The Disney Apocalypse

Imagine being 5 again sitting in front of the giant box tv in the living room and inserting the VHS tape of The Little Mermaid. Your younger self is enamoured with her fiery red hair and pretty shiny tail. Maybe you're from the generation who got to see the first Disney movie up on the big screen, the classic Snow White. Or perhaps, you were in the recent wave of new Disney+ members who get to see all the old classics with only a few keystrokes. Whether you are young or old, poor or rich, everyone knows the nostalgia of Disney. It’s easy to forget behind the glam, glitter, and questionable moral lessons for young girls that above all else Disney is a multi-billion dollar business.

The Disney apocalypse has been happening over the past couple years with them buying out studios and franchises whose might have been competitors in the business and becoming the top mouse in the entertainment industry. In 2006 Disney acquired Pixar Animation Studios from Steve Jobs. Pixar was one of Disney bigger competitors with movies like Toy Story which was progressive in being the first CGI animated film. By buying Pixar they had really started to conglomerate their businesses. The deal to buy out Pixar cost Disney $7.4 billion dollars. Due to Disney's strict copyright laws once Disney buys a company only they can release any new material or toys based off of it which is one of the reasons why Disney makes so much money from these mergers.

From there they only went further with that same motto in mind, buy out the competition no matter the cost. In 2009 Disney bought out Marvel Studios for $4 billion dollars. In 2012 Disney acquires Lucasfilms and gets huge franchises like, Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Disney then acquires 21 Century Fox in 2019, with the major draw of the classic Simpsons, for $52.4 billion. Since these acquisitions, Disney has released four out of the five top lifetime grosses in Box office records. Star Wars: Episode VII- The Force Awakens was number one and made $936 million. Avengers: Endgame was number two making $858 million and broke records for the single largest opening day. Black Panther was fourth making $700 million. Avengers: Infinity war was fifth and made $678 million.

This consolidation under Disney has made their new streaming platform Disney+ wildly popular. For one, popular streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have to pay Disney to use or stream any of their materials on their site meaning those sites don’t offer a lot of Disney content for fans. Plus due to the aforementioned copyright they can’t make any new Disney content. Disney+ has no restrictions on the amount of Disney materials because it is Disney. Viewers can watch classics like Snow White and, the bigger draw, new Disney material only released on the site. Disney+ is one of the only places where you can get new Disney material that is not being released in theatres. For example, The Mandalorian is a show only released on Disney+ as an episodic series. It takes place after the original 3 Star Wars which goes into the tale of The Mandalorian, a bounty hunter, who was hired to kill a mysterious target but makes a different call.

It cost Disney $15 million to make a single episode of The Mandalorian. However, in just the first week after the first episode dropped Disney made nearly 40 million back. This is seemingly Disney’s business style, take bigger risks but ultimately reap huge rewards. The other reason Disney+ has gotten so popular is that other Streaming services like Netflix are more expensive, $13.99 a month just for the basic streaming, while Disney+ is $6.99 and even offered the first year completely free it the viewer who had Verizon. In December of 2019, Netflix was making around $5 million. In just the first day of Disney+ ten million people signed up. Ten million times seven dollars per person means that just on opening day Disney+ earned at least $70 million. This is nearly x14 times more than Netflix is making all month.

Even though that might seem like an outrageous amount to spend on some of companies and entertainment Disney is playing with a longer game in mind. Disney is able to spend these large amounts of money because they are an established family safe brand that can reliably depend on drawing a huge audience from college student to suburban house moms. Disney’s also has multiple establishes sources of income. They have; their parks, their experiences at the parks, the multiple studios they have acquired working on material for them, their cruises, products and toys, streaming services, their product under copyright so only they can use it making other streaming services buy it from them, etc.etc… As a business in the entertainment industry, Disney has established a great brand that will allow them to keep thriving long into the future.

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