Will Disney Ever Recover?

[reee9948]

Ever since 2020, Disney has been hit with nothing but box office failures and criticism from critics and fans alike. The only movie that gain some positive reception is Encanto, but even that bombed because of Covid. While 2020 was the start of them failing in the box office, some said that Disney really really fell off in 2018 with the release of Wreck in Ralph 2 in 2018 which was hated by a lot of people and in 2019 when they released Frozen 2 which while may have made the most money for Disney, it wasn't well received as the original movie.

Considering, that we are now in the sequel era cause the original movies failed, I wonder if Disney will ever come back to its glory days? I know sequels will make them more money, but Disney isn't known for making amazing sequels like Dreamworks and even Dreamworks have been failing recently with the release of Kung Fu Panda 4.

I know Disney has been in the dark era before (though honestly I prefer there 'dark' age movie over their 3d movies), but it seems like Disney this time have dug a really deep grave that they can't get out of. They made both leftist and rightist angry with their recent decision and with the executive meddling too much in the creative process and the worry of 'offending people' they are have become too afraid to step out of their comfort zone and create a movie that lives up to the Disney Legacy.

Is it possible for Disney to come out of grave they dug themselves in or will they continue failing and possibly end up being forced to shut down their animation department (I highly doubt that it will happen since Disney is too big to fail, but considering they shut down the 2d department cause their 2d movies failed in the 2000s, there's always a possibility.)

[Kyle]

They're not gonna shut down their animation department, but I do think they will need to continue to fail harder before we see them rise out of this. Iger recently said a lesson they've learned is that they need to do more oversight of their creatives to make sure things dont go awry. Like, what? That's the opposite takeaway they need to having right now. If that's what they think right now, they have no idea why they are failing in the first place.

[lord-of-sith]

If Disney survived the 2000s and 1970s era flops, they will be fine now. If there's a company that is known for having dark years before coming back stronger than ever, it's them.

[carolinakid]

But the ‘70s animated films (Aristocats (1970), Robin Hood (1973) and Rescuers (1977)) I believe did very well at the box office during their original releases. The Black Cauldron (1985) was the only real animated failure between Jungle Book (1967) and Little Mermaid (1989).
If I’m wrong, please let me know.
Live action box office was disappointing during those years, if I recall correctly.

[DEEcat98]

Though, at least Pixar's doing fine with their 2020's animated movies as those films (except for Lightyear) have most people liking them well, despite them flopping, but that's because of COVID and Elemental at first flopped because it didn't get enough people to see it when it was very recent at the time.

[DisneyJedi]

I’ve literally been asking the same thing for months. Sure, Avatar 2 made billions and Doctor Strange 2, Black Panther 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 were financially successful and The Little Mermaid and Elemental did pretty good at the (worldwide) box office, but for whatever reason, WDAS films haven’t been making as much as Disney’s other theatrical releases or nothing at all and it’s very concerning.

What upsets me more is that I feel like most moviegoers now are absolutely hypocritical about what they will or won’t see in theaters. They won’t see a Disney film in theaters (specifically an original not-based-on-a-previously-established-IP Disney film) and wait till it drops on Disney+ to watch it “for free”, but they’ll show up in droves for something like Barbie, Super Mario Bros or even Five Nights At Freddy’s.

[The Disneynerd]

If Disney survived the 2000s and 1970s era flops, they will be fine now. If there's a company that is known for having dark years before coming back stronger than ever, it's them.

i agree

What upsets me more is that I feel like most moviegoers now are absolutely hypocritical about what they will or won’t see in theaters. They won’t see a Disney film in theaters (specifically an original not-based-on-a-previously-established-IP Disney film) and wait till it drops on Disney+ to watch it “for free”, but they’ll show up in droves for something like Barbie, Super Mario Bros or even Five Nights At Freddy’s.

Gurl..I think its the opposite. People clearly want Disney Animation to make something new, fresh and unexpected, something Wish clearly wasnt. The only original aspect of the movie is that the villain is way more sympathetic than the protagonist

I also dont think that the 3rd Avatar will be as successful as the first 2, but still will be able to cross around 1B.

When they are playing it too safe like the previous few years, by pushing aside the story but saying "hey look atleast our Animation looks more real now", WDAS wont be as memorable as Dreamworks or Sony, especially the latter who is killing it rn with Spiderverse and Mitchells vs Mashines, which I think deserved the Oscar instead of Mehcanto

And the whole world knows Barbie and Supermario, so a movie adaption was always a guranteed success, no matter how the story turned out, but I doubt the Mario sequel will be as successful and will make around 400 Million worldwide, same for a potential Barbie sequel.

[Farerb]

In my opinion, Bob Iger cared about short term investments and successes and never bothered to consider what would happen if people stopped caring about Star Wars or the MCU. Nothing lasts forever.

However, the biggest issue is that he completely stripped the soul out Disney and I think people started to notice it, too much focus on franchises, too much focus on sequels, too much focus on remakes, and his biggest mistake was abandoning Disney's biggest legacy, which is hand drawn animation, now there's nothing that makes them more special and unique than other animation studios that make the same bland CGI movies. Disney under Walt and during the Renaissance used to be innovative, they are no longer trying and they have become tired. They no longer tell stories, but rather they're here to sell you a product, and this is why people are bored and unenamored with the company.

Can Disney recover? Yes, but I don't see it happening under the current leadership. There needs to be a major change and unfortunately Roy Disney isn't here to organize another "Save Disney" campaign.

[carolinakid]

Great analysis, Farerb!
Couldn’t agree more.

Iger is destroying the parks too.

[friendoftheotherside]

I’m not sure if reee9948 is asking about Disney in general or if it’s specifically about Disney Animation. If it’s the first, I don’t think Disney is in so much trouble. Yeah, they had a lot of flops in the last couple of years, but Disney is too big as a company now to go bankrupt like in the olden days. At least for now. Even with all the flops, Disney was the second highest grossing studio of 2023.

As for WDAS, I think, as longer as some lame CEO is in charge, the studio will be under some kind of treat. Because I don’t believe Bob Iger really cares about that studio, or its legacy or even about animation in general. Regardless of how anyone feels about Wish, that movie was made as celebration for the studio’s 100th anniversary. And in my opinion, the marketing was terrible. Just terrible. Fanmade posters were better than the ones officially released. It seemed that Disney didn’t cared at all about its release. The same applies to Elemental and basically every other original animated movie released in the recent past.

What upsets me more is that I feel like most moviegoers now are absolutely hypocritical about what they will or won’t see in theaters. They won’t see a Disney film in theaters (specifically an original not-based-on-a-previously-established-IP Disney film) and wait till it drops on Disney+ to watch it “for free”, but they’ll show up in droves for something like Barbie, Super Mario Bros or even Five Nights At Freddy’s.

I wouldn’t call hypocritical. As reee9948 said, Disney enraged different types of people by being involved in a lot of controversies lately. And people moved on to greener pastures. Basically all Disney has to offer right now is the same that they’ve been offering for the last decade. So why would people show up when they can see “new” things? Sure, Barbie, Super Mario Bros and Five Nights At Freddy’s aren’t technically new, because they already had some type of a fanbase, but it’s not the 40th entry in a franchise.

In my opinion, Bob Iger cared about short term investments and successes and never bothered to consider what would happen if people stopped caring about Star Wars or the MCU. Nothing lasts forever.

However, the biggest issue is that he completely stripped the soul out Disney and I think people started to notice it, too much focus on franchises, too much focus on sequels, too much focus on remakes, and his biggest mistake was abandoning Disney's biggest legacy, which is hand drawn animation, now there's nothing that makes them more special and unique than other animation studios that make the same bland CGI movies. Disney under Walt and during the Renaissance used to be innovative, they are no longer trying and they have become tired. They no longer tell stories, but rather they're here to sell you a product, and this is why people are bored and unenamored with the company.

Can Disney recover? Yes, but I don't see it happening under the current leadership. There needs to be a major change and unfortunately Roy Disney isn't here to organize another "Save Disney" campaign.

Farerb, are you some kind of mind reader? lol Because that’s basically how I think about this whole situation.

By only caring about short term investments and successes, Bob Iger undervalued original stories. Even most of Disney fans seems to only care about sequels and remakes now, because it caters to their nostalgia. Yeah, people complains about when those titles are announced, but they still show up in theaters to watch them, albeit less than they did before. Just look at The Little Mermaid remake vs. Elemental or Wish’s box office. And his solution to the problem? He announced even more sequels and remakes. I’m sure his brilliant idea of releasing a remake and a sequel to Moana with less than two years between them will fix everything!

People keep blaming Bob Chapek for everything, while this whole mess started under Iger (or maybe even under Michael Eisner and his cheapquels). Chapek wasn’t the villain people claim, and Iger also isn’t a hero. They’re both clowns. And if/when Iger leaves, he’s probably going to be replaced by another clown.Wall Street and shareholders aren’t going to care while Disney keeps making money, because they don’t care about creativity and innovation, only about money.

[UmbrellaFish]

Farerb, I agree with you. The seeds of the company’s current issues were sown during Bob Iger’s first tenure as CEO. I’m glad Iger survived the recent challenge from Nelson Peltz, but Disney does need a new vision.

Personally, though, I can’t muster much doom and gloom. I’ve been through this before, my fandom and education in all things Disney started in the 2000’s, during that dark age. The posts here lately about a return to traditional animation feel like a real blast from the past. Things were bleak back then, but they got better. And now they’re bad again. They’ll probably get better again. Or maybe they won’t.

If we’re entering (or have entered) a dark age, maybe there are things to appreciate within it… or at least to find interesting. Disney made some weird movies in the early 2000’s. Or Wish… personally, it’s captured my imagination because while there are elements I like a lot in the film, there are others which are serious missteps that harm the film and you just wonder… why did they make that choice? Do others not take some interest and enjoyment in dissecting what makes “bad” movies bad? If we’re entering another dark age, I hope we get loads of weird movies to dissect. Just so long as they don’t sink the studio before another golden age can begin!

[DisneyFan09]

Well, Disney has recovered from Dark Periods before, so they`ll most likely recover again. Despite how there will always be naysayers who will whine, no matter what.

[Escapay]

Is it possible for Disney to come out of grave they dug themselves in or will they continue failing and possibly end up being forced to shut down their animation department (I highly doubt that it will happen since Disney is too big to fail, but considering they shut down the 2d department cause their 2d movies failed in the 2000s, there's always a possibility.)

The Death of Disney Animation has been used so many times as the theoretical argument for when the company is in a dark age. It's happened in the post-war years, after the expensive cost of Sleeping Beauty, in the wake of Walt's death, in 1984 when the Saul Steinberg, Irwin Jacobs, and Ivan Boesky attempted a hostile takeover of the company, again in 2004 when they dodged a Comcast buyout, and now. Each time, they've bounced back. Post-War Disney gave way to Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty gave way to the cheaper xerography process and the highly profitable One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Walt's Death did make them play it safe, but every 1970s animated film was a box office hit by both Disney and industry standards. The 90s/00s online rhetoric often liked to bully the success of Robin Hood and make it seem like a lesser film than it actually is; never mind the reality that the film was the studio's highest grossing film for 1973 and part of the company's 50th Anniversary celebrations. It was, in essence, what Wish was for the 100th anniversary.

When the company rebuilt itself in 1984 with the influx of Roy E. Disney, Michael Eisner, and Frank Wells, animation was still a priority even though it seemed to take second-tier to that influx of live-action Touchstone fare. (And look at today, Touchstone has been retired as a brand name, while animation has not.) And the abandonment of hand-drawn animation post-2004 has still led to its own revival on two occasions (The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh), as well as regaining the trust (and dollars) of its audience with subsequent CGI pictures after the critical drubbing that Chicken Little got. I think if history has taught us anything, it's that even when Disney tries to kill their animation, they don't succeed. Those who choose to take sides in the left/right politics about the current era Disney will blow it up into more than it is, but that's the way of the internet and any court of public opinion. It's all hot air online, but rarely indicative or informative of how the business works.

Albert

[Thumper_93]

Disney animation studios needs a new fairy tale movie to recover themselves. They need to bring the old magic back instead of think about what is offensive and what is not. People love fairytale movies, they want things like Frozen or Tangled with the old Disney spirit and with a good story behind. They want modern princess but they also want old fashion princess with romance and adventure. It seems that they only want to make happy to people that think that old Disney is not good because the characters from old movies are not politically correct right now.
They need to stop making live action movies that nobody asked for. People with nostalgia is going to consume the old classics merchandise anyway. They don't need to make this films to bring back the nostalgia of these movies.
They also need to be more exclusive with their products. They have to be more careful with the license that they sell. In the 90s Disney was synonyme of quality and exclusivity. Now you can find cheap Disney's products anywhere. Sometimes is exausting entering into a store and see all the Stitch merchandise or Disney merchandise in general. People like things that are exclusive and this kind of strategy is making people to be tired about Disney because it's everywhere.

[Disney's Divinity]

The weird thing about a company when it's not doing well is that they have to take some risk--which is the last thing they want to do when things aren't going well. I think they'll keep going up from Wish (itself a step up from Strange World), but it'll take a while. I think Iger is hoping sequels to old IP like Moana and Frozen will help pull them up in the meantime and minimize the damage on the way. Plus, I feel like the political bull's-eye that was on Disney from the past couple of years has somewhat eased now, which can only help, too.

[Thumper_93]

They didn't take risk with Wish. They changed the whole story because they were affraid and the result was a simple movie that failled.

[nachonaco]

While Jennifer Lee is great, in my opinion, WDAS needs some better blood. Not necessarily new blood, as one might say, but better blood. By that I don't mean just the staff, I mean better creative blood. They need to think of wider, better ideas than the same protagonist with a different physical appearance - genuinely, the 'awkward (mostly female) protagonist' I spoke of in the Wish thread is so played out I can't remember what character traits belonged to who between Asha and the boy from Strange World (Ethan I think is his name? I didn't see much of SW either). Awkward characters had their time and place in the Disney pantheon, but they seem played out in a way that confident characters don't. They just don't stand the test of time. Yes, everyone has awkward moments, but not everyone makes it their personality.

Another thing Disney does wrong is cram the same two or three franchises down our throats at a time, along with whatever IP (Marvel, Star Wars, The Simpsons) they've acquired taking up the majority of the merchandise offerings. I mean, there's a yearly (if not more frequent) short that'll debut on Disney+ every year that basically amounts to "haha we own the Simpsons now and we're going to have them interact with our characters! Aren't we funny?" When they beat you over the head with corporate synergy like that, it just becomes apparent that we're headed towards the world of Wall-E. Subtlety is an art that Disney knew in the 90s and 2000s that needs to make a comeback.

I went to Disneyland for the first time last year and checked out several of the shops while I was there. Each shop had the exact same merchandise no matter where you went. It was so homogenized, it was disorienting. When I worked in MK at WDW (yes, I know WDW is much bigger) in 2012, I don't remember that being the case. I remember finding Brave stuff, Wreck-it Ralph stuff (the two hit movies at the time), which was to be expected, and also plushies of various other WDAS and Pixar characters from older franchises.

I think Disney needs to strike a balance between finding their roots - not necessarily hand-drawn animation, which I would love to see return but understand why it's likely not to - and, as I said above, finding new creative blood. We were really on the right track with Encanto, so I'm honestly not sure what happened with Strange World and Wish. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting anything profound or anything like that, but certainly something that has replayability. I really tried to like both SW and Wish, and I just couldn't. And I'm honestly a person that likes most everything Disney puts out.

Disney is going to be limping along for a while, but I think they can eventually come out of this fog they're in. They need to take a look at what worked in the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s - diversification of merchandising, solidly-written plots, great characterization, memorable songs...but I think they can do it.

[Pokenonbinary]

They will recover but in like 10 years, they had a great amazing decade (in terms of box office not talking about quality, that's subjective) and now they will have a bad decade

The same happened with Warner Bros, amazing box office in the 2000s with Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings and The Dark Knight among others but bad results in the 2010s