Disney to have theatrical window for the remainder of 2021

[Lyle Romer]

Maybe they realized that giving away blockbusters for free on Disney+ is not a great business model. The article I saw said 45 days for most releases but only 30 for "Encanto."

[Steve Guttag]

Disney? Give Away? No, no, the "blockbusters" they charged extra for, in addition to the subscription on Disney +.

What they clearly saw was that when you release day-and-date, you shrink your pie of potential sales AND you create piracy with digital perfect copies...day-and-date!

[Marcel Birgelen]

Maybe give us a little link back to the original article.

But hey, who would have thought that giving pirates a Free Lunch would hurt the bottom line?

[Mike Blakesley]

And, they also saw that without a window, there was no huge infusion of new cash 90 days down the road... there was now only one chance to promote a movie for one weekend before it becomes "yesterday's news."

I might be wrong but I have a feeling it was the second weekend's drop of their Disney+ titles that convinced them. They didn't see such a drastic drop in revenue with the theatrical releases of Free Guy and Shang Chi. (I'm assuming here that their non-published second weekend home video numbers were vastly lower, percentage-wise, than the second-weekend numbers of their theatrical-only titles. The fact that they came out with the week-one home gross of Black Widow but chose not to share the week two gross speaks volumes.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess they got hooked on this idea once stuff like Mulan bombed at the box office (whilst in the midst of global lockdowns), but did "relatively well" on their early access Disney+ platform.

It will be interesting how Bob Chapek will lead the future of this giant media and entertainment conglomerate that's the Walt Disney Company nowadays. With recent developments in the Disney Parks division, he's already been painted as the purely corporate, moneygrab-kind-of CEO, after they introduced all new "Premium Services" that once were available for free. Also, newly themed lands, like the very expensive Star Wars expansions, turned out to be essentially glorified shopping malls for expensive souvenirs. New Marvel additions also get mostly lackluster reviews as they turn out to be mostly opportunities to sell more overpriced food and toys.

So, if he really has his eyes purely on the money, well, then I guess the smart thing to do is to revert to the proven old model of an exclusive theatrical release window...

While it's hard for me to pick sides, it will be interesting to know if the lawsuit as filed by Scarlett Johansson has anything to do with this. Maybe they want to avoid similar run-ins with other A-list actors they still need to finish their open-ended franchises?

[Carsten Kurz]

It's probably a mix of different issues for them. I assume they learned the hard way that consumer copy protection schemes are not as safe as the DCI system and the cinema environment. The target group for many of their releases (e.g. Marvel) is highly susceptible to piracy and group watching, account sharing, etc., younger, short strapped people, etc., so their expectations have probably not been matched. Quite a few cinemas/chains did not show their day and date releases and created more loss. Then there's the Johansson lawsuit, which may already be inconvenient by itself with the PR, but could create complex contract and budgetary issues for future high profile actor engagements.

[Mike Blakesley]

I do wonder how all of this stuff will change future contracts between studios and talent. You can be sure there is an army of lawyers and agents working on new 'standard' deals which at the end of the day will give the studio the final decision in how a movie is released. The business will probably become even more "test market" driven than it is now.... if your movie tests bad it'll get diverted to a straight-to-video pattern.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think the movie studios have been operating on a certain level of ignorance to reality. For years they've been assuming they'll make even more money by speeding up the life cycle of a movie, getting to TV screens as fast as possible. But, yeah, I think they're starting to realize the process is making a big budget become "yesterday's news" very fast. Not only that, it makes it possible for a big budget movie to be forgotten.

Last night I was channel surfing and Godzilla: King of the Monsters was playing on one of the basic cable channels. I completely forgot that movie was released a couple years ago. I thought only two newer "Godzilla" movies were released, the first one in 2014 and the "vs Kong" one released a few months ago. A lot of recently released movies are turning into a blur. This is yet another factor that has helped kill my habit of buying movies on disc. The pandemic has had its own negative effect on movie-going.

Modern movies do not have the retail visibility they once did when the theatrical release window was longer and retail movie sales/rental stores were still thriving. From the 1980's thru the 2000's it was possible for one single movie to remain physically visible to the general public easily for over a year. There would be all the advance marketing (posters, billboards, etc) before the movie was released. Then its marketing material would be all over the multiplexes during its theatrical release. Throw in all the tie-in marketing (fast food, toys, etc). After that died down a few months later advance posters would start appearing for the home video product in a wide variety of stores, not just Walmart. A big enough movie might have its own end cap on a retail aisle. Those days are over.

Today: movies get a very limited amount of time at commercial theaters. Then they're tossed into a streaming app's virtual digital pile with countless other existing movies -all with the same size thumbnail image. Users just get to keep scrolling through row after row after row of random suggestions. It's very easy for still-new movies to get lost and forgotten in that shit.

Retail movie disc sales have gone down the toilet. One reason is movie studios put far less effort into disc-based products than they did in the past. Another is the brick and mortar footprint for movie disc sales and rentals is greatly diminished. Video rental stores are all but extinct. That removed a lot of visual marketing for movies. Most specialty movie/music stores have closed, removing yet another place where movie posters and other marketing tools can be displayed. Now if you want to buy a movie on disc at a local store you pretty much have to do it at the local Walmart or Target location. If the disc isn't there you just order from Amazon. That is, if you're still into buying any movies on disc anymore.

As bad as things have become for the home theater market, it would only seem logical for Hollywood movie studio executives to reverse course and put a lot more muscle behind a commercial theatrical release. Unfortunately it looks like they're still trying to figure out how to double-down on pushing movies to home TV screens as fast as possible.

[Marcel Birgelen]

This is the fantasyland those studios have been living in:

Netflix Market Cap: $230B - 12.1K employees
Disney Market Cap: $330B - 223K employees

Somehow, Netflix has managed to build a company 2/3rds the size of Disney (on paper) with just the bare minimum of operations...

While the market cap and share prices often are completely out of touch with the REAL value of a company, this is the gold standard what CEOs are measured against. Their primary allegiance is towards the shareholders, not towards the employees or customers. How well the shares did will impact how much bonus they'll carry home, nothing else really matters.

[Bobby Henderson]

The CEOs of these companies are all playing a short term game. They fudge the numbers good enough to make a maximum amount of money in a relatively short amount of time. None of these guys are concerned about the long term future of the company. That's because many of these CEOs are journeyman types, hopping from one company to the next every few years. It appears rare for a company CEO to have made a career at that company working up from the bottom to top. Many of these CEOs leave (or get fired) from one top job to take over the CEO job at another company.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess that's the big difference between what we had in the past, where many of the biggest companies in the world were owned and ran by wealthy families and what we have now, where most of the biggest companies are owned by shareholders and operated by puppets that only have a lifespan of a few years as head of the company.

Those families had a vested interest in keeping the company afloat for their posterity, while most of those CEOs have none of those connections with the company. Even if they're paid part of their compensation in shares or options, they can easily divest away from them once their stint is over.

While Disney used to be a "family run" affair, I guess the last Disney descendant that really cared about the company and also had some skin in the game was Roy E. Disney, who passed away in 2009. Ever since, the company has been entirely run by corporate figureheads.

[Mike Blakesley]

That's for sure...you can really see it in the theme parks where they are not only raising the prices sky high, but now they're going to start charging for short-line ride access that used to be free.

It won't be long until it'll be back to a 2021 version of the original admission/ticket model: There'll be different priced tickets for every ride, but you'll still have to pay $100 plus to get in.

[Marcel Birgelen]

That's for sure...you can really see it in the theme parks where they are not only raising the prices sky high, but now they're going to start charging for short-line ride access that used to be free.

It won't be long until it'll be back to a 2021 version of the original admission/ticket model: There'll be different priced tickets for every ride, but you'll still have to pay $100 plus to get in.

We'll see how far they get, but it's clear what their plans with the theme parks are and it's somewhat ironic that the pandemic may have helped to accelerate any plans there have been before.

Nobody really likes long lines, you as a visitor obviously don't like long lines in front of attractions, but Disney* also doesn't like those long lines either, as every minute spent in those lines is a minute less spent in a shop or restaurant. Fast Pass was created back in the late 1990s in order to be able to distribute people better among the parks and allow people to spend less time queued up in long, meandering lines, especially when it's busy. Although this system didn't increase the capacity of the attractions it was introduced on, the crowd control aspect worked pretty well and most guest have since found it to be a worthwhile addition. It was a win-win situation for both Disney and the customer. The idea was so successful, that many other themepark operators, among them Universal, copied the idea.

The system in Florida got a large overhaul in the past decade, when the whole MagicBand and FastPass Plus stuff was introduced and other Disney parks around the world slowly introduced similar systems. Those systems further increased the crowd control aspect and was critiqued by many, because it made your visit more like a planning game, much the same critique as reserved seating gets at cinemas.

When the pandemic struck, Disney, among other theme park operators were faced with operational challenges, as waiting in line for attractions would be incompatible with COVID restrictions, so they introduced the equivalent of reserved seating only at practically all of their attractions. They essentially closed all "standby lines" and started to require reservations for each and every attraction. While guests reaction initially was mixed, most guest understood the necessity for it. For Disney, this was one big experiment, but apparently, they totally fell in love with it and as such, expect this to become the new normal. That is: normal lines at attractions will eventually become extinct and will be entirely replaced by virtual queues. If you want to skip the queue, then you'll end up paying a hefty premium to be allowed to do so. How much this premium will be, will depend on the popularity of the attraction. On busy days and for very popular attractions, this will essentially entail that you'll be required to pay up, just to be able to ride the attraction that day. Much like Fast Passes for popular attractions ran out within the first hour of operation for many popular attractions in the past, the "free tickets" will probably equally run out early on the day for anything popular.

To some extend, this is like going back to the model before 1982, when you paid for your attractions using "A", "B", "C", "D" or "E" tickets. Disney's top attractions are, until this day, still often referred to as "E-tickets"...

Personally, I hope their Disney Genie "Premium Access" stuff explodes in their face, much like their day-and-date Disney+ "Premier Access" release strategy seems to have done. People usually don't mind paying good money for a quality product, but people don't like the idea of being squeezed out of their money at every opportunity and that's the feel I get with many recent developments in and around the Disney universe.

The problem though is, that the cat is out of the bag and even if those things get buried after they initially fail, those ideas are like zombies, they never really die and once every while, they'll rear their ugly head again, to be resurrected by the next generation of executives looking for a quick bargain.

* Fun fact: The late Walter Elias Disney actually didn't mind moderately long lines in front of attractions too much, as they could be used to prepare people for the story inside the attraction itself and a certain wait would only increase the perceived value of the attraction itself. He may have had a point there. While we all expect instant gratification, this actually lowers the perceived value for those things we get instantly gratified with. Which also applies to movies: Movies that are released to streaming video day and date may just feel cheap and less worth it for the general audience...

[Bobby Henderson]

I guess that's the big difference between what we had in the past, where many of the biggest companies in the world were owned and ran by wealthy families and what we have now, where most of the biggest companies are owned by shareholders and operated by puppets that only have a lifespan of a few years as head of the company.

The situation is even worse now. I don't mind a normal corporation that has shares which are publicly traded and lots of other things we've grown to expect. Today so many businesses are owned outright or partially by private equity companies or even groups of such companies. We're talking about outfits like KKR. These organizations are a cancer that is slowly eating the guts out of American business and the bedrock of our economy.

I watched as one such bean counter firm utterly destroyed Sears over the space of 20 years. Sears literally invented the modern brick and mortar retail model. Eddie Lampert and his buddies mismanaged the operation right into the ground. My mother worked for Sears from the mid 1990's up to a few years ago when they closed the Chapel Hills Mall location in Colorado Springs. Lampert and his people were such cheapskates they wouldn't pay squat to maintain anything. That store in Colorado Springs was really nice in the late 1990's. It looked worse than some thrift stores in its final years. There was a LOT of vacant floor space at the end; many vendors cut of their supplies to Sears due to non-payment of bills.

I'm pretty familiar with the Corel software company. CorelDRAW is one graphics application I've used for close to 30 years (I use a few others too). For the past several years the company has been struggling, mainly due to the whims of the private equity companies who are the real bosses of the operation. Vector Capital acquired the company after its founder was ousted due to insider trading. They sold Corel to KKR recently. They have delusions Corel is an equal to Adobe yet are clearly not providing the resources the development team needs to keep up with Adobe. But they're trying to price the product that way. And they're going to put the company out of business if they keep it up with this bullshit.

Private equity firms often take over companies they have zero expertise of running. These are bean counters and nothing more but they take over acting like they're experts on anything, no matter what the market niche might be. They squeeze what ever money they can out of company in a short term before spinning it off to another vulture operation. That's what is happening to Corel now.

That's for sure...you can really see it in the theme parks where they are not only raising the prices sky high, but now they're going to start charging for short-line ride access that used to be free. It won't be long until it'll be back to a 2021 version of the original admission ticket model: There'll be different priced tickets for every ride, but you'll still have to pay $100 plus to get in.

I'm glad I don't have kids or grandchildren. Theme parks are pretty much dead to me. The price gouging for everything from parking to different douchebag levels of standing in line for a ride have long gotten out of hand. The only theme parks I might give a chance are smaller parks, such as Frontier City in Oklahoma City. But even in that park the costs and other inconveniences have grown too ridiculous to tolerate.

[Martin Brooks]

I'm glad I don't have kids or grandchildren. Theme parks are pretty much dead to me. The price gouging for everything from parking to different douchebag levels of standing in line for a ride have long gotten out of hand. The only theme parks I might give a chance are smaller parks, such as Frontier City in Oklahoma City. But even in that park the costs and other inconveniences have grown too ridiculous to tolerate.

That's true almost everywhere and it's not limited to theme-based amusement parks. It's true for most sporting events, concerts, etc. Every company has bought into the mantra of "maximizing revenue" even at the risk of alienating their own customers and leaving a bad taste in their mouths. $200 tickets to a baseball game with $13 hot dogs, $12 beers and $25 parking? Even in Coney Island, which is supposed to be "the people''s playground" and appeal to working class people, Luna Park, which replaced Astroland some years ago, charges something like $55 for a pass for a limited number of rides in a quite plain "park" (actually just blacktop) and parents who don't ride have to pay the full price to accompany their kids into the park. (Actually, a park like Disney's is almost a bargain compared to Coney's Luna for what you get.) A hot dog, fries and a soda for 2 kids and 2 adults at Nathan's will now set a family back over $50. It's all become ridiculous.

When I was a kid, it cost 75 cents to sit in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium and $1.35 to sit in the upper grandstand. That's about $6.73 / $12.11 in current dollars. That's a reasonable fee to see a ball game and the stands were full for most games back then. You could even double that or triple that and I'd still find it reasonable. Today (even pre-COVID), the stands are largely empty except for a few key games on weekends.

I never liked the Disney parks. I loved documentaries about the parks, but the stories about how everything was accomplished and the tech behind it were far more interesting than the attractions themselves and when I was there many years ago, the food was horrible and a ripoff even in the so-called fancy restaurants in EPCOT and it's apparently gotten worse since. I always resented that every major attraction emptied into a retail store. But I don't blame Disney from operating this way because it obviously works for them. They keep raising prices and the crowds come anyway. The Disney-owned hotels cost a fortune. (Back in the early 80's, Disney had "Vacation Villas" for $100 a night ($307 in current dollars) that held a family of 4 adults and 2 kids and also included free park transportation and they had kitchens, so you could save some $$$ by making breakfast there but they tore them down to build something else. That was a decent deal.)

A street vendor yesterday near a food fair wanted $2 for a small bottle of water. Almost everyone is trying to rip everyone off.

I'm glad I have grandkids, but we've never even considered taking them to a park like Disney. It's less expensive to go to Europe and I did take my granddaughter when she was 15 to Sweden and Denmark. That was her Disney and she loved it. While she was there she said, "I don't know how I'm going to go back to my regular life." We were in upstate New York State on vacation in late June and we offered to take my 12-year-old grandson to a nearby Six Flags, but his sister (now 18) had already left because she had a work commitment. He said he wanted to wait until she could go with him. Nice kid. He's gone to some upstate activity parks and water parks, but they weren't ridiculous ripoffs.