With the 100-year anniversary of Disney celebrated this past October, Disney has officially impacted lives for a century. In this period, Disney has created countless childhood memories, sparked imaginations, and contributed to numerous sources of entertainment. For every individual, there is almost certainly a Disney production that has deeply resonated with them.
The list of disney movies are countless, ranging from classics like Cinderella to comic-based movies such as The Avengers. Of the 53 movies that have ever surpassed 1-billion dollars on the global box office, Disney officially owns 32 of them. There is no surprise, then, that Disney has always been a wildly successful company.
Therefore, it is surprising that Disney has recently been on a rapid decline. Over the summer of 2023 itself, Disney lost 900 million dollars from the box office in underperforming movies.
These losses are mainly attributed towards the high movie budgets and the revenue not breaking even. The live action remake The Little Mermaid, for example, made an impressive 561 million dollars. However, once you include the estimated budget of 250 million and the global marketing budget of 140 million, you can see how disney ended up with a loss. Disney’s Elemental also suffered losses because of this issue. The inflated budgets of The Little Mermaid and Elemental shoved a metaphorical knife into disney’s chest.
The Marvel sector of Disney is also on a slow but steady decline. There have been some exceptions, such as Spider-Man: No Way Home, but Disney has failed to put out consistently successful content. This is seen in many movies, such as The Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which tanked box office records, and Secret Invasion, which has received an underwhelming reaction from fans. The Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania made 476 million dollars worldwide, which is low in comparison to the Avengers films and other stand alone Marvel movies in the past. There are many reasons why Marvel is suffering, it could be that the A-team heroes are gone, there is too much content to prioritize quality, or even the fact that the widely regarded climax of the MCU, Avengers End-game, is over. No matter the reason, Marvel is suffering heavily.
Disney has also seen many losses in Disney+, their streaming subscription, caused partly by the lackluster content and the recent consumer price hikes, leading to millions of dollars lost in unsubscriptions.
Disney movies have been a source of great entertainment and happiness for many generations. Although the company has been going through a rough patch, it is still striving for improvement. Bob Iger, the CEO that returned last november, has made it clear that he will make sure that quality is weighed heavier than quantity in the future. We can only hope that these changes will be enough to ensure that Disney, a pioneer of entertainment, will thrive for generations to come.
