Hey Buddy! I haven't seen you for a minute now. Have to ask: what's up with Disney now that they have gotten all into politics? Are they happy with the way Chapek is guiding the ship? I know you are an insider so give me all the dirt.
Getting into politics is never a good idea IMHO, especially as a 4 quadrant company like Disney. You are bound to upset some people as they obviously have. Staying neutral while quickly putting out a statement in support of the LGBT community and then staying quiet regardless of push would have been the smart move. Too late for that and I believe the best course of action now is silence. Chapek WILL definitely be asked about it during Quarterlys next week.
A lot of people in the firm are unhappy with Chapek. A lot of people are also unhappy Disney has gone so strongly politically lately. More importantly than employees is that shareholders are unhappy. That should and does worry the board. If their Quarterly numbers are not good.....
They fumbled twice and came out looking like they were trying to play both sides. It was actually amazing to see how bad they fumbled it and how they got there. The leaked videos also did not do them any favors. The stock tanking is partly because of Wall Street having doubts on streaming and partly because of the major pushback that Disney got due to trying to play a political game.
As muchas morbius sucked. It could have performed worse at the boX office especially with those reviews and a weird character choice to lead a movie. Sony didn't spend too much on the movie so I wouldn't say its financially disappointing.
If you think about it Morbius already outgrossed Fant4stic, Dark PhoeniX and New Mutants in North America. And Sony would probably force Morbius to appear in the other Sony movies even if a Morbius 2 isn't happening.
All of what you are saying is true, but Morbius still bombed. New Mutants is a special case as that was a horrible movie that came right in the middle of the pandemic and everyone knew the movie was inconsequential since Marvel Studios was going to reboot it. Dark Phoenix had a similar issue of being irrelevant. And remember multipliers for F4 was 2.18x, Dark Phoenix was 2x. Morbius, if it gets to 75MM (it won't) will have one of the worst multipliers for CBMs ever at 1.92x.
Whether we like it or not Morbius was coming off Venom and Venom 2 which most people liked (even if I personally didn't). Having a 1.92x does not bode well for future SSU movies. Franchises don't die off one bad movie and Sony had enough good cred with fans who enjoyed Venom. Sony can still turn things around though, so we'll see.
Remains to be seen if the bombas will continue or if it'll be a one off. Let's see how Kraven, El Muerto, and Madame Webb perform.