Disney Deathcart 3/11/25

This quarter is going to be brutal

By now I’m familiar with Bob Iger’s Modus Operandi. Most of the investors are to be treated like mushrooms. The important investors don’t care about these dog and pony shows, they’ve got Bob’s home number. Regardless, the information that gets released to the Mom and Pop stakeholders needs to meet the legal definition of accuracy.

So, talk up anything that can be accused of being success, even if it wasn’t. For instance, the publicly declared budget of Captain America 4 was $180 million. While that was the budget at the start, it’s closer to $400 million with reshoots and marketing, was another $200 million. However, since the declared budget is still $180 million, we can claim it has clawed back its spend.

Next, breeze over failures in the middle. Lump them all together then say something like, “Not all of our projects met our expectations. THIS THING and THAT THING underperformed but on the bright side…” And immediately move on to something that is a major success.

The parks are more of a problem since there really isn’t much in the way of shell games that can be played or at least not as many shell games as there are in film distribution.

So, make some blue sky new attraction announcements for the parks that may, but more likely won’t ever see the light of day. Although if it shoehorns an IP into a ride that doesn’t have it and thereby ruin it, the project will likely move forward. The same if it destroys an attraction that is simply too American for current year Disney tastes.

Next, the failure that is closest to TV Bob’s heart, is Disney+. It was totally worth paying billions that Disney didn’t have to muddy the streaming waters with Hulu so far as he was concerned.

Finally, if the year is going to be a bad one, like 2025, then try to cram all the bad news there is into one quarter.

Which is what Disney will have to be doing for this quarter.

Films: Mufasa underperformed but acceptably so at $700 million, although Faverau’s Lion King hauled in a whopping $1.65 billion and that was in pre-Biden bucks, call it $2.2 billion today. It’s horrendous failure from that perspective but TV Bob isn’t going to put it that perspective. Captain America 4 I’ve already discussed. Snow White on the other hand is already getting its marketing budget slashed. It’s being pared down to a few TV and YouTube commercials, and Rachel Zegler’s attack-handlers who are required to mace and tackle her if it looks like she’s going to open her mouth. I’ve been surprised by a film’s box office before but it’s safe to say Disney is anticipating a bomb too obvious to put in any kind of good light.

The Parks, however, are the real problem. The Parks used to live by Walt’s first law, “No chipped Paint! All horses jump! No light out!” They aren’t doing that anymore. They’ve been dialing back on even basic maintenance, the parks are dirty for the first time since Michael Eisner took over. DEI Imagineering has been delivering broken and substandard rides. The fact that you can see the backs of facades from the new rides tells you they can’t do the job. Eisner would have strangled the Imagineers that delivered such thing.

Worse still, Epic Universe, (the new park that Universal built with all the billions Iger used to pay for Hulu), will open this summer and the advance reviews are stellar. Summer will be down for the second year in a row, and spring reservations are down as well because park goers are saving up to go to Epic. The unthinkable is on the horizon, Universal will be the main attraction in Orlando and Disney World will be the day trip… “If we have time.”

Disney Plus is where the numeric legerdemain will have to be concentrated. The simple and absolutely brutal truth is this: Disney has lost the children’s market to YouTube. There is no getting them back from that. Gen Alpha is the first generation of children that Disney hasn’t had in its pocket since the Depression.

The adult market is faring no better. Daredevil Born Again had lower debut numbers than Agatha All Along. 7.5 million to 9.3 million respectively. Dana Walden’s is saying Disney is going to be very careful with the next seasons of Succession and (I can’t believe they are doing this) Shogun. Jame Clavell didn’t write a sequel to Shogun. The producers are kicking themselves for killing off Yabu.

This is going to be one of those quarters where all the lipstick in the world is still going to leave the pig looking like a pig.

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