2023 marked the 100th anniversary of the first full color animated feature-film, Snow White and its creator, the once too big to fail entertainment giant, Disney, is now struggling to find success. In the past year, the company has faced harsh social criticism, a lack of box office earnings and decreased viewership on their streaming service, Disney Plus. The corporation has had a rough start to the decade, and there are yet to be signs of any coming improvement.
In recent years, Disney has faced lashback for many decisions that it has made regarding representation and other social issues in and outside of their films. The company has faced intense criticism for the lack of diversity in their movies. Although Disney has been attempting to fix these problems with their more recent films, to fans, these changes have seemed to be more out of corporate interest than actually caring. Disney has also faced just as much criticism regarding their handling of political and social issues. The corporation angered many fans when they did not make any objections to last year’s controversial Florida Parental Rights in Education Act even when one of their major sources of income, Disney World, is located in Florida. After months without saying anything, Disney finally changed their tune and began to call for a repeal of the law, but they just dug themselves into an even deeper hole. Those who criticized Disney saw their response as too little, while conservatives, such as governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, saw it as a bad decision. Desantis took away Disney’s Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, a special district of Florida that allowed Disney to essentially make their own laws within their theme park since 1967. In the past few years, Disney has consistently been unable to please either side of the political compass.
In 2023, Disney released eight feature films in hopes of receiving more revenue; however,only five were even able to break even. A general rule of thumb in Hollywood is that if a movie makes 2.5 times its budget, it is successful. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 was the only Disney movie that was able to pass that threshold this year. Not a single movie was able to gross $1 billion, a far cry from just four years ago in 2019, where seven movies made $1 billion or more. Some minor excuses can be made for Disney, most notably the Screen Actors Guild of America Strike, which prevented the movies’ stars from promoting the films that they had worked on, but this was happening to the entirety of the film industry.
Disney fared just as badly with critics as they did with the box office this year. On Rotten Tomatoes, only two movies achieved above a 70 on a 100 point scale, while another three received a rotten rating. One of the major factors many fans have theorized about these recent troubles is Disney developing an addiction to mediocrity. A few years ago, it seemed like all of Disney, especially the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was too big to fail. Many thought that no matter what was released, Disney would be raking in billions of dollars. It seems as though Disney took this idea to heart and convinced themselves that the best move to make in this position was to release a ton of low quality, cheaply made movies because they expected to make billions no matter what they put out. This strategy actually did work for a few years, but now many are feeling burnout from Disney’s consistently weak output. For any other studio, these dips in numbers would be cause for a major change, but it only seems to be making Disney double down on their failing business plan.
Another factor that has been leeching off of Disney’s movie sale is their streaming service, Disney Plus. Released during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it originally seemed like a great idea, but since then, Disney has mishandled their originally promising business venture. Many moviegoers have stopped buying tickets to new Disney movies because they know that if they wait just a little while, that movie will be put onto Disney Plus, a much cheaper way to watch it. The streaming service has also been a large contributor to the previously mentioned Disney burnout that much of society has been feeling in recent years. Another issue that Disney has had with Disney Plus is their tv shows. It has seemed as though Disney has been greenlighting any project as long as it is connected to a well established Intellectual Property. This has made for even further burnout, especially to Disney’s once cornerstone IP, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The series has become too big for most fans. Before Disney Plus, fans would only be expected to watch three of four movies a year. Now, they are expected to watch up to five tv shows on top of the movies. These tv shows have already made Marvel’s phase four longer than the entire Infinity Saga. Subscriptions are beginning to stagnate and Disney Plus is no longer a viable future for Disney.
After the 2010s, possibly Disney’s best decade financially, nobody could have possibly expected this fall from grace. This year, the multimedia company put out failure after failure with no sign of improvement. Most other film studios have adapted to the changing world of cinema, Disney has not and shows no interest in doing so. Disney needs to make a big change soon or the studio risks becoming an irrelevant relic of the past.
