Why Disney Needed Fox to Save the MCU | The Backdrop
Added 2024-07-30 15:09:15 +0000 UTCThis week's episode of The Backdrop is now available!
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So, any projections on what will happen once Disney finishes buying the entire planet? Once they run out of creative hunting/raiding grounds and realize that all of their conquests made them too big to maintain considering they are already forgetting how to sustainably farm? Will they leave in their wake naught but creative wasteland and jaded consumers? Or will they collapse at some point and the Circle of Life will turn the lions into grass for the process to start again?
Maciej Myczkowski
2024-08-07 23:07:55 +0000 UTCDisney actually already have invested a bit in Bollywood. I believe "Dangal" was a co-production? I actually quite liked it. (Amir Khan is great.)
Darren Mooney
2024-08-07 12:54:30 +0000 UTCThank you! I do think it is a factor, in large because - and to be clear, I am stating a fact, not something that I think is a good thing - quality has always been somewhat independent of box office performance. There is no real correlation between the two, as much as one might wish it were so. Sometimes good movies make money and sometimes bad movies bomb, but just as often bad movies make money and good movies bomb. I think a crap movie in a large franchise can still make a lot of money - "Rise of Skywalker" made over a billion, "Crystal Skull" grossed over $800m and was the second highest-grossing film of the year, the Michael Bay "Transformers" were consistently terrible but made money for a long time. I think the big factor is exhaustion. The worst "Transformers" movie is (I think uncontroversially) the second one, even if they are all bad. But the films keep making money, until they enter a decline with four and five. I think that's not because audiences suddenly had a "this is bad!" realisation, but because they'd just had enough. I really do think the big issue with "Star Wars" was turning it into a Marvel-like content-delivery mechanism. It's a franchise that really works as a "sometimes" treat, where you build up demand and everybody goes to see it, and the more closely the movies release to one another, the more the box office declines. "Solo" absolutely would have made more (maybe significantly more) in the Christmas slot instead of the May slot, but Disney were very obviously testing to see if they could get multiple "Star Wars" movies in a year, like Marvel. And audiences don't really like that. Even with Marvel. I think a lot of their recent product isn't great. But then I think a lot of their earlier product wasn't great either. I have a hard time arguing "Deadpool and Wolverine" is better than "The Marvels" - again, I don't think either is good - but there's a big difference between a film that is tied to two very recent streaming shows, and a film tied to stuff that's been bouncing around the zeitgeist for two decades but yet to be exploited. I also think being the only Marvel movie this year - instead of one of three Marvel movies last year - helped keep it fresh.
Darren Mooney
2024-08-07 12:53:35 +0000 UTCI wonder about this myself. I think you can see he problem with Pixar, where because so many of the Pixar movies between 2010 and 2019 were sequels to established brands, there really aren't too many original films for them to sequelise in 2020-2029. "Inside Out" was the big one, and they did that. Maybe they could do "Coco." But who wants "The Better Dinosaur?" And you can see that. Their next sequel is "Toy Story 5", but what's after that? Can you do another "Nemo", another "Incredibles", another "Monsters?" Maybe, but it feels like you've exhausted the market.
Darren Mooney
2024-08-07 12:45:12 +0000 UTCI agree in the most part with TwoHeavens. Esq. Cultural fracking is an awesome term, but it does suggest that there is a finite amount of culture/joy to be extracted from the bedrock of star wars/marvel when in fact this is limitless. The issue is the limits that are set by the studios. Just as AI will never be able to invent a new story, studios will always go for the safe (mean) option to ensure financial viability. This is unfortunate because a lot of what made the SW extended universe so rich were the attempts that failed and the successes that came from an unexpected source, like the unofficial/not cannon books.
Ben Repton
2024-08-02 12:55:17 +0000 UTCCurious to see what Disney buys next - maybe Honk Kong/Chinese based companies? Or stepping into Bollywood? I've seen some really crazy over the top interesting stuff coming out in my local theaters from India this year.
Larry Stouder-Studenmund
2024-07-31 16:14:04 +0000 UTCIt makes sense that they want to save it, and the argument makes sense too... but y'know it's just buying Fox, not the infinite power of Christ. I'm not sure anything short of the latter can save the MCU at this point. I do disagree to a degree with the Star Wars and Marvel thing in terms of cultural fracking (which is still spot on as a description). They're not dying as IPs because every little bit of raw ore's been mined out of them, leaving them feeling tired and boring. What's killing them is raw incompetence, especially in the writing department. They're really not effectively exploiting their IP, because they're handing it to a bunch of dullards and incompetents. Which goes back to the whole thing about Disney not being able to innovate thing. Good episode!
TwoHeavens. Esq
2024-07-30 16:05:48 +0000 UTCContinuing to love this series! Any thoughts on the next source of popular art from the past 10 years/nostalgia sources to be exploited ruthlesslessly once the Fox Marvels are dried up?
William Alexander
2024-07-30 15:45:32 +0000 UTC
