By Gracelyn Skilling ’26
Disney is one of, if not the biggest media companies in the world. However, in recent years, the entertainment giant shockingly seems to have fallen off.
Disney recently announced plans to slash expenses down by another $2 billion, adding on to the already planned $5.5 billion cut in spending. A series of box office flops, including Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels, the latest installment of Indiana Jones, and recently Wish, have plagued Disney as of late, and the company lost a staggering $123 billion in market value in 2022. And it’s no secret that over the past decade they’ve been inflating the prices of everything from streaming subscriptions to their signature mouse ears sold at theme parks.
It seems like it may very well be the end of an era for Disney. What happened?
Disney+ may have doomed the box office
When Disney set their sights on the streaming industry in 2019 with the introduction of Disney+, the world braced itself for what would undoubtedly be an extraordinary second act of the greatest business run of the modern century. After its prior decades of resounding success, America’s greatest entertainment company seemed to be perfectly set up to dominate the box office, and even the streaming industry.
That’s not quite what happened. Of course, the COVID-19 doled out a blow to the whole economy, but it also seemed to accustom moviegoers to a much easier alternative: streaming. The residue of the pandemic still remains in this respect, as Disney fans are far more likely than before to simply watch a new release from their home on Disney+ than venture out to a costly movie theater.
To make matters worse, Disney+ has done anything but compensate where theater-based income lacks. Since the launch of the streaming service in 2019, Disney has lost a total of $11 billion from it.
Quantity over quality
Especially in the case of Marvel Studios, Disney has been suffering the consequences of prioritizing quantity when it comes to new content. Disney CEO Bob Iger pointed to this issue as the main cause of Marvel’s downward spiral: it was a “definite mistake,” he admits, to increase output from the company’s studio division just to “feed the streaming platforms.” He adds, “Quality needs attention. … It doesn’t happen by accident. Quantity, in our case, diluted quality.”
An overabundance of cookie-cutter media
People rag on Disney for many reasons, but there is one theme that seems to be shared among everyone: audiences are tired of live-action remakes and lackluster sequels. Even Bob Iger himself confessed that they’d “made too many,” explaining that “you have to have a reason to make it beyond commerce.”
While many have condemned this phenomenon as a cheap cash cow, the issue is that there’s some validity behind that take–Disney has been making sequels and remakes because they are, indeed, often far more lucrative than any original media they could put out and gain more interest despite their often lukewarm reception. This trope is also reflected in what many have complained to be cookie cutter characters and plots, particularly noticeable in modern Disney Princesses and their classic “adorkable” personalities. Again, while this is the more profitable route, it’s come at the cost of Disney’s reputation among many.
It seems that the root of the issue is that Disney, a giant in the entertainment industry with everything to lose and with their grip already slipping, can’t afford to take risks. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s been eating away at Disney’s once near universal popularity.
