Disney Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary While The Company And The Rest of Its Media Empire Struggles In The Post-Covid Era By: Brody Sorbera

On October 15th, 2023, ABC aired a short called "Once Upon A Studio" to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary; it celebrated all of its movies and animated masterpieces that have touched our hearts and inspired many artists over its century in the public sphere. The plot revolves around all of the Disney characters, from old to recent, gathering to take a picture for the 100th anniversary, and shenanigans ensue. It was a fun and heartwarming piece of Disney magic that summoned all the characters from Snow White to Encanto and all of the films too many to mention, with the old voice actors coming back to reprise their roles and two moments that were straight-up tear jerkers with the Genie using Robin Williams's outtakes which was a lovely tribute to the late legend. Also, Mickey is staring at a picture of Walt Disney and simply saying thanks. It returns to that classic Disney spirit they have lacked in the last five years, though some will argue they have needed it longer.

That lack of the Disney spirit (if you want to call it that) is starting to impact them at the box office, with the most prominent recent examples being the disaster that was Indiana Jones 5, losing a whopping 100 million dollars for the studio just this year and that's far from the only example. You know things are bad when Forbes puts out an article that listed all of Disney's flops from just this year, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantemaina and The Little Mermaid remake, underperformed despite the media hype. I already went over Indiana Jones and didn't even know Secret Invasion existed until I heard about how it flopped on YouTube. I can go over many more examples, but we should instead analyze three questions, "What made Disney successful in the past?" "How did they end up in the situation they are in now?" and "Where do we go from here?

To answer the first question, I'm not going to go over the entire history as that is a book in itself, but the main ingredient, in my view, boils down to one word: "originality." I understand that many Disney movies are taken from 16th-18th century fables. Still, nearly every big Hollywood production is either taken from a book, fairy tale or play, with a few exceptions here and there. The point is that Disney not only adapted these old fables for the audience of the time that the movie came out but transformed the story into memorable, colorful, and fun experiences that you can't get from the original books; not only that, but another word that comes into mind is "innovation" mind you it's a famous fact that it was Disney that made the first-ever feature-length animated movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" despite all of the columnists and journalists at the time criticizing Walt Disney for the attempt saying that audiences wouldn't be able to sit through a "cartoon movie" and against the odds proved the critics wrong and went on a run of hit after hit only being interrupted by World War 2

This success continued until Walt Disney's death (coincidentally on my birthday) on December 15th, 1966. The entire entertainment industry was devastated, and while the following animated films were a relative success at the box office, it wasn't on the same level. It was in the 50s and 60s, and the critics weren't thrilled about the new entries. The company struggled through the 70s as it tried to open and rely on its theme parks, which they went into a lot of debt to open, especially when Epcot came around in 1980. Still, the company was in such a tail that it nearly got bought up and sold into other divisions. When Michael Eisner, the former CEO of Paramount, came along and revitalized the company, creating the Disney Renaissance, the current guy, Bob Iger, took over in 2006. He entirely focused on becoming a Media Empire; nothing is wrong with this. Many great movies came out of the Eiger era, but longtime fans thought that it lacked the creativity of bosses from years past, leading to our second question.

Let's go back to 2019 Disney is on top of the world the live action remake to "the Lion King "was one of the highest grossing, animated movies of all time, Despite heavy criticism from longtime Star Wars fans, the Star Wars saga was still in full swing, and Pixar was doing its thing, and Iger thought it would be the perfect time to step down from his role and give it to one of his right hand man Bob Chapek unfortunately, this couldn't have been timed any worse, in March 2020 everything shut down, including the theme parks and all movie productions as the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing, and Disney began losing millions, many of their projects were delayed, and sometimes canceled, which created even more lost revenue for the company, A few of their animated movies were already completed before Covid and Disney didn't know how to release them because the movie theaters were closed so Chapek came up with the idea of releasing them on Disney+ but when the movie theater slowly reopened releasing them on Disney+ and the movie theaters at the same time which cannibalized its own revenue, as many people could simply just watch the new movie home for free instead of having to go out to pay to see it on the big screen. Disney eventually did away with the strategy as they realized it was into its sales, but it was already too late by this point. Also, the end of the most famous Marvel phase of this cinematic universe and the end of the Skywalker saga for Star Wars as they were ready to enter new chapters, but Disney didn't know quite what to do once those stories ended, and even long time fans began turning the other cheek.

I only got into specific examples because I wanted a more basic overview of what happened to Disney. Still, a particular instance of how Disney has spent so much money gained almost nothing. It was "Galaxy's Edge" and an unmitigated disaster, a hotel where you can only stay for two nights for $2000 and, according to reviewers, was a significant soup sandwich. Disney had spent so much money thinking this would be the next innovative revolution in the industry of hotels and the Park side of the company back several years. More examples like these show why Disney is at its lowest stock price in 15 years.

Now, to answer the final question, the future for Disney remains uncertain; sure, they are still a highly profitable company, and every company experiences mess-ups and setbacks. Disney has been in this position before, but they've climbed back and shown resilience. Still, they also feel they won't be saved again. There won't be another Michael Eisner to walk through the door and keep the company. The big thing that Disney has needed to improve in recent years, which made the company what it was, is creativity. Heavily relying on your big and doing live-action remakes will not create a promising long-term future. The live-action remakes are beginning to flop one by one because the fans aren't buying it anymore. Fans also realize that we don't need to rely on Disney anymore. There are so many avenues to get great content, not only from their arrivals like DreamWorks but numerous Indie projects; you can say that the industry has passed Disney by, but I don't think so. I believe it just takes a few creative minds to make the company into what it is again because it wasn't that long ago that Disney was on top of the world, but even when it was at the top of the world, it all just felt so hollow. Let us hope that they can make their creative itch again.