Disney and the Quest to Milk every IP

[Skanky Vamp]

from giz

The Little Mermaid is only the newest of Disney’s animated adaptations. As live-action takes on Moana, Hercules, Lilo and Stitch, and Snow White are all churning their way through the Mouse House production factory, the man leading the “reimagination” is Walt Disney Pictures president Sean Bailey, who has at least 50 more projects waiting in the wings.

This figure comes courtesy of a new profile in the New York Times. Bailey—whose “division makes two or three big-budget films annually for release in theaters and three modestly budgeted movies for Disney+”—says that one of the main reasons for these live-action adaptations is to find a way to “make Disney stories less retrograde.” By this he means less overwhelmingly misogynist and white.

He’s also working on Mufasa, the Lion King prequel directed by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins, due out in 2024. Bailey believes that The Lion King franchise has “big, epic saga” potential on the level of something like Star Wars, noting “There’s a lot of room to run if we can find the stories.”

Additionally, the profile says that “restarting the five-film Pirates of the Caribbean series is another priority” for Bailey. Those films are fine, and that universe is full of opportunity to do other spooky weird supernatural offshoots with other ships. You don’t need to remake the Pirates franchise. When asked if controversial star Johnny Depp would return as Captain Jack Sparrow, Bailey responded “Noncommittal at this point.” Another live-action franchise that still has life left in it, according to the profile, is Hocus Pocus, which now has a third film in the works after last year’s Disney+ sequel to the 1993 cult favorite.

It really is heartwarming to know that Disney believes in that old adage quantity over quality.

 

[Bop]

Before The Little Mermaid came out the fans were being so obnoxious saying that it's going to blow Aladdin 2019 out of the water. Due to that I'm pleased to see it's not doing well at the box office and won't get anywhere near Aladdin's box office total.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Before The Little Mermaid came out the fans were being so obnoxious saying that it's going to blow Aladdin 2019 out of the water. Due to that I'm pleased to see it's not doing well at the box office and won't get anywhere near Aladdin's box office total.

The opening weekend surpassed the opening weekend of Aladdin and that was with less showings.

 

[Bop]

The opening weekend surpassed the opening weekend of Aladdin and that was with less showings.

The Little Mermaid is currently at 326 million globally, at the same number of days since release Aladdin was at 446 million.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

The Little Mermaid is currently at 326 million globally, at the same number of days since release Aladdin was at 446 million.

Actually when I look at the numbers Little Mermaid is ahead of Aladdin. 10 day total for Mermaid is $186,992,778, 10 day total for Aladdin is 185,537,718. It's not really blowing it out of the water, but it's still doing better than it did in the same time period at least domestically.

 

[Bop]

Actually when I look at the numbers Little Mermaid is ahead of Aladdin. 10 day total for Mermaid is $186,992,778, 10 day total for Aladdin is 185,537,718. It's not really blowing it out of the water, but it's still doing better than it did in the same time period at least domestically.

That's the domestic numbers, The Little Mermaid is doing pretty well domestically (pretty much equal to Aladdin right now) but internationally The Little Mermaid is doing very poorly and in the end Aladdin made 698 million internationally and 355 domestic taking it to 1 billion overall. Pretty much nobody is predicting that The Little Mermaid will get to a billion anymore because the international numbers are low, some are even estimating it could end around 500/600 million globally. So yeah if that happens, and it's looking likely, Aladdin will have blown The Little Mermaid out of the water.

 

[Stake fodder]

Bailey... says that one of the main reasons for these live-action adaptations is to find a way to “make Disney stories less retrograde.” By this he means less overwhelmingly misogynist and white.

And this can't be done in animation? I guess CGI has gotten good enough that it's cheaper to use in combination with actors than illustration is.

Bailey believes that The Lion King franchise has “big, epic saga” potential on the level of something like Star Wars, noting “There’s a lot of room to run if we can find the stories.”

Well, yeah, finding the stories is the main issue in creating a "big, epic saga." The next biggest problem is then not running your saga into the ground with too many spinoffs "on the level of something like Star Wars." Or making a sixth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, for instance.

 

[Puppet]

The idea that in order to be less misogynistic and white they have to remake the cartoons honestly baffles my mind. These Disney dudes cannot possibly be this dumb? They have to know that they can accomplish that just as well (if not better) with original stories, whether drawn or live-action... good lord!

 

[thrasherpix]

The idea that in order to be less misogynistic and white they have to remake the cartoons honestly baffles my mind. These Disney dudes cannot possibly be this dumb? They have to know that they can accomplish that just as well (if not better) with original stories, whether drawn or live-action... good lord!

I suspect cynical, short term marketing strategies OR a "trojan horse" diabolical long range plan to roll back progress that has already been made. They don't even have to be creative, there are real life characters to choose from that they ignore. The unintended (or deliberate) side effect is that it comes with a subtle "only a white man could do this, anything else is cartoon fantasy."

Instead of gender swapping a man who flew one of the first balloons, they could've done one with Amelia Earhart. Many don't understand how important the contributions of women were in early STEM development, and they won't make movies of them.

More than one (and that's not counting a board member, who this is only half true of) said race representation was important to them, but also that they felt uncomfortable with things like "blackwashing." Possibly a fear of backlash, perhaps the same way as I feel, that it implies only a white man could be significant. Black Panther was different (though also not the first black Marvel character to get his own movie, an earlier one I suspect helping the Buffy TV series coming about) because he was originally black, The Princess and the Frog did well and made enough money to earn the protagonist a place among Disney princesses (which is earned by merch and ticket sales rather than if they are technically a princess or not), and same for other characters.

But the big names keep either swapping (fiction or real life) or finding the worst possible choice to focus on that makes me feel it has to be deliberate...and yet maybe I'm overestimating humanity again.

And what's with this "first" nonsense everyone has been doing the last few years? Besides pure gaslighting (or psychotic narcissism). I was relieved to find a couple of authors who were decades ahead of them being civil, real, sincere, and careful NOT to claim the title first. One woman who got an award or recognition of some kind for having a gay male protagonist said a black man did it before her, and he showed up to comment on her site (a wise elder), thanking her, and also not to worry about it (and that "prescriptive language" does more harm than good, and I'd add a good way to spin wheels doing nothing while feeling as if something has been done--and many words offensive today were once politically correct words themselves to replace other words, and sometimes "reclaimed" to rinse and repeat without meaning).

In any case, I haven't seen any of these "First" produce another Scully Effect, so in addition to not being first, they're doing it wrong. But either they don't care, or they deliberately doing it wrong on purpose, I can't figure it out.

 

[Miss Muffet]

Disney's remakes just annoy the heck out of me, especially because the remakes are pretty much always worse than the original, and the original stuff they've made recently (like Encanto, Moana, Raya, etc.) has been great. I know they just want to make as much money as they can, but seriously? Why can't they just focus on making new stories, and maybe explore new myths and fairy tales from other cultures (aka not Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen, or at the very least trying one of their stories that doesn't have fifty million adaptations) instead of making remaking an old story practically shot for shot?

 

[The Bronze]

As long as it makes money they'll keep churning them out. I've still got an unlimited card so I see most of them. They're pretty much all 3-6/10 and pointless.

At least the crab was still good in the little mermaid.

 

[Tome]

There are two ways to look at this.

There is the cynical way, which will be the belief that Disney is only interested in making more money, and that they don't care about anything else. If that's truly the way it is then, yea, they'll just keep on milking every IP as long as they are profitable, and when they are not anymore Disney might get their shit together and start funding more original stories.

The other way is more nuanced, where the belief would be that more than just being a money-making machine, Disney is also interested in remaking their classics for the brand new generation (not for us older folks). Therefore, they are obviously less concerned about what WE think of these remakes and more interested in attracting that younger audience of millenials. This would also explain why some of the stories have to be somewhat altered to fit better with the society this new generation is living in.

Personally, I agree with the people who say that Disney (just like the rest of Hollywood) should focus a lot more on creating new stories. This includes stories involving minorities. It would be a lot more interesting. More so, I also agree that a majority of the remakes have not even been AS GOOD AS the originals. If you're going to remake a movie or a TV show you have to AT LEAST hit that bar, imo.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Personally, I would like to see Disney get some competition. They treat their employees so badly that the animators have given the place a name: Mauschwitz. They might as well have "arbeit macht frei" on the studio entrance. Many businesses had a saying, "if you don't come in Saturday, don't bother coming in Monday". At Disney, the saying was, "if you don't come in Saturday, don't bother coming in Sunday". I support businesses that treat their personnel well. I wish Disney all the failure it deserves.

BTW as I am writing this, I am eating a Chapman's ice cream bar. This is a company that kept its workers on at full pay when their factory burned down and had their workers rebuild it. No one lost their job because of it, even when there was no revenue.

I also have some items from Hammond, a company that makes transformers and switch panels as well as small project boxes. They operate a museum of antique radios and donations to this museum are tax-deductible. This museum is a couple of rooms in their northern factory in Guelph that total about 200 feet by 20 feet - they didn't have to do that but it keeps the spirit of radio & electronics alive as a hobby.

 

[Stake fodder]

Back in the videotape days, Disney would create artificial scarity by advertising that they were going to stop selling this or that movie, only to bring it back after a few years. (And usually, the movie would continue to be for sale in stores, even if Disney stopped making new copies.) Now that many don't buy DVDs, I suppose re-makes are their way of trying to pump life into old products.

I think it's great to add diversity, but like everyone's saying, make new stories!

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Yeah, the live action movies have been... Uneven.

So basically, every marketing major is taught in school about generational theory, which is basically astrology. One of the things they are taught is that more recent generations are more comfortable with diversity. I don't buy it for a second, I think every American generation that came of age after 1964 has claimed that, and they will still mysteriously move to suburbia as soon as their kids need an education. The other thing they are taught is cause marketing, that, you can't market anymore by demonstrating quality or value, the days of Hector Boiardi asking if he may come into your home, and offering a healthy, cheap and delicious meal are over. Nobody will believe him. What you must do, is appeal to vanity. Hey, are you the type of person who values diversity? So are we. Support the things you care about by supporting us. These majors graduate, go on to corporate jobs, and tell their 60 year old employers in no uncertain terms that rising generations must see progressive social activism in the companies they do business with. And that is why it's more important to produce "In The Heights" than that "In The Heights" makes money. Because you want the image of being a company that makes movies for diverse audiences, it's not important that you make money on those movies, it's just marketing costs. We will see if it pays off, or not.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Deadline reports that Disney has officially started getting together a team to make audiences cry and traumatize a new generation with a Bambi adaptation from Oscar-winning Women Talking filmmaker Sarah Polley. Bambi follows the trend of Disney classics getting the live-action treatment—something that seems unlikely to subside anytime soon after the recent success of The Little Mermaid, and a list of upcoming titles like the Rock’s Moana project.

No other information is known at this time. There was a script written a few years ago but no word on if that is being used or not.