Disney Looking to Build on Successful IP; Must Avoid Heavy-Handed Star Wars, Marvel Fan Service
Disney Looking to Build on Successful IP; Must Avoid Heavy-Handed Star Wars, Marvel Fan Service
The Walt Disney Company is in a transitional phase at the moment. Disney is seeking to cut more than $5 billion from its bottom line, and the company is looking at all facets of its operation for savings. Even drastic measures like selling its majority share in Hulu are on the table.
Many of Disney’s budget cuts are being done in the name of pulling its streaming arm out of the cycle of $1 billion+ losses and into profitability. According to CEO Bob Iger, who spoke with analysts and investors during the company’s first fiscal quarter earnings call on Wednesday, part of the strategy to increase streaming profits will include a heavier focus on popular franchises Disney owns.
“Since my return, I have drilled down into every facet of the streaming business to determine how to achieve both profitability and growth,” Iger said. “And so with that goal in mind, we will focus even more on our core brands and franchises, which have consistently delivered higher returns.”
Iger cited a Nielsen survey which showed that the company’s flagship streaming service Disney+ had 10 of the top 15 movies streamed in 2022, which he says suggests that Disney’s core franchises are one of the key areas that the company needs to focus on in order to maximize its earning potential. The trick will be how Disney balances the quality and the quantity of future projects from their biggest IPs like Marvel and Star Wars.
“We’re going to lean more into our franchises; our core franchises and our brands,” the CEO continued. “We have to be better at curating the Disney and the Pixar and the Marvel and the Star Wars of it all as well. And of course, reduce costs on everything that we make because while we’re extremely proud of what’s on the screen, it’s gotten to a point where it’s extraordinarily expensive. And we want all the quality. We want the quality on the screen, but we have to look at what they cost us.”
Those comments make it sound like fans can expect more Marvel and Star Wars content on Disney+ in the coming years, but how much? Some industry analysts think it’s time for streamers to pare down on such content, especially since episodes can easily cost $10-15 million to produce. By producing one or two Star Wars or Marvel shows per year instead of three or four, Disney could cut costs and still keep a core subscriber group from churning away. Giving each series more time to perfect its story and visual effects would also increase the overall results as well, especially since that has been lacking of late, especially for Marvel.
But Disney+ is still focused on attracting new users instead of merely retaining current subscribers, and judging from Iger’s comments it sounds like it’s full steam ahead for Star Wars and Marvel. If the company is serious about focusing on quality, there’s one thing that Disney can do immediately to improve its Marvel and Star Wars content: cut down on fan service.
In 2022, Disney released three live-action series each from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises. The lowest-reviewed series from Marvel on Rotten Tomatoes was “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” with 80% positive reviews, while “The Book of Boba Fett” took home that distinction for the Star Wars franchise at a 66% approval rating.
Both of these series — but especially “Boba Fett” — were incredibly heavy-handed with their fan service. Both shows went to extreme lengths to shoehorn familiar characters into their stories to varying narrative and CGI results. Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/Hulk and (spoiler alert!) Charlie Cox’s Daredevil both get an inordinate amount of screen time in “She-Hulk,” while several episodes of “Boba Fett” are more heavily focused on “The Mandalorian's” Din Djarin and Grogu than they are on Fett himself. Making a show about Boba Fett in the first place is pretty heavy-handed fan service, a lesson Disney apparently did not learn from the ill-fated “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
Disney would do well to move away from series that rely so heavily on this type of storytelling. While they initially bring more viewers in to see their old favorites, they can also damage the reputation of an IP over time if not handled properly The more a franchise relies on fan service, the more audiences are convinced that the stewards of those universes don’t have any original ideas for them, and don’t truly understand the nature of their stories, to begin with.
Disney’s reliance on franchises is probably a wise move overall, considering how popular its core brands are. But if it plans to lean even further into them in order to help mitigate its streaming losses, it must avoid the fan service that has plagued some of its most recent projects.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”