Their last few movies have been... well "abysmal" would make some abysses unhappy to be compared to the movie performance.<p>Strange World [0] was a box office bomb - reported box office revenues of $74M on a budget of $135–180M.<p>It's got nothing on Turning Red [1], though. $20M on a $175M budget. Whoof.<p>Lightyear [2] only barely made their production costs, $225M on a $200M budget.<p>They've had some mild successes, but their last couple years of performance have been marked by some absolutely horrid bombs.<p>You can blame their "going broke" grade performance on whatever you want, but the reality seems to be that Disney is simply <i>not making movies anyone wants to see.</i> And if you're an entertainment company, well, that's a problem.<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_World_(film)</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Red</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_(film)</a>
This was announced in February, they're just starting them today.<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/business/disney-earnings/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/business/disney-earnings/inde...</a>
> <i>The first round will begin this week, and managers will soon start to notify affected employees. A second, larger round of layoffs will take place in April, Iger said, with several thousand staffers let go. A third round of layoffs will then occur “before the beginning of the summer” to reach the company’s planned goal of eliminating 7,000 jobs.</i><p>For the people at Disney wondering whether they'll get hit in one of the waves of indiscriminate axe swings, sounds less like the happiest place on earth, and more like the anxiety and stress of living under a wicked stepmother.
Here's the symptom:<p>I shouldn't have to pay extra so my kids don't get treated like trash (let people skip in front of them in line, removing them from their seat when someone with a special badge shows up, etc...) on a "dream" vacation.<p>The disease? Disney is out of touch with it's customer base.
I'm surprised that's it, given how so many of there franchises like Marvel and Star Wars aren't too doing well, and then still trying to deal with Covid changing the way they run the Parks.<p>I can't imagine them getting political with Ron Desantis helped at all, he's extremely popular in Florida.<p>Thinking about the Pixar brand, I still the remember the first I thought Pixar isn't as good anymore was with Brave. I also remember being surprised a large amount of the original Pixar teams left to Dreamworks or other places.<p>I expect Bog Iger was brought in as a Hatchet Man, he already fired Victoria Alonso an executive with disney for 17 years rumored to be behind marvel phase 4 and 5 failures.
Feel bad for those employees, being on the line of fire myself at Google and waiting to find out if I have a job next month.<p>That being said, how on Earth has Disney managed to screw up 10 years of Marvel success? They spread themselves too thin trying to create too many shows without proper planning. And that's only focusing on Marvel. They also managed to piss people off with their half-assed Star Wars trilogy, to the point that you can clearly perceive directors going into different and incompatible paths for films that should build on the predecessor.<p>Edit: They should be two franchises that print money, but instead we get the current headlines.
The last few years have been very capital-rich and interest-low. In that environment you hire. When the capital dries up and interest rises you lay off. If you don't lay people off in the bad times you can't hire them in the good times. Disney is evil for many, many reasons, but laying off three percent of their workforce when interest rates go through the roof and they're in a cold war with a lunatic governor is not one of them.
>The difficult reality of many colleagues and friends leaving Disney is not something we take lightly<p>They aren't "leaving". Have the guts to stand by what you have actually done or the shame to remain silent.