No one is too big to fail - Disney

[clearspira]

In just six months Disney is on the verge of massive redundancies that could stretch as high as Bob Iger. NO ONE could have predicted that in 2019 and yet in retrospect it makes perfect sense.

In summary:

Almost no one is going to their parks due to Covid-19.
Almost no one is going to the cinema worldwide due to Covid-19.
Disney bought a couple of cruise ships that no one is using.
Less of a cut on those films due to the deals with the streaming firms not being as lucrative.
Filming on many of its most prized films - including the MCU and Star Wars - is on hold.
Disney - according to unconfirmed reports - STILL have not made back what they paid for Star Wars.
Disney recently bought Fox which is a debt they don't need.

Disney was big and bloated. And if 2020 continued like 2019 that need not have been an issue. But it didn't. This video goes into a lot of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVNCuFH7j_U

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

All three episodes made at least a billion dollars. Solo didn't do as good as they wanted but Rogue 1 did. How much money are they supposed to have made at this point?

[Madner Kami]

All three episodes made at least a billion dollars. Solo didn't do as good as they wanted but Rogue 1 did. How much money are they supposed to have made at this point?

"At least a billion dollars" may seem like much to you and yes, all three sequel films made their money back, but, and that is the kicker, the Star Wars franchise is not just the movies. It's toys, coffee-mugs, stickers, games as well and that is where the sequels truely fail. They literally do not sale. Whatever Disney expected to earn, they are incredibly far behind by even their lowest and most conservative expectations. Star Wars is quite the hot potatoe for them at the moment and in their situation.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

All three episodes made at least a billion dollars. Solo didn't do as good as they wanted but Rogue 1 did. How much money are they supposed to have made at this point?

"At least a billion dollars" may seem like much to you and yes, all three sequel films made their money back, but, and that is the kicker, the Star Wars franchise is not just the movies. It's toys, coffee-mugs, stickers, games as well and that is where the sequels truely fail. They literally do not sale. Whatever Disney expected to earn, they are incredibly far behind by even their lowest and most conservative expectations. Star Wars is quite the hot potatoe for them at the moment and in their situation.

Where are the reports that indicate this?

[Jonathan101]

All three episodes made at least a billion dollars. Solo didn't do as good as they wanted but Rogue 1 did. How much money are they supposed to have made at this point?

"At least a billion dollars" may seem like much to you and yes, all three sequel films made their money back, but, and that is the kicker, the Star Wars franchise is not just the movies. It's toys, coffee-mugs, stickers, games as well and that is where the sequels truely fail. They literally do not sale. Whatever Disney expected to earn, they are incredibly far behind by even their lowest and most conservative expectations. Star Wars is quite the hot potatoe for them at the moment and in their situation.

Where are the reports that indicate this?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/hasbro-ceo-admits-making-strategic-mistake-with-last-jedi-toys

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lukethompson/2017/12/21/why-arent-star-wars-toys-selling-as-well-this-year/#26b7b00a54e5

https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/with-star-wars-toys-the-force-is-strong-but-retail-sales-arent/

https://www.jeditemplearchives.com/2019-01-14-disneys-2018-annual-report-sees-star-wars-in-decline/

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Thanks!

The Forbes article states that there wasn't much new in The Last Jedi to market toys for. That was my first impression of lacking merchandise instead of Star Wars fatigue.

But the movie doesn't give them much to work with. While The Empire Strikes Back persuaded kids to re-buy all their favorite characters in snow gear and alternate Cloud City costumes, The Last Jedi mostly keeps its core group in the same or similar duds. The most notable exception, Rey, is one of the few figures that's hard to find. Likewise, there are few new characters to get kids really excited. Benicio Del Toro and Laura Dern's new additions are fairly subdued: only Rose and the Praetorian Guard offer visually novel and narratively dynamic additions. (Also arguably Snoke, but we'll get to him.) When it comes to vehicles, the best new reveals are too massive to sell as figure-compatible toys: the Dreadnought, Snoke's Star Destroyer, the Resistance bombers, and the Gorilla Walker will all get their LEGO due, but for action figures? Not so feasible. When it comes to vehicles that are feasible, Kylo Ren's TIE Silencer is indeed cool, but the main new good-guy fighter, the Ski Speeder, is specifically called out in the movie as junk, and in the story -- SPOILER alert -- all of them crash or blow up. That's not necessarily appealing to a kid.

[Jonathan101]

Well, nobody mentioned Star Wars fatigue in the first place.

[Darth Wedgius]

IIRC, Disney is borrowing money to continue. That's not necessarily a fatal situation, but it can only continue for so long. There are things they can do to make money, but they have their own problems. A lot of things they could sell (e.g., ESPN, Shanghai Disney Resort) are worth less right now for the very reasons Disney is hurting so badly. And ESPN was already doing somewhat poorly before the pandemic, and the US-China situation makes Shanghai Disney Resort possibly problematic for any domestic purchaser, meaning any purchaser faces less competition.

The could sell off Star Wars. They could write in that they get to keep their Star Wars theme park properties and can continue to show the original Star Wars movies on Disney+. But I doubt they'd get what they paid for it, and not just because of SARS-Cov-2.

They could sell off Fox, after having Fox give the rest of Star Wars to Disney proper (if they haven't already). I doubt they'd get what they paid for it, not because Fox isn't worth as much, but because they may have paid too much for it in the first place. It might still be a good idea.

They could sell off publishing rights to the Marvel comics. They probably should. They replaced a lot of the movie characters in the comics at the height of their movie popularity in a "diversity" push anyway, and, though they brought them back, I don't think those characters not being in the comics hurt the movies any. A lot of their movies are based on characters that were never their best-sellers anyway. They can keep merchandising rights and TV, movie, and streaming rights.

[Rocketboy1313]

Guys, "too big to fail" doesn't refer to a business being so big and powerful that no financial crisis could take it down.
It refers to a businesses that is so big and powerful that were it to fail during a financial crisis it would drag down many-many-many other businesses and deepen the crisis, necessitating the government to step in an save the business.

Allowing businesses to get that big an powerful is a failure of capitalist systems, as they end up having extreme lobbying, regulatory, standards setting, and other monopolistic behaviors that damage the free market. Saving them from failure without major restructuring or jail time for those who structured in such a way to cause failure (for instance, selling sub-prime investments bundled in such a way that investors were unaware of the dangers of purchasing the product) and allowing management to go free with bonuses plundered from the pockets of investors and taxpayers... that would be an example of crony capitalism.

It is entirely possible for an IP and vacation conglomerate like Disney to go belly up, they are not "too big to fail"... but something like a firm that has a massive amount of retirement accounts tied up in their investment? That would need to be "saved".

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well, nobody mentioned Star Wars fatigue in the first place.

The first link you posted alluded straight to it as the punchline of the article.