The Incredibly Satisfying Death of Disney

[Baller234]

I wouldnt be surprised if there was some sort of extortion or other pressure that forced him to sell star wars, but disney at the time of the sale (2012) was not the disney of today.

It doesnt seem that strange for him to donate the $4 billion, he was already worth like ~$10b before the sale, he had zero need for this money.

The aspect of the sale that was strange to me is the fact that he relinquished total creative control to disney. I guess maybe he trusted their creative choices at the time since they were doing a pretty good job with marvel at that point

By this same logic, if he didn't need the money then he didn't need to sell Lucasfilm.

Assuming he was worth $14b after the sale, that would mean he gave away nearly 30% of his entire net worth to a single charity. I mean that sounds great, and sure anything is possible, but I just find that really hard to believe.

I just can't picture an aggressive money hungry businessman like Lucas waking up one day and deciding to A) sell his golden goose... and B) donate the proceeds to a single charity.

[Patrick Chewing]

Damn, looks like they're bailing on the Mandalorian. Looks like they're making Season 4 into a movie instead and calling it a wrap after that.

https://movieweb.com/the-mandalorian...rumored-movie/


The show that put Disney Plus on the map may be what puts a wrap on Disney Plus. I can't see Disney Plus surviving 2-3 more years.

[Phoenix]

This is just a wild conspiracy theory of mine and I have no evidence to back this up, but part of me thinks Lucas was extorted when it came to selling Star Wars.

I don't know what they had on him, but I always thought it was strange that he donated the $4 billion he received from the sale to some education reform charity. Like huh? That is why you sold your media empire and life's work? You're that much of a philanthropist? I don't buy it. Probably some dummy company set up by Disney so that he could "donate" the money back to them.

In the initial announcement video featuring him and Kathleen Kennedy, he said he just wanted to retire and didn't want to run a corporation anymore. Okay fine, but why do you have to sell everything? Why not just stay on as a silent partner? It's just really, really weird.

Then you take into account how vocal he was in Disney's mishandling of everything, and how he referred to them afterwards as "white slavers". Lots of animosity there for someone who was so gung ho about selling to them.

Interesting theory. One thing about the reasons why he sold off, he received tons of criticism after the prequel trilogy so it may have been a 'fukk it' sale. I always felt 4 billion was a bit of an undersell considering the IP crossed so many media forms( Movies, books, games, toys, theme park, etc etc). Recouping that 4 billion for a competent new rights holder and then some should have been easy money, but as we see Disney has come increasingly incompetent. It seems like they mostly had their shit together before the pandemic. 2019 they had Avengers Endgame and launched Mandalorian. You could probably even say 2020/2021 wasn't too bad with Wanda Vision, Mandalorian season 2 and Spider-man no way home those years. It's really since 2022 where it feels like they've gone totally off the rails.

[Phoenix]

I wouldnt be surprised if there was some sort of extortion or other pressure that forced him to sell star wars, but disney at the time of the sale (2012) was not the disney of today.

It doesnt seem that strange for him to donate the $4 billion, he was already worth like ~$10b before the sale, he had zero need for this money.

The aspect of the sale that was strange to me is the fact that he relinquished total creative control to disney. I guess maybe he trusted their creative choices at the time since they were doing a pretty good job with marvel at that point

IIRC he gave them story treatments for Episode 7/8/9 and Disney basically said 'no thanks'. I believe it was intended to feature Luke rebuilding the Jedi and the Whills. I 'think' there was always intended to a female Jedi that Luke passed the baton to by the end( too lazy to confirm right now).

[Spuddywebby]

Elon should expand his portfolio again.

Stock going below its 5 year low and heading into the 70’s. In the low 70’s it’s probably a buy as activists will come in and force a revamp of the business, selling/spinning off some of the businesses like ESPN, admitting defeat to Netflix on streaming and getting back to focusing on classic Disney content. Or an Apple comes in and makes some type of content deal with them. They need to do something to generate significantly more positive cash flow so they can reinstate the dividend and bring back those investors.

[Off the Court]

Stock going below its 5 year low and heading into the 70’s. In the low 70’s it’s probably a buy as activists will come in and force a revamp of the business, selling/spinning off some of the businesses like ESPN, admitting defeat to Netflix on streaming and getting back to focusing on classic Disney content. Or an Apple comes in and makes some type of content deal with them. They need to do something to generate significantly more positive cash flow so they can reinstate the dividend and bring back those investors.

They need to focus on their entertainment, theme parks, Star Wars, Marvel, movies, etc. It's all their failing side projects like ESPN you mentioned that got them in trouble.

They have 4 Star Wars movies in development and a new trilogy in the works that will be a cash cow regardless of how well it is received. And they also are a lock for Deadpool 3 to be a mega-blockbuster because Hugh Jackman has agreed to play Logan and the movie will be a gory R-Rated Deadpool vs Logan. And that kind of movie will separate itself from the other Marvel movies that many have grown tired of.

[Patrick Chewing]

Someone help me understand Disney's thinking again here. They just raised the price of their Disney+ subscription, and they do this as they are watching more and more people unsubscribe from them since 2022.

Graph: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ubscribers-us/

So why the increase? This is a company with an enormous amount of capital and wealth, so why would they alienate their customers even more by raising rates? Wouldn't you think that if you were bleeding customers, that you would want to do something to bring them back? Hmmm like perhaps lowering the cost of subscription??

[Spuddywebby]

Someone help me understand Disney's thinking again here. They just raised the price of their Disney+ subscription, and they do this as they are watching more and more people unsubscribe from them since 2022.

Graph: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ubscribers-us/

So why the increase? This is a company with an enormous amount of capital and wealth, so why would they alienate their customers even more by raising rates? Wouldn't you think that if you were bleeding customers, that you would want to do something to bring them back? Hmmm like perhaps lowering the cost of subscription??

Two things.

1. They are following Netflix’s “raise” which happened when they stopped the password sharing.

2. Disney + is a money loser, which was expected as it takes time/money to build up a business like that (see Netflix). At this point, they are probably thinking of taking all their medicine at once (raising prices/losing subs) and building up from there by improving/adding to the content and then hopefully having subs come back. Lowering prices now would keep subs and probably add more but they would be money losing subs and the stock price would take another leg down.

In streaming you can’t compete on price. In the beginning it works, but eventually people get tired of stale content. Like how many people do you know have Crackle?

Disney has a large library, this whole Disney+ things has just been badly mismanaged and it doesn’t seem like they understand what their streaming customer wants.

[BurningHammer]

How's Ahsoka ratings?

[Patrick Chewing]

Two things.

1. They are following Netflix’s “raise” which happened when they stopped the password sharing.

2. Disney + is a money loser, which was expected as it takes time/money to build up a business like that (see Netflix). At this point, they are probably thinking of taking all their medicine at once (raising prices/losing subs) and building up from there by improving/adding to the content and then hopefully having subs come back. Lowering prices now would keep subs and probably add more but they would be money losing subs and the stock price would take another leg down.

In streaming you can’t compete on price. In the beginning it works, but eventually people get tired of stale content. Like how many people do you know have Crackle?

Disney has a large library, this whole Disney+ things has just been badly mismanaged and it doesn’t seem like they understand what their streaming customer wants.

Hmmm.

I honestly can't see some of these streaming services staying around long term. If I'm Netflix, I'm making offers for everyone, including Disney+. Netflix has been around the longest. 25 years to be exact. They've only gotten bigger to the point of their own programming and filmmaking now. For all the clout Amazon has, they are still way behind Netflix in terms of content and overall access. Some kind of partnership between Netflix and YouTubeTV would be nice. YouTube TV just went up to $75 I think. If Netflix can take over Paramount Plus, Apple Plus, Disney Plus, all the Pluses and merge with YoutubeTV somehow, that would be a beautiful thing.

I used to work for Comcast, which is quite possibly the worst company in the existence of mankind to work for, and I would also enjoy seeing their demise.

[Patrick Chewing]

Disney’s Worst Close Since October 2014: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/busine...e-october-2014