For the past decade, Disney has been the Teflon movie studio, remarkably adept at withstanding the tectonic changes impacting the film industry, and well fortified by its arsenal of key properties …
This isn't just a Disney issue, it is happening across the board (The Flash.) A report was released in March stating that the attendance was 35% down from pre-pandemic levels and falling. The studios don't want to face the issue, or highlight it in the media, that people aren't going to the theaters, at least enough to make it profitable for both studios and theaters.
Tom Cruise is out there now (recent media blitz) to try and get butts in seats. Good luck. I think Covid opened the door, much like working at home did for workers, to watching movies via streaming.....at home.
@rodneyck@echoplex21 It's a serious problem, and the studios aren't doing themselves any favors by thinking that it's superhero movies that are keeping the audiences out of the theaters:
But yeah most of that budget got sunk into tooooo many action sequences. Dragged like crazy. I bet you could cut like 30 minutes of action footage and end up with a better paced movie.
Kathleen Kennedy had an incredibly respectable career but clearly needs to go. She worked better with Spielberg and Lucas.
Alan Horn should have stepped down 5 years earlier. Bergman is not off to a great start. He needs some big wins in the next couple of years or he needs to go too.
Even Feige is fading.
They desperately need some fresh innovative thinking at the top.
Feige probably wants Bergman's job but I'd move him over to Kennedy's job for 5 years and make him prove himself over there first. That'd give him a fresh challenge. Lucasfilm and he both need the reboot.
For Marvel, Disney had James Gunn but they botched it with the termination which lead him to DC. He was the perfect person to build up the next phase of the MCU and GOTG3 is by far the best movie released since Endgame (as much as I enjoyed No Way Home).
I think they were hoping for Taika to be the next one up but Love & Thunder may have put a damper on things.
It's hard to know whether L&T was Taika's flub or the studio's. Either way, you're right, it's bad for his prospects.
Then again, I'm not sure I see him as having the needed business acumen/savvy. Seems like Favreau and Johnson are maybe better equipped leaders in that way. Whedon would have worked too, if he hadn't have tuned out to be such a turd.
They have nothing new, and have tortured the old standby's to death. My god, that Indy movie is just a fucking mess. Kennedy keeps shooting these properties in the fucking head with her politics. Nobody wants to listen to the preaching anymore.
@ikidd@echoplex21 The politics aren't the problem. Across the Spider-Verse is "woke" as hell and its on the fast track to be the most successful movie ever made. What happened to Indiana Jones is the same thing that happened to the James Bond franchise. What was innovative back then is the same old same old now. Bond got left behind by contemporary spys like Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt and The Gentlemen. Indy got left behind by action thrillers like The Fast and The Furious and John Wick.
I think everyone is tired of the rehashing of move characters. I would rather see something completely new than just another remake or reboot of a movie or TV show I seen tons of times.