It wasn’t exactly a marquee season for Disney. They saw Toy Story 5 put in a serious shift at the box office, but elsewhere, some formerly safe bets fizzled. The Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana adaptation both seriously underperformed.
New Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro admitted to both in an interview with Variety.
Former billion-dollar-grosser franchise Star Wars suffered a historic low, with just $345 million worldwide. Moana is even worse, with just $262 million worldwide, leaving the House Of Mouse staring down the barrel of a $100 million loss.
Many Outposters, as you are superior online movie beings, predicted The Mandalorian would not hit its marks. You cited that the annoying toy buzz had faded, and that not enough cat ladies sharing sassy Grogu memes on Facebook would come out more than two years after the last episode of the show. Moana, though, well now that is a surprise.
D’Amaro attempted to reassure any watching stock holders that they would still make money from the movies eventually:
“Even when our franchise films don’t meet our box office expectations, as with the Mandalorian and Grogu and the live-action Moana, our investments in these core properties fuel other parts of our company.
The Mandalorian and Grogu drove healthy growth in retail sales for the Star Wars franchise and drew guests to the updated Millennum Falcon attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and led to significant engagement in gaming as well.
And the live-action Moana is expected to be a strong title on Disney+, building on the success of the original film, which is one of the most-streamed movies of all time. These franchise investments contributed to value creation beyond their theatrical releases.”
He’s probably entirely right, even if it does sound a bit like cope at this stage. Disney CFO Hugh Johnston also backed him up:
“Theatrical performance is important to us, of course, and we certainly aspire to deliver consistent financial results for our films. But the nature of the film industry is such that it is more of a portfolio game.
The good news for us is our diversified business helps us basically cover the volatility that comes out of the film business… the theatrical window in a lot of ways is just one data point, and the real value of that IP is the cumulative benefit of decades-long storytelling and our ability to take that IP and lay it into the entirety of the Disney flywheel.”
With Lilo & Stitch 2, Avatar 4, Incredibles 3, plus Avengers juggernauts ready to roll then nobody expects Disney to be in the poor house soon. That is a worrying lack of original IP, though.
As for Star Wars? Well, we are not really sure where the hell the brand goes from here.
