By the end of 2023, Walt Disney Studios will have released 33 movies. With so many box office bombs from Disney, CEO Bob Iger wants to change the “focus” of the studio’s movies going forward.
Walt Disney Studios has been facing a cinematic rough patch this year. CEO Bob Iger knows the pressure is on. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the media businessman has an explanation for what led to Disney’s films underperforming.
“That said as I looked at our overall output, meaning the studio, it’s clear that the pandemic created a lot of challenges creatively for everybody, including for us,” said Iger. “In addition, at the time the pandemic hit, we were leaning into a huge increase in how much we were making and I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality. And I think that’s exactly what happened. We lost some focus.”
During the pandemic, Disney may have gotten too ahead of itself by continuously producing content after movie theaters shut down. In the past, Disney released fewer titles than its rival studios. Then Bob Chapek, who was Disney’s CEO from 2020 to 2022, increased film and TV production content. But, there’s still hope as Bob Iger is more than aware of the problem. In fact, Disney will focus instead on the quality of content compared to quantity. He’s hopeful about the studio’s upcoming sequels, popular titles, and original content like Wish, which releases on Thanksgiving weekend.
“So I feel good about the direction we’re headed. But I’m mindful of the fact that our performance from a quality perspective wasn’t really up to the standards that we set for ourselves.”
What Disney Movies Have Underperformed This Year?
Disney will release its latest movie, The Marvels, during the weekend. However, Variety predicts the superhero movie will only generate $60-65 million, making it one of the lowest debut numbers in the MCU. Other high-profile misses include Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which needed $600 million to break even. It only made $384 million at the box office which led to a $100 million loss for Disney. The Haunted Mansion also didn’t have the best opening as it struggled below Barbenheimer. Other titles that underperformed included The Little Mermaid, Strange World, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
In 28 years, Pixar suffered its worst opening. Elemental debuted at $29.5 million, becoming the second-lowest three-day opening weekend for a Pixar movie. Other than poor marketing and competing with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, critics believed that the underperformance of the Pixar movie stemmed from audiences used to seeing Disney movies hit streaming. In the past few years surrounding the pandemic, Luca, Soul, and Turning Red went straight to Disney+. Raya and the Last Dragon had a streaming/theatrical simultaneous release, and Encanto was in theaters for 30 days before moving to streaming.
The lesson learned is that producing great content will matter more than how many movies Disney Studios puts out there. Hopefully, 2024 will be a much better year for the studio like Bob Iger says.
