Plainly, the money flow has been curtailed, tho.Doubting that this are actually dead. More likely just shelved for now.
https://www.polygon.com/23644727/willow-series-canceled-renewed-season-2-when
Disney Plus’ Willow isn’t canceled, just paused for at least a year, says producer
Jon Kasdan says reports of the show’s death are greatly exaggerated
By Susana Polo@NerdGerhl Mar 17, 2023, 11:40am EDT
Following a Deadline report that Disney Plus had canceled Willow, the TV series based on George Lucas’ 1988 fantasy adventure, show producer Jon Kasdan has tweeted a correction. “Neither I, nor the folks at Lucasfilm, would or have actually characterized it quite that way.”
According to Kasdan, Willow isn’t dead, just sleeping.
Kasdan’s thread continues for two more tweets as well, noting the general slowing of production across the entertainment industry, but especially streaming, and the logistics of scheduling around your cast’s commitments.
“The truth is less splashy [than cancellation],” he writes, “but here it is: A decision was made last week to release our main cast for other series opportunities that may arise for them in the coming year. With all the tv and movies in production around the world, it feels unfair to limit an actor’s availability without a clear sense of when you’re going to need them again.”
According to Kasdan, season 2 of Willow is, if not completely written, significantly planned out, and some characters with small roles in the first season, like Annabelle Davis’ Mims, will have much larger ones in the new. But since their initial contracts didn’t include so much season 2 work, they’re now busy with other projects.
“Due to forces much larger and more intricate than I would ever pretend to fully understand,” Kasdan says, “production of streaming shows is slowing down across the entire industry, and Willow won’t resume filming in the next 12 months. But here’s what’s equally true: with the enthusiastic and unwavering support of Lucasfilm and Disney, we’ve developed and written what we hope is a brain-meltingly fun, richer, darker and better VOLUME II, which builds on the characters and story of our first eight chapters (The Wyrm survives!).”
The Wyrm is the shadowy evil force worshipped by the Crone, the ultimate antagonist of Willow’s first season. Though the Wyrm didn’t make any direct appearance in Willow’s first season, Kasdan clearly had a solid idea of it in November of last year.
“[The Crone is] the emissary of something much greater and darker and more powerful [...] I loved the idea that to whomever [the Wyrm] is, we are ants barely playing on the cement, and he needs to only reach out and crush us,”
Kasdan told Polygon during the Willow press tour.
“[The Crone is] the spokesperson of that voice and ends up being really representative to me of, weirdly enough, more of a worldview and of a philosophical view, than she is an out and out villain,” Kasdan added. “There’s nihilism at the core of the Crone that I really wanted to explore. And I think that even after her story ends, the influence of that philosophical point of view is going to leave a permanent impact on our characters.”
In the Twitter thread, Kasdan went on to talk about the themes of season 2 — including courage, desire, acceptance, comedy and beauty in the darkest places, “the enemies we must inevitably confront, both without and, often far more insidiously, from within. But, above all, it’s about the ineffable and enduring magic of friendship.”
So, is Willow canceled? No, according to its executive producer. But do we know if it’ll continue? That’s hazier.
“I have total confidence that, if an appetite for more Willow persists, Disney, Lucasfilm and this amazing cast will satisfy it,” Kasdan wrote in his thread.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney...ices-recent-price-jump-6dbf637a?siteid=yhoof2
Disney+ Users Digested the Streaming Service’s Recent Price Jump
Robbie Whelan
Data from subscription-analytics firm Antenna suggest Disney has some headroom to raise streaming prices further. By Robbie Whelan
Updated March 17, 2023 10:05 am ET
Subscribers to Walt Disney Co.’s flagship Disney+ streaming service barely blinked at a 38% price increase that the company imposed in December as part of its launch of an ad-supported streaming product.
About 94% of subscribers to the old, ad-free Disney+ service stayed with the product at a higher price point and swallowed the $3 a month price increase, according to new data from subscription-analytics firm Antenna.
Disney declined to comment on Antenna’s numbers, but the data suggest the company has some headroom to raise the streaming price beyond the current level of $10.99 a month. Newly returned Chief Executive Robert Iger has hinted that increases might be coming.
“In our zeal to grow global [subscriptions], I think we were off in terms of that pricing strategy, and we’re now starting to learn more about it and to adjust accordingly,” Mr. Iger said last week at a conference hosted by the investment bank Morgan Stanley. “We have a lot of rationalization to do from a pricing perspective, but that’s one path to profitability.”
In 2019, the company launched Disney+ at a price of $6.99 a month.
Yes, they forget why people were “cutting the cord” in the first place….And between things like ESPN+ and NBCNewsNow, cord cutting is even easier to justify than ever before.Google (of all companies) has raised Youtube TV price to $72.99/mo. Lol. They are at Cable level pricing and you get ads. Time is a flat circle. And you get to pay for your internet on top of that.
Yep. "cutting the cord" on that one this weekend. We just signed up before the super bowl because we had cable. Now they raise the price. No, thanks. We don't watch enough TV to justify it.Google (of all companies) has raised Youtube TV price to $72.99/mo. Lol. They are at Cable level pricing and you get ads. Time is a flat circle. And you get to pay for your internet on top of that.
Glad to see nearly half the cuts coming from open positions. I wonder if they will disclose how many from each division?https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-executives-thousands-layoffs-ceo-bob-iger-april-2023-3
Disney layoffs: Managers to identify thousands of staff cuts by April
3/17/23
Claire Atkinson
Over the past two weeks Disney managers have been given targets to reduce their budgets along with headcount, according to a person familiar with the company.
- Bob Iger is on a push for profitability at Disney and announced plans to cut 7,000 positions.
- Managers must identify candidates for layoffs by April, according to a source close to Disney.
- Layoffs will impact about 4,000 employees, with the rest of the cuts coming from open roles.
Disney bean counters have been looking carefully across the company in an attempt to find redundancies and eliminate executives where they can. Executives have been directed to prepare budget cuts and lists of employees to be laid off, and this person believes the news will come down in April, as managers have been told to turn in their lists in the next few weeks. It's unclear whether Disney will conduct the layoffs in smaller waves over a longer period of time or drop the hammer on thousands at the same time.
CEO Bob Iger had announced his plans to collapse the centralized content and distribution unit DMED on his first day back at the company in November. He further announced plans to eliminate 7,000 jobs on the company's February earnings call. At least 4,000 of those cuts will come from current headcount, with the rest from open positions, according to this person, who is familiar with what managers have been told.
Disney declined to comment.
Disney Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy told investors on the earnings call that the company has targeted cost savings of $5.5 billion. Some of that total will come from trimming content spending on TV and movies and the rest will come from marketing and other non-content lines.
Disney's annual meeting is April 3, when it will face at least one vocal activist investor, the National Legal and Policy and Center, which is lobbing criticism at Iger and the board over the company's alleged "wokeness" and business dealings with China, "an established serial violator of human and political rights." Disney is also under pressure from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis after clashing over the company's support for its LGBTQ+ employees.
Disney is cost cutting as it realigns the management of its global linear and streaming assets, along with its movie business, and rethinks pricing at its theme parks. Parks is expected to be hit with cuts too.
Just this week, Disney's top human resources executive Paul Richardson exited the company. He had been with Disney's ESPN for 15 years before his elevation to the C-suite role by Iger's predecessor, Bob Chapek. Richardson was replaced by Sonia Coleman, also a 15-year Disney veteran.
In February Iger announced a restructure of Disney into three divisions: Entertainment, ESPN, and Parks, Experiences and Products. Alan Bergman and Dana Walden were named co-chairmen of the Entertainment unit, with Bergman primarily looking after movies, Walden looking after TV, and the two jointly overseeing responsibility for streaming businesses and stations.
ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro took on responsibility for sports on all channels and globally, while Josh D'Amaro continued as chairman of the parks group.
In late February, Walden shared a memo announcing a new structure for her teams — handing oversight of Nat Geo and Onyx to John Landgraf, in addition to his role as Chairman of FX Content and FX Productions, and elevating Simran Sethi to EVP, programming and content strategy at ABC Entertainment and Freeform.
I expect word will leak out pretty quickly. Lots of folks watching this.Glad to see nearly half the cuts coming from open positions. I wonder if they will disclose how many from each division?
Hopefully he is one of them. One of the worst hosts? Dunno if that's even the right term, in all of sports.https://frontofficesports.com/espn-bracing-for-painful-round-of-layoffs/
ESPN Bracing For Painful Round of Layoffs
- Stephen A. Smith warns ESPN layoffs are ‘coming’.
- Parent Disney slashing 7,000 jobs; $5.5 billion in costs.
By Michael McCarthy
March 20, 2023 | 12:59 pm
ESPN is bracing for painful layoffs in the coming weeks, sources tell Front Office Sports.
As part of a corporate restructuring, parent Disney is slashing 7,000 jobs and $5.5 billion in costs. The layoffs could amount to 3% of Disney’s global workforce.
Stephen A. Smith alluded to the network’s precarious situation on his “K[no]w Mercy” podcast.
“Have you all been paying attention to the business landscape? Disney itself announced that over 7,000 employees are going to be let go,” Smith said. “ESPN is under the Disney umbrella. They’re going to have cuts coming.
“Hell, for all I know, I might be one of them. Now I doubt that. But it’s possible. No one knows.”
ESPN’s footprint has been reduced to less than
75 million U.S. homes from 100 million in 2011, and the network has suffered several layoffs over the last decade.
- Ravaged by the pandemic, ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro cut 300 jobs and let 200 positions go unfilled in 2021.
- In 2017, former president John Skipper laid off roughly 100 anchors, reporters, and analysts, including Trent Dilfer, Danny Kanell, and Jerome Bettis.
- ESPN dropped 300 employees in 2015.
For all the press and angst around cord cutting, that is a slower bleed than I would have expected, over the last 12 years.75 million U.S. homes from 100 million in 2011