Disney bets on sequels and password crackdown for profit growth ( www.bbc.com )

Disney is banking on a password crackdown and spate of sequels as it pushes to make its streaming business profitable. 

The company, which is under pressure as audiences move away from traditional pay-TV and cinema, said it was on track to meet its goals after new subscribers and price rises helped to narrow losses in its streaming business.

bblkargonaut ,

Netflix has been such a staple for so long it took a full Arr suite to get my wife to be ok that I cancelled it. When it came to Disney plus, she didn't care because she's not into Star wars and she hulk soured her on marvel. My 5 year old niece and nephew only ask to watch Netflix when they come over. As someone who has witnessed them kill so many franchises I love, I think Disney cracking down on password sharing is a great idea.

Omegamanthethird ,
@Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world avatar

That's wild. Netflix has been kinda shit for so long, when they upped their prices we quit no problem. I'll probably sub for a month when Sandman or Stranger Things comes back.

On the other hand, we have Disney running most of the time. When it's not playing Bluey and Spidey and His Amazing Friends, it's playing one of their movies. And when the kids go to sleep I'm watching X-Men '97.

Also, I thought She-Hulk was fantastic. But it's kind of crazy to me that THAT was what soured the MCU. Thor Love and Thunder and Quantumania soured it for me (and on the TV side, Echo has Secret Invasion and Echo were not good). I didn't even see The Marvels, which turned out to be fine.

bblkargonaut ,

We actually both enjoyed most of she hulk, it was the ending going off the rails that was too much for my wife. She had no idea who Kevin was and all the other stuff didn't really pay off. I've been sour on the MCU since falcon and the Winter soldier cringe fest, but I keep watching the movies because I would find someone enjoyment to balance out the frustration of missed opportunities to adapt old comics storylines.

For my case we have been family sharing subscriptions and Netflix was always our responsibility even though I'm well versed in the skill set needed to sail the seas, and for years it worked out great. But the family sharing nonsense has finally made it inconvenient enough to go back to the sea. Cocomelon and love is blind show on Netflix a must have for the family.

Omegamanthethird ,
@Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world avatar

Dang, Falcon and the Winter Soldier was my favorite of the shows and John Walker is my favorite new character in awhile.

And yeah, the She-Hulk ending is legit something that would have happened in her own solo book. But I can see it not landing with people not familiar with her. Kind of like Fantastic Four meeting Jack Kirby would be comic accurate, but would probably be too weird for a movie.

I think Cocomelon has a free app, at least it does on our Roku.

bblkargonaut ,

The US agent plot line was the best part of the show, and his story arc made sense. The I feel like the flag smasher plot line kinda went off the rails, and they wanted to make them sympathetic characters but lost the plot in the process. Zemo on the airplane was both entertaining and a little cringe. But the police officer stepping between falcon and the Winter soldier was so cringe I had to pause for a moment, like how does someone in America after endgame not recognize one of two avengers standing in front of him, when one has a full metallic arm. I think I would have liked it better if I wasn't hoping for a 24 or NCIS with superheroes.

Omegamanthethird ,
@Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world avatar

IMO, the Flag Smashers were just a plot device for the rest of the show to happen around. They were definitely the worst part, but I also didn't care about them.

I loved Zemo though. Every second. I don't remember the police officer at all.

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

I dare them to cut me off. Every dollar not spent on streaming will go to selfhosting and piracy.

newthrowaway20 ,

You should spend that dollar on self-hosting and piracy anyways, it's a better value.

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

I know this. Decisionmaking among extended family is rarely so simple however.

newthrowaway20 ,

God, ain't that the truth. Getting my mom to give up Netflix was like pulling teeth. When people are used to something, they never want to give it up. I still haven't gotten her to drop cable, but I am essentially her DVR now, for all intents and purposes.

It's been a fun evolution though. My parents and extended family all use it now, and my mom keeps asking me why I don't make money from this stuff. Had to explain to her that selling pirated material is a 'dick move' plus I didn't wanna put myself out there like that.

IWantToFuckSpez ,

or for the people who don't want to selfhost and like the convenience of a streaming app Kodi + Pov addon + Trakt +Alldebrid subscription

IchNichtenLichten ,
@IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world avatar

Not only that, it's a better product.

I pay for Fubo because I can't find a way to watch my team's games any other way. If I record something like The Daily Show I have to use their skanky interface to scrub through ad breaks. If I add the show to my Sonarr I get it shortly after it airs with the ads removed already.

slurpinderpin ,

What sport? I might be able to help point you in the right direction

IchNichtenLichten ,
@IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks!

Football/soccer, specifically EPL, cup and Champion's League games. It's the only thing the *arr apps don't seem to be able to get.

slurpinderpin ,

Ah sorry brotha, no help from me on that. I don’t watch much football/soccer, and if I do I just use sportsurge

IchNichtenLichten ,
@IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world avatar

No worries, thanks anyway!

FenrirIII ,
@FenrirIII@lemmy.world avatar

It's such a daunting thing. I used to Plex everything, but it became too much. There were ISP letters too. Does someone have a dummy's guide?

Laser ,
  1. Don't torrent without a paid VPN
  2. Done
homesweethomeMrL ,

Gentlemen . . . to evil!

clink

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

ice statue starts shaking and erupts

"Piratebay!"

shooting ensues

Son_of_dad ,

People shit on Disney for only doing sequels, yet when they release original properties like they have the last 2 years, people ignore them and don't watch them. No wonder they go to sequels, viewers clearly don't want to gamble on new stuff. And all the people bitching about Disney only doing sequels, don't watch Disney movies anyways

Larry ,

What original properties? Not a rhetorical question, I'm curious

No_Change_Just_Money ,

I assume they mean "Wish", also known as "how many Disney references do I need to make for them to count as a movie"

MeekerThanBeaker ,

I wouldn't have minded the references if the movie was good. It wasn't and the songs were subpar.

In the past ten years, I thought Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, and Encanto were good. Raya, Strange World, and Wish were not for me... and those were three of the last four Disney animated original movies.

For Pixar, they've been hit or miss for me too. I liked Inside Out, Coco, Soul, Luca, and Elemental. Didn't care for The Good Dinosaur, Onward, Turning Red, or Lightyear.

But sequels can be hit or miss too.

One of the best animated movies I've seen in recent years (apart from Spider-Man) is The Mitchells vs. the Machines. It's completely hyper, but original and funny.

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

The ones you didn't like my kids loved, so maybe you're just not the target audience anymore?

MeekerThanBeaker ,

I definitely am not the target audience for Turning Red. I admit that. And kids probably didn't like Soul as much as adults. But if Disney/Pixar wonders why they aren't getting the numbers they used to, they need to target the four quadrant audience, but more importantly have better writing overall.

Kids like a lot of things... sometimes things that are truly awful. I used to be a kid who liked awful stuff growing up too. You can have a monkey character who says "poop" every other word and kids would find that hilarious. Doesn't make it good. I'm not the target audience for Bluey, but I can tell it's better than most things out there.

Also, it's definitely subjective. I've watched a lot of movies and television so I can see more unoriginality than others. I used to like the Knock Knock joke about the banana and orange... and the chicken crossing the road. But now, what else is new? How many stories about a character turning into an animal to learn a lesson do we need?

Doof ,

There is plenty of things Ioved as a kid that I can look at objectively look at now and say if it was good or not. I’m not sure if a kids enjoyment says much about quality; I used to think Gex was better than Mario.

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

I think kids enjoyment of a kids movie says quite a bit. Disney adults are weird.

Doof ,

Where did I speak on Disney? Just had nothing original to say?

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

Your first comment on this thread, after I remarked that the Disney movies that OP didn't like are the Disney movies my kids liked, and you responded that kids are not a good judge of quality.

You were speaking on Disney, apparently not knowing what you're speaking about.

Doof ,

No, I’m speaking on kids not being the best case for taste, they/you used the Disney example. I did not. That’s how discussions work, you dork. I mean you seem to be able to follow along until you add your own narrative, so I think you can figure it out.

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

Sir, this is a thread about Disney on a post about Disney

Doof ,

Fucking brain rot, you think you’ve made a point but you only made yourself look more foolish. I know what the fuck my own point is. You say my kids like these movies, I say regardless of how you feel about it ‘kids don’t have the best taste’. That’s it. That’s the point. I dunno why people can‘t seem to understand that sometimes people are talking about a certain part of their comments. It’s either being purposefully obtuse or straight up dumb. You can decide.

NoSpiritAnimal ,
@NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world avatar

A group of people, standing on a corner on a sunny day. They are having a pleasant conversation about Disney movies.

Approaching quickly you blurt out "Kids have bad taste!"

"Huh?" The group replies. "I think they're supposed to be for kids."

"Fucking Brain Rot" you reply, shaking your head at their obtuse attempts at communication.

Doof , (edited )

My guy this is a forum not a public street where two people are having a discussion, don’t be daft. Not only that the guy you respond to also responded with pointing out the same fallacy, so how are you going to explain that away?

Son_of_dad ,

So again, they make an original and you shit on that too. Wtf?

Son_of_dad ,

Wish, soul, onward, elemental, Luca, reya, strange world, Ron's gone wrong. I would add Encanto and turning red but those actually became popular, at least Encanto did

MrVilliam ,

I get what you mean, but I really feel like the quality of original stuff is not up to the standard that they were putting out 30 years ago. I just rewatched Lion King the other day and I couldn't believe how well it holds up. Every performance ranges from great to fantastic, every song is really good, the score is fucking phenomenal, the animation truly pushed the boundaries for the time, and the story and dialogue are straight up Shakespeare. Encanto and Onward are good, but they're not Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast good.

At the end of the day, Disney is not in the business of making art this century; they're in the money making business. They make a product, not art. It's more profitable to make something that's just good enough to get people's money, and that's all they actually care about. Remember that with every culture war stance they take. They don't actually give a shit about LGBTQ rights or representation, they just know that they can get extra attention and sales from barely doing anything, and it's not far enough to alienate the Chinese market. Win-win. When they fight that dorky Florida meatball, understand that they're not on your side; they're on their side. If they could have it their way, they would own all media and distribution, and you'd never see another movie or TV show again without first forking over everything they can get out of you.

zaph ,
@zaph@sh.itjust.works avatar

and the story and dialogue are straight up Shakespeare

Well it is a cartoon animal version of Hamlet.

mctoasterson ,

Excellent points. Disney couldn't care less about the groups it claims to support. Their actions are more in line with co-opting identity groups to sell them back to you as a commodity. This fact really ossified for me when visiting Epcot a while back. I realized that many of their recent (and planned future) films are literally designed around ethnicities or cultures so they can have tie-in IP in the world showcase at Epcot, driving more merch and premium ride sales.

There is always an ulterior motive.

PseudorandomNoise ,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

The password crackdown will work, sadly. However is it going to be enough to make up for the fact that Disney's got nothing right now except shitting out sequels?

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I don't know that it will work. How many additional people sign up when these password sharing crackdowns happen? I doubt it's enough to make their number crunchers happy.

PseudorandomNoise ,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

How many additional people sign up when these password sharing crackdowns happen?

Several million

Which every company saw, and that's why they're all gonna do this too.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Sure, but note the second part of my post.

PseudorandomNoise ,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

The second part of your post is too vague and subjective to comment on. Are accountants not supposed to be happy with an additional $59 million in subscription revenue? That's all in a 3-month period.

And even if not, note the rest of the article. They're not solely cracking down on password sharing, the service is getting more expensive too. They all are. Disney is not charting new territory with any of this.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I'm not sure what's too vague about it. If the decision isn't going to generate them enough revenue for it to make enough of a difference to the people who care about the profits, then they may find out that it wasn't worth doing in the long-term. Considering Disney's profits, that sounds like a drop in the bucket.

PseudorandomNoise ,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

It's a win-win situation for the streaming companies no matter what. The people who weren't paying will either stop watching entirely (no longer costing Disney anything) or they pay up and become an additional subscriber. It doesn't matter if it's a small increase in profits or not, it's still an increase so it's happening.

You can scroll back through older social media posts from when Netflix announced this. How many folks said they were done? How much did that cost Netflix in the end? Literally nothing!

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

PR always has a cost.

PseudorandomNoise ,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

That remains to be seen here. Netflix was all "love is sharing your password" and now they're "fuck you pay up" and they're being rewarded with millions of subs.

I get where you're coming from but so far there's no data to back up what you're saying.

conditional_soup ,

The thing is that this isn't an endpoint. We've got corporations that comfortably clear multiple billions in profit each quarter and the investors get sad when that number doesn't keep going up because that was last quarter. It's like the world's fattest men insist that they're starving to death. Investors will be satisfied with this for a quarter, and then they'll have to turn to some other scheme to try and inflate profits further. I get that this is nominally how capitalism is supposed to work, but I think that putting the investor as the first, last, and only consideration has caused a proliferation of slash-and-burn style short-termism. It's fake growth because it's not actually sustainable, everyone knows it, but you just try and keep it up until the next short term scheme can keep your stonks inflated.

Imo, the market has already shown that it won't bear infinite growth in streaming services (what with every network trying to start their own proprietary netflix-priced service), and they're going to start running into that ceiling again as they all start to raise prices. The consumer just doesn't have unlimited money, especially after the Fed pooped its pants when workers got their first real wage growth in 40 years and decided that it was a nightmare inflation scenario.

PugJesus ,
@PugJesus@kbin.social avatar

I get that this is nominally how capitalism is supposed to work, but I think that putting the investor as the first, last, and only consideration has caused a proliferation of slash-and-burn style short-termism. It’s fake growth because it’s not actually sustainable, everyone knows it, but you just try and keep it up until the next short term scheme can keep your stonks inflated.

It's very true. When the owner-class still dominated decision-making, there was a level of rationality in firm behavior - as there were owners who felt that the firm was their property, they were motivated to keep it healthy. Shear the sheep. From the viewpoint of the owner, this is rational - there is no sense in destroying what makes you money in the long term.

But investors have no such urge, and as the investor-class has come to dominate decision-making and not just capital allocation, they've begun slaughtering the sheep to gorge themselves and move onto the next. This, from their viewpoint, is perfectly rational decision-making - they are maximizing their gain from each investment, wringing it dry, and then leaving what's left (preferably before the stock crashes) to find a new, healthy host. I mean, investment. They have no incentive to maintain the health of the firm, not even in an exploitative sense. What is it that Marx calls them? Rentier capitalists?

It's not sustainable. Not even by capitalism's admittedly low standards.

gac11 ,

I know I'm just an anecdote but Netflix had some ridiculous deal where I paid $75 for a year of Starz and I got Netflix for free. So they got to pretend like they didn't lose me when in reality I was imminently going to quit due to the password crackdown.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

So much of modern business is just hoodwinking investors into thinking infinite growth is possible.

Z3k3 ,

The same was said about Netflix. That didn't appear to manifest

CosmicTurtle0 ,

There is a lot of selection bias here on lemmy. The majority of us are technical enough to either know where to find free streaming sites or torrent.

The large majority of customers aren't.

It's why these crackdowns work. They've done the math. They know they'll make more money then they'll lose.

Laser ,

It's also that they basically raised a generation of users who never had to pirate. Truth is 20 years ago there was literally no alternative to pirating. So you either figured it out or you'd have to drive to the store.

Nowadays, most consumers have gotten complacent, which is understandable given how good the legal alternatives were at one point.

However, while the initial steps might be a bit more difficult nowadays (I strongly advise against torrenting without a paid VPN), getting to a convenient setup is much easier nowadays. The *arrs, jellyfin, Kodi, docker, Android devices connected to a big screen etc. enable anyone willing to spend the time to create a setup that can rival commercial offerings.

Just to emphasize, I don't condone piracy here, but the direction the industry is going is unsurprisingly off-putting.

CosmicTurtle0 ,

Even with the arrs, jellyfin, et al, it's still not a turn-key solution. Fmovies and the like are more "user friendly" as they don't require any special software outside of knowing the URL.

Unfortunately, sharing those urls are often against website rules and you sort of have to learn them as you explore piracy in general.

Laser ,

Even with the arrs, jellyfin, et al, it's still not a turn-key solution.

Not quite, all I wanted to express is that spending the time, you can get an experience close to the commercial offerings. And I guess with docker based setups it's rather easy. Never used it though.

Personally I've never been a fan of piracy streaming sites, they always seemed so sketchy.

Corkyskog ,

Disney has Hulu, and that's enough for some people.

Son_of_dad ,

Onward, elemental, wish, soul, reya... Some of the original properties that Disney has released in the last 5 years and nobody went to see. The only originals that have done well were Encanto and turning red.

People like to shit on Disney's lack of originals, but nobody goes to watch them when they release them. People only want sequels so that's what they get. In truth, people like you who complain about Disney's lack of original films don't actually watch Disney films

dvlsg ,
@dvlsg@lemmy.world avatar

How many of those were actually good, though?

Genuinely asking, I only saw 3 out of the 5 and don't remember being blown away by any of them. I'm not sure I even remember the plot of some.

But I can still immediately recall songs from both Encanto and Moana and I haven't seen either of those in years.

ShepherdPie , (edited )

This guy's full of it claiming that the only complainers are people who don't watch the movies. I've seen all these movies as I have a kid and a lot of them are "meh". Frozen was an original property and it blew up big. Same with Moana, Inside Out, Encanto, Big Hero 6, Wreck it Ralph, Brave, etc.

Furthermore they're ignoring the rest of the Disney catalog and rehashed sequels outside of animated films "of the last 5 years." What about all the terrible live-action remakes? What about all the Star Wars and Marvel sequels? Those have all done terrible as well.

Omegamanthethird ,
@Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world avatar

I would personally say all of the movies mentioned range from good to amazing. I think all of them would be worth seeing in theaters (not that they're all must-see movies though).

tegs_terry ,

Now the real challenge is getting the cartoon titles under a single word

PseudorandomNoise ,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

2 of those came out in 2020 and Raya was still during COVID, so it's really not fair to lump those in. I was mostly talking about the movies they released just last year, their big 100th year. Indy 5, Wish, The Marvels, Ant-Man 3. None of them did as well as Disney needed.

Meanwhile movies about long-established toys like Mario and Barbie each made a billion+, and people were willing to go see a 3-hour docu-drama about a scientist. So we know it's not the "people don't go to the theaters anymore" excuse. People just aren't getting dressed to watch crap and that's what Disney's been known for lately.

john89 ,

So looking forward to all the useful idiots shilling this crap without even realizing how they're being manipulated into doing it.

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