DIS Shareholders and Stock Info ONLY

[fatmanatee]

Maybe theaters should bring back matinee pricing and offer a free small popcorn or something. It does cause a lot for a family to go to the movies. I wonder if the studios have done the analysis of offering a discount on kid's movies and whether the discount would be offset by a greater number of people coming to the theater.

It is sort of interesting, my local AMC has a few discounts listed (in order):

- Discount Tuesday
- Students
- Military
- Seniors

Nothing family-specific. I think they do matinee pricing but there's no mention of it on that portion of the website.

 

[Obi-J Kenobi]

Maybe theaters should bring back matinee pricing and offer a free small popcorn or something. It does cause a lot for a family to go to the movies. I wonder if the studios have done the analysis of offering a discount on kid's movies and whether the discount would be offset by a greater number of people coming to the theater.

My local theater offers $5.50 per ticket movies all day, any time on Tuesdays. There are significant discounts on popcorn and soda and candy. I do not recall the savings but I think it is near 50% off. No discounts on liquor, beer or wine though.

 

[Cfabar1]

I have a money-making idea! How about a new domestic theme park specifically themed for families with youngsters! Said no one at DIS.

https://deadline.com/2023/12/universal-texas-theme-park-for-families-with-young-kids-1235647953/

Universal’s New Texas Park For Families With Young Kids Will Have Themed Lands, A 300-Room Hotel
By Jill Goldsmith - Co-Business Editor
December 1, 2023 10:05am

Universal Destinations & Experiences is out with new details for Universal Kids Resort, its first theme park designed specifically for families with young children planned for Frisco, Texas.

The project, first announced in January, will feature a theme park with family-friendly attractions and themed lands, interactive shows, merchandise, food and beverage venues and character meet and greets, as well as a 300–room themed hotel as Universal looks to introduce itself and its storytelling to young audiences in new markets. It broke ground on the space last month.

The resort “will inspire the unbridled creativity of kids through imagination, discovery and most importantly – play,” said Molly Murphy, President, Universal Creative. “We’re designing the resort so kids and families can feel the thrill of being physically immersed in their most beloved stories and characters.”

The park is set in a lush green landscape with a distinctive look, feel and scale specifically for younger kids. The Comcast/NBCUniversal division said the resort will create thousands of jobs including more than 2,500 new construction jobs.

Universal selected the city of Frisco based on the city’s growing population and ability to attract businesses to the area.

Sounds like Disneys America. We will see if it works.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

Some chatter from THR about Illumination’s latest. Should be interesting to see what happens.

View attachment 814903

I wouldn’t trust THR and their reporting of this. On that same article they were also tracking Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and theirs was weak. Deadline has a better tracking for Aquaman, which might also apply to Migration.
https://deadline.com/2023/11/aquaman-and-the-lost-kingdom-box-office-projection-1235644067/amp/

 

[wabbott]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1730685700809372056

 

[Disney Bobby]

That is not true at all. This was just last year! I do agree streaming has changed the game big time but good story telling/entertaining will get people in the theater. If word of mouth is good (not reviews on RottenTomatoes - bought and paid for by studios) people will go.

Dead Reckoning is an outlier but I enjoyed it. I love the movies but I am very selective what to see based on todays pushy agenda. Disney is getting destroyed by it.

I agree with all this.

I'm interested to see how Godzilla Minus One does. I love a good monster movie. Supposedly only $15million to produce and has been praised by the critics. Not a lot of marketing. Will be interesting if people will support it at the theater or wait for it to come out as a rental.

 

[HokieRaven5]

I'm interested to see how Godzilla Minus One does. I love a good monster movie. Supposedly only $15million to produce and has been praised by the critics. Not a lot of marketing. Will be interesting if people will support it at the theater or wait for it to come out as a rental.

It was about a year before Shin Godzilla wound up on any sort of home release, and hasn’t been anywhere other than Crunchyroll for streaming. So yeah Godzilla Minus One will probably perform well. Will probably go see it this weekend.

 

[fatmanatee]

I wouldn’t trust THR and their reporting of this. On that same article they were also tracking Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and theirs was weak. Deadline has a better tracking for Aquaman, which might also apply to Migration.
https://deadline.com/2023/11/aquaman-and-the-lost-kingdom-box-office-projection-1235644067/amp/

It doesn’t really apply to Migration, which is barely mentioned in the Deadline article. The reason I posted about it was because of the ongoing discussion about streaming and animated movies.

 

[HokieRaven5]

It doesn’t really apply to Migration, which is barely mentioned in the Deadline article. The reason I posted about it was because of the ongoing discussion about streaming and animated movies.

Studios could see the results and wind up pushing more for continued animated sequels and familiar IP/stories rather than something new/original, because that’s what audiences appear to be going for in animation.

Disney/Pixar already made that move by pushing Elio to 2025 in favor of Inside Out 2. Likewise Dreamworks has Kung Fu Panda 4 next year, and Illumination has Despicable Me 4

 

[Elijah Abrams]

Studios could see the results and wind up pushing more for continued animated sequels and familiar IP/stories rather than something new/original, because that’s what audiences appear to be going for in animation.

Disney/Pixar already made that move by pushing Elio to 2025 in favor of Inside Out 2. Likewise Dreamworks has Kung Fu Panda 4 next year, and Illumination has Despicable Me 4

Nobody wants "just sequels/IP", so take that back!

Also, Elio was pushed all the way back to 2025 due to the actors' strike, not because of a need for IP. What do you think they're gonna do, scrap Elio's theatrical release and make it exclusive to streaming (Disney+)?

It doesn’t really apply to Migration, which is barely mentioned in the Deadline article. The reason I posted about it was because of the ongoing discussion about streaming and animated movies.

Then let's all of us on this forum stop with the discussion about it! Everyone is getting sick of seeing sequels and familiar IP in theatres, based on how bad The Marvels, Haunted Mansion, and Indiana Jones 5 did at the box office, and we have been in a year where Hollywood has been on strike. This is a shareholders and stock info ONLY thread, not a thread about how streaming is ruining cinemagoing!

Anyway, this article from Box Office Pro I found shows better tracking numbers for Migration. The one THR had came from the National Research Group.
https://www.boxofficepro.com/long-r...es-to-stand-out-over-christmas-and-new-years/

 

[wabbott]

https://variety.com/vip/bob-iger-disney-sale-abc-linear-channels-denial-1235816334/

Bob Iger Denied Disney Linear Channels Were for Sale: Don't Buy It

by Andrew Wallenstein
December 1, 2023 12:40pm PST

Mogul Memo to Bob Iger: I’m Not Buying Your ABC Sale Denial

Dear Bob,

I can only imagine your horror at getting a shout-out from Elon Musk from the stage at the The New York Times’ DealBook Summit conference this week, shortly after he told all the advertisers boycotting X — the dumpster fire once known as Twitter — to “go f— yourself.”

But I would also surmise you might have taken some small amount of pleasure knowing the controversy Musk kicked up in that moment would deflect some degree of attention from your own appearance at the event, where you made a few headlines yourself.

If you don’t mind, Bob, with plenty of people picking apart Musk’s latest self-immolation, I think your own words that day could use some scrutiny.

Which isn’t to suggest your comments were anywhere as explosive as Musk’s or even as problematic as your own missteps over the summer on CNBC, when you insensitively knocked the writers and actors unions for not being “realistic” about going on strike. But permit me to quibble nonetheless with some of your latest statements.

What also caused quite a stir on CNBC that day in July was your response to a question about the possibility of selling the company’s linear channels — including ABC, Disney Channel and the ABC station group, which you deemed as possibly no longer “core to Disney.”

In case that characterization wasn’t eyebrow-raising enough, when CNBC’s David Faber specifically asked if you were looking to sell cable channels FX and Nat Geo, you replied, “We’re going to be expansive. I think if you can, you can interpret what that word means.”

Lo and behold, everyone on Earth came to the same conclusion about what that word meant even if you weren’t explicitly saying it: Disney’s linear channels were for sale. That was followed by months of internal panic at Disney by employees who were caught unaware, as well as reports of damage control and, of course, multibillion-dollar overtures from Nexstar and Allen Media Group.

Then came this week, in which you you made clear in back-to-back appearances, first at an off-the-record company town hall on Tuesday and then on Wednesday at DealBook, that the linear channels were in fact, not for sale.

And that’s A-OK! It would have been perfectly fine if you explained that the company reconsidered its position on the sale, but that’s not how you explained it at DealBook, Bob, and that’s where the problem arises.

So let’s look at the exact words you used to convey your approach to interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin: “Sometimes, when I am looking for a reaction to my own thought process, I like to test that process in public, particularly in ways that I might be able to get a reaction from the investment community. So my thought was at the time that I would essentially be public with that thought process.”

There are so many flags on the field in these two sentences, I’m not even sure where to begin. But let’s start with the impulse to test your own thought process in public with regard to unloading multibillion-dollar assets.

Three words of advice: Don’t. Do. That.

Because then the “reaction from the investment community” will come in the form of companies offering to take those assets off your hands, something known in the M&A game as “bids.” So when you publicly float the notion of parting with assets, any sane individual is going to conclude you are engaging in what is known as a “sale.”

Next time you want to test a thought process, do it the old-fashioned way: Get your publicist to call up journalists at one of your favorite news publications — like, oh, I don’t know, Variety — and whisper in their ear the notion that your company is considering making a play for such-and-such company.

Then the word gets out without your fingerprints attached, the market reacts without thinking it’s an actual sale in progress, and you don’t have thousands of staffers freaking out that the brand for which they work so hard is being sold right from under them without their even knowing about it.

When you do it the way you did it on CNBC, and then make a bigger mess of it at DealBook, it just looks like a CEO isn’t getting good PR advice. (Somewhere over at ByteDance, your former handler, Zenia Mucha, must be cackling with delight.)

Then you doubled down by oversharing this gem you tossed Sorkin’s way: “I did not want to get accused of being kind of an old media executive.”

OK, bad enough that you’ve fessed up to floating M&A trial balloons in TV interviews; it’s worse to lay bare dealmaking motivations that don’t seem particularly strategic.

But wait, it gets worse. Ultimately, you didn’t really take responsibility for your actions: “I did not say they were for sale. The coverage of what I said said they were for sale.”

Ah, the classic “blame the media” move! Usually employed by politicians, but hey, you flirted with a presidential run for a while, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

I’ll going out on a limb here and guess that either disentangling the linear assets proved too difficult to sell anytime soon or Disney ultimately didn’t didn’t see a bid attractive enough to do the disentangling. Regardless, you didn’t want to be perceived in the marketplace as indecisive, so instead you’ve decided to try and make it seem as if you were never really looking to sell in the first place, which is nonsense.

Did you ever say, “These assets are for sale?” No. But in response to direct questions about whether they were for sale, did you not only fail to deny it but play it so ridiculously coy that the only reasonable inference to be made was they were for sale? Absolutely. So let’s not pretend you were misinterpreted.

If there’s one thing CEOs of all stripes can learn from Elon, it’s that the surest road to ruin is to let ego get in the way of dictating sound judgment.

Andrew Wallenstein is President and Chief Media Analyst of Variety Intelligence Platform, a new extension of the Variety brand focused on market research. He has been with Variety since 2011, previously as Co-Editor-in-Chief. Wallenstein received the Luminary Award for Career Achievement from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2017. He was an on-air contributor for NPR’s All Things Considered for nearly a decade and also hosted the PBS series “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors” and TV Guide Channel’s “Square Off,” a weekly primetime series about the TV industry. Wallenstein has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe and Business Week. He was at The Hollywood Reporter from 2002 to 2010.

 

[wabbott]

IIRC, there was some discussion upthread (or somewhere) about the prospective costs of upcoming sports contracts renewals. This article looks at the issue.

https://frontofficesports.com/would-disneys-espn-walk-away-from-the-nba/

Would Disney’s ESPN Walk Away From The NBA?

by Michael McCarthy
12/1/23

ESPN and Turner Sports have shared NBA media rights since 2002 and are in an exclusive negotiating window to renew into the 2030s.

Tough-talking David Zaslav declared that Warner Bros. Discovery Sports doesn’t need the NBA. But what if the Walt Disney Co. could drop out of the bidding if the price tag gets too high its ESPN network?

It’s hard to imagine ESPN without LeBron James, Steph Curry, Doris Burke, and Mike Breen. Top executives like Jimmy Pitaro and Burke Magnus have repeatedly stated they want to renew their NBA rights.

If they don’t close the deal, deep-pocketed streamers Amazon Prime Video — which is already eyeing a Tuesday or Thursday night package similar to “Thursday Night Football” — and Apple are waiting in the wings.

Not to mention NBC Sports, the league’s broadcast partner during the 1990s, which is itching for a “Roundball Rock” reunion.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Pitaro era, it’s that ESPN will no longer bid on everything — or against itself. The new ESPN picks its spots.

The NBA will seek a combined $50 billion to $75 billion for its next long-term cycle of media rights. That could double or triple the payout from its current nine-year deals that pay a combined $24 billion, or $2.6 billion a year, through the 2024-25 season.

Disney owns 80% of ESPN. But what ESPN wants may have to take a back seat to what parent Disney needs financially, and the Mouse House is under pressure from Wall Street to boost its flagging stock price.

Despite slashing $7.5 billion in costs and 8,000 jobs, returning Disney chairman Bob Iger has even talked about selling ESPN and ABC. Or bringing in strategic investors like the NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL.

As a former producer for the late, great ABC Sports, Iger understands how the one-two punch of falling subscribers and rising costs hurts ESPN.

Even if the NBA, NFL, or MLB buys a stake, ESPN’s business model will still be battling the same economic headwinds, according to media analyst Rich Greenfield.

“We do not understand how any of them would solve ESPN’s #1 problem — the cost of sports rights is rising faster than revenues,” he warned in a research note for LightShed Research. “Sure, there could be excitement around one or more of them overpaying to own a piece of ESPN, but that does not fix/improve ESPN’s long-term financial prospects.”

Put aside Disney’s issues, and the mood is different inside ESPN, too.

Rather than simply out-spending competitors for marquee rights, Pitaro has installed fiscal rigor to the bidding process.

When the price got too high for Big Ten rights, a more disciplined ESPN walked away despite a 40-year relationship with the conference. It also passed on rights to the NFL’s Sunday Ticket, Major League Soccer, and the Pac-12 Conference.

ESPN also has expensive rights negotiations coming up for the College Football Playoff (CFP), UFC, and possibly the WWE.

To make matters more intriguing, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver recently criticized TV coverage from his incumbent networks on a podcast with ESPN analyst JJ Redick.

Similar to the NFL, Silver would like to see more Xs and Os analysis of NBA offenses and defenses. Not just paeans to players’ athletic prowess.

“I think where we can all do a better job, and again I’m not just pointing to the media here, is talking more about the game,” Silver said. “My frustration a bit, I think sometimes the color commentary in our games gets reduced to, ‘This team wanted it more’ or ‘This team tried harder.’”

On the other hand, the NBA amounts to “existential rights” for ESPN, according to former president John Skipper.
While Wall Street remains skeptical about how much ESPN can charge for a new DTC product, ex-Disney executive turned Iger advisor Kevin Mayer told Yahoo Finance that $30 a month would be a “reasonable” price.

There’s “absolutely no way” ESPN walks away from the NBA, said media consultant Jim Williams. The two rely on each other, he noted. The combination of ESPN’s distribution, shoulder programming, and Disney’s marketing might help keep the Association front and center in fans’ minds.

“If you’re going to take it to streaming, and you’re going to ask for $25 a month, you better damn well have the NBA,” Williams warned. “Look at the demo of that audience. How are you going to put together a streaming service, and you’re supposedly the Worldwide Leader in Sports, and not have the NBA? It’s not going to happen. That would be insanity.”

One option for ESPN is relinquishing part of the expanded CFP to free up money for the NBA.

All sports TV networks cry poverty come negotiating time, noted ex-Fox Sports executive Bob Thompson.

The first-ever release of ESPN’s financials revealed a surprisingly powerful and profitable company.

In short, Thompson expects both ESPN and WBD Sports to renew their NBA packages, even if they’re smaller than what they have right now, with a new streaming partner in the mix too.

Look for ESPN to put some games on its ESPN+ streaming platform while WBD Sports streams games across B/R and Max, he added.

“The NBA is TNT’s primary sports product – and for ESPN the NBA will be critical for when they offer ESPN in a DTC model,” Thompson said. “Sure, they are saying it costs too much. That’s what networks do. I would be concerned if they were saying the ratings or the demos were bad, but I’m not hearing any of that. I think at the end of the day they renew with a rights fee increase but they end up with fewer games as the NBA carves out a streaming package as part of the new deal.”

Another former sports media executive with direct knowledge of ESPN and the NBA said it’s typical for media executives and commissioners to talk tough publicly during billion-dollar negotiations.

“Both WBD and Disney need NBA content to keep affiliate fees (however shrinking) coming and in a DTC world for all the months of content that the NBA provides…So posturing like this is not usual.”

 

[fatmanatee]

This is a shareholders and stock info ONLY thread, not a thread about how streaming is ruining cinemagoing!

The habits of movie watchers, and particularly a shift from theaters (a profitable venture) to streaming (a venture that isn’t very profitable right now), might have an impact on the stock.

 

[clarker99]

The habits of movie watchers, and particularly a shift from theaters (a profitable venture) to streaming (a venture that isn’t very profitable right now), might have an impact on the stock.

Of course it is pertinent to the stock. Everyone and their dog said linear tv was going to go extinct bc of streaming. Instead Disney’s linear business is a very slow bleed while its box office has had its head chopped off.

 

[wabbott]

https://variety.com/vip/why-telecom-key-to-bundlings-next-phase-1235810322/

Why Telecom Will Be Key to Bundling’s Next Phase
by Tyler Aquilina
November 28, 2023 - 7:04am PST

Meet the new bundle — it’s not quite the same as the old bundle, but it’s starting to look awfully similar.

As streaming bundles continue to grow more significant to the SVOD market, it’s seeming more and more likely that SVOD-telecom partnerships are poised to become the dominant model. Consumers who spent the past decade breaking up their packages of phone, internet and televised entertainment services may soon find themselves paying the same company for all three once again.

This trend is evinced in a new survey of subscription service executives from technology company Bango, which points to the way streaming bundle deals are likely headed.

Besides smart TVs and other connected TV devices, which are already the predominant hubs through which consumers access SVOD services, executives cited telecom companies — namely pay TV, broadband and cellular providers — as their preferred bundling partners by a significant margin over retail brands and other potential collaborators.

It’s a natural partnership, after all. Most of the legacy media studios-turned-streamers have existing relationships with telecom companies due to their cable network operations, and the historical bundling of TV with internet and phone service makes similar streaming packages a logical proposition for consumers.

Furthermore, Bango’s survey also found executives’ top priorities in bundling their services to be twofold: securing additional customers and reducing user churn. Broadband and cellular are among the most essential, and therefore lowest-churn, subscription services for consumers; bundling streaming subscriptions with these offerings is thus a wise strategy for lowering their churn.

Meanwhile, new SVOD subscribers are becoming more difficult to acquire directly, meaning distribution partners will be needed for streamers to continue growing their user bases. A global forecast by research firm Omdia this year projected that by 2028, bundles with pay TV, broadband or wireless plans will generate 70 percent of OTT video net sub adds and constitute a fourth of global SVOD subscriptions.

It’s clear, then, that executives and industry analysts alike believe telecom-SVOD partnerships will be increasingly significant to the streaming bundle landscape, though there is more tangible evidence of this as well.

Consider Verizon’s latest deal for its wireless customers: ad-supported subscriptions to both Netflix and Max for an additional $10 per month (a 40% markdown on the cost of the two services à la carte).

It’s a significant discount, to be sure, but as media-industry commentator Evan Shapiro noted in a recent blog post, “The real scoop is that Verizon is bundling more and more entertainment services into their mobile plan — the only must-have service for the majority of humans on earth.”

Indeed, the telecom giant has already established itself as a new force in the streaming aggregation space, having launched the Plus Play subscription marketplace for its customers earlier this year. Since then, Verizon has continued to reshape and expand its bundle offerings, allowing unlimited plan customers to add individual “perks” from a slate featuring, for instance, Disney’s SVOD bundle (Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+) and Apple One, which includes Apple TV+.

The big takeaway here is that Verizon is working hard to establish itself as a go-between for its customers and subscription streaming services in a market where control of those relationships is becoming an increasingly important currency.

Meanwhile, Disney’s recent deal with Charter Communications, which established new Spectrum TV packages that will include the Mouse House’s SVOD services, created a potential template for other telcos and streamers. Though no similar deals have yet followed, more should be expected as media companies’ carriage deals come up for renegotiation.

As I’ve argued before, such partnerships aren’t likely to reverse the tide of cord-cutting, but they should give telecom companies a bit more power over their relationships with streaming companies. Not for nothing, they’ll also help to bring in additional, low-churn customers for SVODs — exactly what streamers want to achieve with bundles, in other words.

In short, there’s little reason to doubt that telecom companies are rapidly becoming a major force in the streaming bundle space and that these types of partnerships will grow ever more significant to and prominent in the streaming business. And as these relationships solidify further, perhaps the new entertainment landscape won’t look so different for consumers after all.

Tyler Aquilina is a media analyst for Variety Intelligence Platform, primarily covering the streaming wars and their impact on the media/tech business. He previously wrote for Entertainment Weekly, where he covered the film industry, streaming and worker issues in Hollywood, among many other topics. A former Midwesterner and graduate of Loyola Marymount University, Aquilina is based in Los Angeles, where he can often be found watching “Jeopardy!” and reading history books.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

Instead Disney’s linear business is a very slow bleed while its box office has had its head chopped off.

Because of bad decisions, right?

 

[Cfabar1]

Because of bad decisions, right?

I would argue they have tried too hard in the family movies to cater to modern taste and have become too self-referential and mocking in their treatment of the characters. Works great for Enchanted, but not for an animated feature.

Also the humor has become way more centered towards the adults and overt and crass and not as subtle as it used to be in that respect.

 

[Disney Bobby]

It was about a year before Shin Godzilla wound up on any sort of home release, and hasn’t been anywhere other than Crunchyroll for streaming. So yeah Godzilla Minus One will probably perform well. Will probably go see it this weekend.

Then I'll wait for your review.

 

[fatmanatee]

I would argue they have tried too hard in the family movies to cater to modern taste and have become too self-referential and mocking in their treatment of the characters. Works great for Enchanted, but not for an animated feature.

Also the humor has become way more centered towards the adults and overt and crass and not as subtle as it used to be in that respect.

He’s probably talking about the decision to build D+.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

He’s probably talking about the decision to build D+.

No I wasn’t.