Sequels, reboots, prequels, and remakes are the order of the day at Disney. Disney CEO Bob Iger has confirmed at his quarterly earnings call that more sequels for Frozen, Toy Story, and Zootopia franchises are in the works due to the new animated projects failing.
The news that unneeded and unwanted sequels for franchises that had perfect conclusions should not be too surprising given how poorly Disney has handled its brands in recent years.
Whether it’s the abject failure of the MCU Phase 4, the total disaster of the Disney Star Wars saga, the sad decay of Pirates of the Caribbean, the remakes of the classic animated movies being poor quality, or the extremely worrying low box office returns on the new animated films, Disney’s entertainment branches have not had much success outside of the classic brand releases (mostly as you’ll see in a moment) since 2015.
And that’s probably why the stock price has been slashed by over 50% since 2020, and CEO Bob Iger revealed the company was laying off over 7,000 employees to save $5.5B
Nevertheless, I’m going to focus on the entertainment aspect of this news as I find that to be the most compelling and telling of where Disney is at this moment.
For Disney to go back into the well and greenlight yet more Toy Story and Frozen movies shows that the recent, new animated films have just not been popular enough with the general public to warrant more creative, innovative ideas from the current crop of animated filmmakers.
I mean, Strange World (2022) only gained $74M from the worldwide box office, Encanto (2021) had some great music and reviews but only had a $256 worldwide box office tally, and Turning Red (2022) had the worst performance out of all the with just a $20M box office showing.
Just for comparison, Toy Story 4 (2019) earned $1.04B from the box office, Frozen 2 (2019) earned $1.45B, and Zootopia (2016) had a $1.025B box office showing as a brand-new animated franchise.
Clearly, these movies were able to capture the interest and love of the general audience the newest animated films were unable to do, which should be extremely concerning for the Big Mouse as this situation is starting to feel a lot like the Dark Ages Disney suffered after the death of Walt Disney.
In the 1970’s and 80’s, Disney suffered their worst period in company history as they kept making horrific box office flops one after the other as the new company heads stupidly tried to turn Disney into a dark, HBO-like brand, even though Walt Disney specially orientated the company and its projects for children, young adults, and families.
Now, these latest movies are not as dark as the “Dark Ages” movies, but they are just as bad in their own right.
(Walt Disney Studios/Pixar-Toy Story 4-Official Trailer)
The Star Wars sequel trilogy and subsequent Disney+ projects was a headless monstrosity that irrevocably damaged the franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell No Tales was an abomination of a movie that spat on the legacy of Jack Sparrow, the latest animated projects have not been well received as they are either too strange, quirky, or just plainly dull, the live-action remakes don’t have the luster and shine their animated predecessors possessed, and the MCU Phase 4 has been overwhelmed by a sludge of content, poor story cohesion and character writing/development, and general superhero burnout.
There’s a reason why the popularity of the Western genre from the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s was gone by the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s as the general public just got burnt out. It happens.
Though, unfortunately for Disney, the original Dark Ages took 18 years for the company to come out of and begin produce great movies like the original Toy Story (1995), The Little Mermaid (1989), The Lion King (1994) Beauty and The Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), etc., which may be too long for Disney to survive as we see it today.
If Disney continues to spend billions of dollars on rival entertainment franchises, such as Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox, and subsequently make bad or uninteresting projects with them, the company might very well find itself in a position of having to sell off said assets to pay its ever-encroaching and ever-growing billions of dollars of debt.
And that’s something no one wants to see happen.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Walt Disney Studios) (Frozen 2 Official Trailer – YouTube)
In Text Image 1: (Walt Disney Studios/Pixar) (Toy Story 4 | Official Trailer – YouTube)
