Disney has recently fallen off in terms of quality and is becoming more and more corporate each passing year. They are buying out all their competition, and with the recent Disney-Fox merger, we are looking at a potential monopoly on the television and film industry.
For those who don’t know, in late 2017, Disney announced plans to buy Fox and their media properties. In layman’s terms, instead of striving to beat a competitor, Disney decided to buy them out instead.
Competition makes businesses strive to improve and innovate their business. Without competition, why would a company strive to improve itself? If Disney gets a monopoly and controls a majority of the film industry, we will find that creativity and innovation will seemingly disappear from film if these kinds of business practices continue to become more common in the industry.
This year alone, Disney has 12 films planned for release, and every single one of those films is a sequel, spinoff, remake, reboot or an adaptation. Not a single one of these films is a new property that Disney has come up with. This shows how the people who run the company now have one key interest in mind: money.
But who can blame them: new properties are always risky because you don’t have a built-in audience already to watch your film. By paying to see these films, we are essentially saying, “We want less creativity and more sequels, spinoffs, etc.” You may not think that, but in business, money always speaks louder than words.
Then we have Disney’s cash cows that bring in so much money for them, the big ones being Star Wars and Marvel. These film properties have been milked to the breaking point. Marvel is still raking in the big bucks for Disney currently, but many have started expressing superhero fatigue.
Just this year there are 10 superhero movies announced for release. That’s not even including the ones that might be announced this year. Star Wars, however, is already experiencing fan fatigue, with many fans sick of yearly Star Wars films, and many who do not like the direction the new films are taking. This showed up most recently in the poor box office results of “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
The money shows this clearly: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” made $2.066 billion. It was very successful, and won most fans’ hearts.
“Rogue One” made $1.056 billion, which makes sense because it is a spinoff and would not make as much as a mainline film.
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is where we see a major decline; this film made $1.321 billion, nearly half of what the Force Awakens made. Many fans hated this film, which caused the box office to decline.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” shows major disinterest in the franchise. Hardly anyone saw this film, and those that did thought it was average. In just three years, Disney caused people to already be sick of this franchise. They milked it dry and are continuing to do so.
This may result in temporary success for Disney, but in the long term this will hurt them because people will start getting sick of the way Disney handles business and their franchises. The money will stop flowing, and when Disney realizes their mistakes, it will be too late.