresses and their dildo collection if they cannot strut about and threaten people who refuse to accept their lunacy?
It's you not accepting them, calling their existence "lunacy" that makes them hate your ass, "bud."
Re:Moderation in all things (Score:5, Insightful)
It's often not the writers and creators, it's the bosses and their commercial demands. "We need a TV show to set up this movie" or "you must feature this in the show to sell a specific toy".
The problem with the MCU post-Endgame is that it just doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. When it started they were building the Avengers, and then the war with Thanos. But now we have some vague multiverse based villain with unclear goals and motivations, and a bunch of 2nd tier heroes that nobody really cares that much about.
There have been some decent moments, like bits of Loki and Wandavision, but both didn't have satisfying endings because of the need to set up future movies. Eternals was a flop, too many characters with not enough development, can't even remember what they were fighting now.
If they bring in the X-Men then at least they will have some decent characters for people to care about. I wonder what Deadpool 3 will be like.
Re:Moderation in all things (Score:5, Insightful)
You overlooked the biggest one: "This made a lot of money. Make us another one just like it."
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This is quite true. They still have some runway left, though. My friend who is a star wars nut and just enjoys seeing movies goes to every single Marvel release without fail, purchasing tickets far in advance, no matter how awful they look. There are a lot of people just like that.
Technically, Iron Man was a second tier hero as well, but they were able to market it very well. I still think the first Iron Man is one of the best Marvel films, which is funny because there wasn't an MCU then.
They really have le
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They really have let the universe expand too far with the need for everything to be higher stakes than the last.
There's also the gaping plot hole that we have some heroes who are exceptional for human beings and others who are intergalactic demigod status or above. And they're in the same movie fighting in the same battle against the same bad guy hordes.
I could suspend my disbelief -- if I really tried -- for the original Avengers group movie. I still think it would have been a better movie if they'd found a way to have characters like Black Widow and Hawkeye not used as front line fighters in the big set pieces but
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The problem with the MCU post-Endgame is that it just doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.
Exactly. I enjoy a silly superhero movie as much as the next action movie fan. I could probably tell you every MCU film up to Endgame, mostly in the right order and with some recollection of the plot, even though I haven't seen most of them for years. After that point I'm fairly sure I'd miss a few. And I'm not sure whether I've actually seen them and forgotten or just never realised they existed.
The insane number of mediocre TV show spin-offs that Disney+ seems to have generated in franchises like MCU or S
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But 27 spin-off shows that are mostly contrived excuses to get one or two big screen stars back on the small screen ...
Like that show where The Hulk un-boxes things for YouTube. Sure there are moments of excitement when he's trying to deal with some really difficult packaging, but even that gets old after a while. :-)
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There is an adjacent problem of no creativity. In the music industry, there are plenty of stories of music execs saying they want something just like the last hit.
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But now we have some vague multiverse based villain with unclear goals and motivations
Jonathan Majors' (Kang) antics have upset the applecart, don't forget. He was the big setup for the next team-up movies (The King Dynasty; but with the assault charges that happened (and the ones we are only starting to find out about), Majors is toxic. Look at how all the movies that featured him have been pushed out and talk of Dr Doom have intensified. Which is a shame; my wife (not a Marvel fan) enjoyed both Loki (and the He Who Remains setup) and Quantumania, mostly because of Majors' performance.
a bunch of 2nd tier heroes that nobody really cares that much about
Setup
Re:Ah yes, itâ(TM)s the fanâ(TM)s fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, comic books in general are crap, THAT is why most adults abandoned them in their adolescence
But, in much the same way that Harry Potter (a children's book written at a 5th grade reading level) was widely read by adults, comic books seem to have the same emotional maturity as a majority of adult Americans
Re:Ah yes,... (Score:2)
I've seen those SOF vs MI7 movie money numbers posed elsewhere, and they are intentionally misleading because they are comparing two weeks of SOF ($85M) vs four days of MI7 ($85M).
Apples to Apples, the weekend numbers for SOF is $27,000,000 and MI7 $56,200,000. What is interesting is that SOF's gross has steadily increased since opening week.
Indiana Jones V looked like shit so no wonder it tanked. Elemental was just an infinite-gender-ideology brainwashing attempt, and consumers saw it as such and stayed
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Sound of Freedom's numbers have been steadily increasing because it opened in half the theaters that the major movies did and has since been adding theaters expanding the pool of people who could see it, and it has exceedingly good word of mouth. The irony being that with proper marketing and release from Disney it could have easily done 2-3 times what it will do in the end, thus offsetting the failure of at least one of their movies this year. Instead they refused to release it and sold it for pennies on t
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Where are you getting those numbers from?
https://www.the-numbers.com/bo... [the-numbers.com]
Mission impossible 7 made $80 million on its opening weekend, Sound of Freedom is in it's week 2.
Indy 5 is at $145m, Elemental is at $125m
Sound of Freedom doing good, especially on a small budget is a classic hollywood case of people actually enjoying an original, non-franchise concept, politics aside it's been a big success, no need to fudge the numbers to make that case.
Really the blowout will be this week with "Oppenheimer" and "Ba