Hollywood to implode...according to Spielberg

[DarthSkywalker]

Not with The Lone Ranger. POTC3 I can see since you have the big pirate battles and ships to make and such a huge cast but The Lone Ranger, even more than any of the POTC movies, needed to be cut down ages before. So much was unnecessary and you could have saved money instead of wasting it on those aspects.

I loved every moment, so can't agree. Also, one of the reasons The Lone Ranger was so expensive was Disney's own delay in the production. That results in the need to renew contracts and such. That isn't cheap, not cheap at all.

 

[Teelie]

Tangled, Wreck-it-Ralph, and soon Frozen. Pirates still makes them great money. Not good, but great money.

How many of those were in the $200+ million ballpark again? While these "smaller" movies are indeed a success, none of them are capable of off setting the losses made by John Carter or The Lone Ranger.

As to originality: Tangled is merely a renaming of Rapunzel, Wreck-it-Ralph is an exception and Frozen doesn't come out until November so you're jumping the gun on if it will be a success. Pirates is suffering diminishing returns and is one of their few bright-spot franchises. And hell of a lot of money to make besides. Plus, that's just a pirate movie with Johnny Depp so not entirely original.

My point was that the larger, expensive tentpole movies Disney have done are a majority of flops and a lot of their original stuff isn't as successful as it could be either. The smaller movies that don't take a quarter of a billion dollars to make are the trouble, not stuff that's "merely" in the $100 million range.

 

[Ultimatehero]

How many of those were in the $200+ million ballpark again? While these "smaller" movies are indeed a success, none of them are capable of off setting the losses made by John Carter or The Lone Ranger.

Which every single studio has. Only, Disney owns the more successful properties and companies so they are better equipped to battle this than any other studio. Look at Universal and Battleship for example -- what exactly do they have to easily bounce back from that? Not a lot. Warners now is looking to DC and LOTR, but with LOTR going to be gone soon - you are really only looking at two bulletproof vests now and only one later. Fox has X-Men now, and hopefully Fantastic Four, but nothing else is really a guarantee HUGE money drawer for them either.

Yes, you are looking at a flop with Lone Ranger this year. HOWEVER you are also looking at Iron Man 3 and Monsters University to easily battle this. No other studio has the power to handle a flop and bounce back from it as easily as Disney can.

Also you are only talking about Disney Pictures, without bringing Disney STUDIOS (financially the MOST important factor) into the equation at all.

They have what no other studio really has -- the freedom and ability to take risks because a flop just bounces off of it, flops don't bounce off so easily of other studios because they don't have as much ammunition to protect them against it.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

How many of those were in the $200+ million ballpark again? While these "smaller" movies are indeed a success, none of them are capable of off setting the losses made by John Carter or The Lone Ranger.

As to originality: Tangled is merely a renaming of Rapunzel, Wreck-it-Ralph is an exception and Frozen doesn't come out until November so you're jumping the gun. Pirates is suffering diminishing returns and is one of their few bright-spot franchises. And hell of a lot of money to make besides.

My point was that the larger, expensive tentpole movies Disney have done are a majority of flops. The smaller movies that don't take a quarter of a billion dollars to make are the trouble, not stuff that's "merely" in the $100 million range.

Pirates 2, 3 and 4 combined cost over $700mil. Tangled cost $260mil. Those three Pirates movies also grossed over 3 billion dollars. Do you just say stuff without looking up the numbers? Pirates offset the Lone Ranger and John Carter by itself, with plenty of more money to make. And how is Pirates diminishing returns? The last one was the second highest grossing one in the franchise even while most didn't even like it.

You do realize that Disney has these things called theme parks right? That they are a much bigger company then their movie division right? The genius of Disney is that they make properties that sell merchandise like hot cakes to the little ones. The numbers movies like Toy Story and Cars have made in terms of merch is legendary. Just look at their parks.

And Tangled was a great, original film. It is done in the style that Disney has always done. Take an existing fairy tale, and tell it in a modern way, for kids and adults a like.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Which every single studio has. Only, Disney owns the more successful properties and companies so they are better equipped to battle this than any other studio. Look at Universal and Battleship for example -- what exactly do they have to easily bounce back from that? Not a lot. Warners now is looking to DC and LOTR, but with LOTR going to be gone soon - you are really only looking at two bulletproof vests now and only one later.

Yes, you are looking at a flop with Lone Ranger this year. HOWEVER you are also looking at Iron Man 3 and Monsters University to easily battle this. No other studio has the power to handle a flop and bounce back from it as easily as Disney can.

Also you are only talking about Disney Pictures, without bringing Disney STUDIOS (financially the MOST important factor) into the equation at all.

They still have Thor: the Dark World and Frozen coming out this year. Hell they still have Planes, which is a spin off of Cars, which is addictive to little kids.

This isn't even an argument.

 

[Ultimatehero]

They still have Thor: the Dark World and Frozen coming out this year. Hell they still have Planes, which is a spin off of Cars, which is addictive to little kids.

This isn't even an argument.

I think it's just a confusion among them. They're looking at things only in terms of either only looking at Disney Pictures and completely ignoring Disney Studios which is the most important factor financially. Or not really grasping how money flows in every studio and how production companies operate, which could be a hard thing to grasp; hell I didn't even grasp that during film school - it took needing to be in an actual company to understand how big production companies are and how integral they are.

 

[Rocketman]

How many of those were in the $200+ million ballpark again? While these "smaller" movies are indeed a success, none of them are capable of off setting the losses made by John Carter or The Lone Ranger.

As to originality: Tangled is merely a renaming of Rapunzel, Wreck-it-Ralph is an exception and Frozen doesn't come out until November so you're jumping the gun on if it will be a success. Pirates is suffering diminishing returns and is one of their few bright-spot franchises. And hell of a lot of money to make besides. Plus, that's just a pirate movie with Johnny Depp so not entirely original.

My point was that the larger, expensive tentpole movies Disney have done are a majority of flops and a lot of their original stuff isn't as successful as it could be either. The smaller movies that don't take a quarter of a billion dollars to make are the trouble, not stuff that's "merely" in the $100 million range.

Bingo.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

I think it's just a confusion among them. They're looking at things only in terms of either only looking at Disney Pictures and completely ignoring Disney Studios which is the most important factor financially. Or not really grasping how money flows in every studio and how production companies operate, which could be a hard thing to grasp; hell I didn't even grasp that during film school - it took needing to be in an actual company to understand how big production companies are and how integral they are.

Nah, I am thinking it is just straight up hate at this point. Once they started questioning the quality and originality of the films, I think their intentions became a bit more... apparent.

 

[Ultimatehero]

Nah, I am thinking it is just straight up hate at this point. Once they started questioning the quality and originality of the films, I think their intentions became a bit more... apparent.

Looking to rocketman's new post, you're definitely right.

Once again Rocketman has confused Disney Pictures with Disney Studios.

Disney Pictures is an entity just like Legacy, De Line Pictures, just like Dreamworks Animation and everything else.

Disney Studios is an entity just like Universal, Fox, and Warner - but it has more successful production companies under it. This is why Disney Studios is key and only looking at Disney Pictures is like only saying Warners is all about De Line Pictures. It's disregarding completely how studios work and choosing to remain ignorant about how money works and flows in Hollywood from top to bottom.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Bingo.

Bingo what? Do you even know what you are writing? How in the world do you people think they afforded Lucasfilms and Marvel Studios? Magic?

You do realize Walt Disney Studios has six, six billion dollar films in the last four years, right? The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Dead Man's Chest, On Stranger Tides, Toy Story 3, and Alice in Wonderland. Each and everyone, a cash cow in terms of merchandise.

By the end of 2015, they will have at least 2 more, probably 3. In 2015 alone they are releasing Avengers 2, Star Wars VII, Finding Dory, and Pirates 5.

They make it rain in Hollywood.

 

[Ultimatehero]

Also as much as I hate that they're releasing Planes home video into theaters like it was always meant for theaters - financially it will rake in money because kids love Cars and it will give them new merchandising which is where Cars made all of its money and quickly became the most successful merchandising property (before the Avengers came out, around Cars 2 trades stated this). So even Planes which some are ridiculing on here is looking at a LOT of money. One can not agree with how Planes was handled, but one can not deny the money Planes is going to bring in.

 

[Rocketman]

Why is everyone getting all riled up? Calm down. Monopolies are never good things. Quality or not. It won't end well. Disney may be making the majority of all money in the world by 2015, but you people are writing about it in a positive light, as if to say, "Look how awesome my company is!" Your intentions are more apparent. How awesome is it going to be in 2020? 2025? 2030? Yes, it's awesome... but for how long?

Here are my intentions. I want the following things in this list:

1. High quality movies.

Disney rarely, if ever, provides that for me. That's all I care about. I don't care how much money they're making. If they're going to continue raking in billions and buying more companies and creating more and more of a monopoly, they'll be even further from meeting my list of criteria above.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Just so we are clear. This is what Walt Disney Studios plans to deliver over the next 30 months, including the Marvel films, avoiding documentaries.

Planes
Thor: The Dark World
Frozen
Saving Mr. Banks
Muppets Most Wanted
Captain America: The Winter Solider
The Good Dinosaur
Maleficent
Guardians of the Galaxy
Planes: Fire and Rescue
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Big Hero 6
Tomorrowland (Brad Bird says hi)
Into the Woods
Million Dollar Arm
Avengers 2
Cinderella
Inside Out
Star Wars Episdoe VII
Pirates of the Caribbean 5
Finding Dory
Ant-Man

Call it a hunch, but I think they are going to be able to cover expenses.

 

[Ultimatehero]

Why is everyone getting all riled up? Calm down. Monopolies are never good things. Quality or not. It won't end well. Disney may be making the majority of all money in the world by 2015, but you people are writing about it in a positive light, as if to say, "Look how awesome my company is!" Your intentions are more apparent. How awesome is it going to be in 2020? 2025? 2030? Yes, it's awesome... but for how long?

Here are my intentions. I want the following things in this list:

1. High quality movies.

Disney rarely, if ever, provides that for me. That's all I care about. I don't care how much money they're making. If they're going to continue raking in billions and buying more companies and creating more and more of a monopoly, they'll be even further from meeting my list of criteria above.

Maybe for you but for the majority of people?

PIXAR keeps on winning academy awards, beloved by the audience and critics alike.

MARVEL has hit a home-run with attaching Joss Whedon to its franchise, that critically was one of the HIGHEST rated films of last year (like top five most likely - last I checked it was 98%).

STAR WARS has JJ Abram's attached who critics absolutely love and a lot of fans loved the Star Trek films from.

So critically? They are on the same level as any other studio and for their big franchises continue to go after the top of the pile continuing to pull in fantastic scores from critics, box office successes, and academy award winners. I'd say that's a HUGE plus in terms of maintaining quality.

As for it being a monopoly - Disney has never let me down because they always go after the top people that they can and in the future this will only increase as they become more and more powerful. As a writer, yeah it has me scared but only because I am attached to Universal so now over the years I have to aim at being more on Disney's radar screens so it switches up my game plan but nothing else and I don't see that as a negative in the long-run since I trust them.

As per what this says about R and dark films to come? If you look at the films Disney makes - not Disney Pictures, but Disney you will see that they have made and continue to make plenty of Rated R films under their other film branches.

As to how it can have so much under it... well, a larger board would just be established. And that shouldn't be no difficulty given that Disney is already an empire right now. They know how to have multiple branches so putting more chains of command into their film studio shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Rocketman]

Just so we are clear. This is what Walt Disney Studios plans to deliver over the next 30 months, including the Marvel films, avoiding documentaries.

Planes
Thor: The Dark World
Frozen
Saving Mr. Banks
Muppets Most Wanted
Captain America: The Winter Solider
The Good Dinosaur
Maleficent
Guardians of the Galaxy
Planes: Fire and Rescue
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Big Hero 6
Tomorrowland (Brad Bird says hi)
Into the Woods
Million Dollar Arm
Avengers 2
Cinderella
Inside Out
Star Wars Episdoe VII
Pirates of the Caribbean 5
Finding Dory
Ant-Man

Call it a hunch, but I think they are going to be able to cover expenses.

And three of those look pretty good. See my point?

 

[Rocketman]

Maybe for you but for the majority of people?

PIXAR keeps on winning academy awards, beloved by the audience and critics alike.

MARVEL has hit a home-run with attaching Joss Whedon to its franchise, that critically was one of the HIGHEST rated films of last year (like top five most likely - last I checked it was 98%).

STAR WARS has JJ Abram's attached who critics absolutely love and a lot of fans loved the Star Trek films from.

So critically? They are on the same level as any other studio and for their big franchises continue to go after the top of the pile continuing to pull in fantastic scores from critics, box office successes, and academy award winners. I'd say that's a HUGE plus in terms of maintaining quality.

As for it being a monopoly - Disney has never let me down because they always go after the top people that they can and in the future this will only increase as they become more and more powerful. As a writer, yeah it has me scared but only because I am attached to Universal so now over the years I have to aim at being more on Disney's radar screens so it switches up my game plan but nothing else and I don't see that as a long-run negative.

As to how it can have so much under it... well, a larger board would just be established. And that shouldn't be no difficulty given that Disney is already an empire right now. They know how to have multiple branches so putting more chains of command into their film studio shouldn't be a problem.

Eh, to each his own. I just have high demands for movies, and they're not met 95% of the time (from all studios, not just Disney).

I respect your points.

What have you written / worked on? Do you have an IMDB page?

 

[Ultimatehero]

And three of those look pretty good. See my point?

Yes, subjectively, you don't like Disney films whereas the majority of critics and audience members do. Pixar brings in academy awards and is the only studio to continue do so one-right-after-another, Avengers was critically one of the top ten (if not five) films of last summer, and JJ Abram's continues to impress critics with Star Trek, etc.

What have you written / worked on? Do you have an IMDB page?

I will disclose that in the future, some on here know, others don't. Up to this point everything is within circulation with somebody at the top of Universal, that's all I can say at this point.

 

[Rocketman]

Yes, subjectively, you don't like Disney films whereas the majority of critics and audience members do. Pixar brings in academy awards and is the only studio to continue do so one-right-after-another, Avengers was critically one of the top ten (if not five) films of last summer, and JJ Abram's continues to impress critics with Star Trek, etc.

OKAY.

Read my previous post.

Damn.

 

[Ultimatehero]

By the time I finished posting it, that post was already there. I'd say 30 second difference.

 

[Teelie]

Wow... so I point out that of all the high profile flops in recent years, many are Disney's directly (not someone they bought like Marvel or Pixar) so I must be hating on Disney? Or are you just going to twist some more words to fit your white knighting of Disney and try to make yourself look impressive?

They spent billions buying Star Wars and are looking to turn it into their next cash cow with sequel after sequel to justify it. Hell, so would I if it was me but their way is so blatant and callous it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Note that's not the same as hate.

The Pirates movies are uneven in quality. The first did extremely well, the second two less so, the fourth did better but suffered story-wise and critically. The fifth movie isn't out yet to know if there will be a return to form from the first movie or if this was a fluke.

Now it's plainly obvious you're just looking for an excuse to put words in other people's mouths and defend Disney despite the fact it's made some big missteps in it's movie production instead of acknowledging what I said: most of their success is from acquisitions. They are making big gambles on these projects and outside of Marvel and Pixar they have been stumbling.

But that's just hate, right?

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Why is everyone getting all riled up? Calm down. Monopolies are never good things. Quality or not. It won't end well. Disney may be making the majority of all money in the world by 2015, but you people are writing about it in a positive light, as if to say, "Look how awesome my company is!" Your intentions are more apparent. How awesome is it going to be in 2020? 2025? 2030? Yes, it's awesome... but for how long?

Here are my intentions. I want the following things in this list:

1. High quality movies.

Disney rarely, if ever, provides that for me. That's all I care about. I don't care how much money they're making. If they're going to continue raking in billions and buying more companies and creating more and more of a monopoly, they'll be even further from meeting my list of criteria above.

I think the Disney monopoly is fine because they have been bringing me movies I have loved since the 1930s. You may not like them, but I adore their films, their theme parks and their Monday Night Football.

And three of those look pretty good. See my point?

Maybe to you. To me, I see at least a dozen that get my film fan brain excited.

All the Marvel films look strong to me, my only question mark is Guardians. Big Hero 6 is going to be the first animated Marvel film done by Disney. Ant-Man is being done by Edgar Wright. Edgar Wright is making an Ant-Man movie.

Add in Frozen, The Muppets sequel, three Pixar films (two originals), an adaption of Alexander and his horrible day, Brad Birds top secret Tomorrowland, JJ Abrams doing Star Wars VII, and an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's classic Into the Woods.

I am very, very excited.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Wow... so I point out that of all the high profile flops in recent years, many are Disney's directly (not someone they bought like Marvel or Pixar) so I must be hating on Disney? Or are you just going to twist some more words to fit your white knighting of Disney and try to make yourself look impressive?

They spent billions buying Star Wars and are looking to turn it into their next cash cow with sequel after sequel to justify it. Hell, so would I if it was me but their way is so blatant and callous it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Note that's not the same as hate.

The Pirates movies are uneven in quality. The first did extremely well, the second two less so, the fourth did better but suffered story-wise and critically. The fifth movie isn't out yet to know if there will be a return to form from the first movie or if this was a fluke.

Now it's plainly obvious you're just looking for an excuse to put words in other people's mouths and defend Disney despite the fact it's made some big missteps in it's movie production instead of acknowledging what I said: most of their success is from acquisitions. They are making big gambles on these projects and outside of Marvel and Pixar they have been stumbling.

But that's just hate, right?

No, it makes no sense.

You keep complaining that a film studio acquires talent and film rights. Of course they do. That is what every studio does. The big difference with Disney is they do it better then everyone else. So what does it matter?

And yes, you talk flops, like they can't recover from them, when they make hugely profitable films every year.

 

[Rocketman]

And yes, you talk flops, like they can't recover from them, when they make hugely profitable films every year.

So they get a free pass for making crappy movies every year, as long as they recover?

(This sort of brings us back full circle to Spielberg's original point.)

 

[Teelie]

I said that Disney has sunk a lot of money into movies that failed directly from their own studio. Their aquisitions suceeded. That's hard to understand, okay then.

I'm not saying they can't recover from them now but the original point of this thread is eventually it will result in studio losses they can't recover from. How many of you are saying Spielberg is wrong for basically stating the same thing on a larger (Hollywood) scale?

Disney has been buying up a lot of (sometimes very expensive) properties and while they're successful today they are also making large failures that are similar to the bigger Hollywood ecosystem where continued failures are going to begin to affect the bottom line.

Spielberg was saying this is what's happening to Hollywood as a whole, I am saying it's going to happen to Disney directly if their bigger films aren't more successful. The major success they have had is all been stuff they bought, not created.

If all you're going to do is call me a Disney hater and say it makes no sense then there's really not much more to say, is there?

 

[DarthSkywalker]

So they get a free pass for making crappy movies every year, as long as they recover?

(This sort of brings us back full circle to Spielberg's original point.)

Ok make up your mind. Are you talking about quality or whether the films make money? A flop is about profits, about money. It is not about the quality of the films. I have seen plenty of great films that didn't make money at the box office.

You sit here and talk about all you care about is quality, and then bring up dollars and cents again.

Stick to something.