Disney's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year...

OK. Maybe it wasn't THAT bad, but that's the wording of the book I stole the title from. Hell, maybe it WAS an OK year. Interestingly, when you Google for something similar, apparently the pundits say 2023 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for Disney as well. So were it not for Deadpool and Wolverine... I dunno.

Anyhow, speaking of the MCU (you're joining at a bit of a low point, by the way), 2025 wasn't very good. We'll say it was a net loss. I'll start there because that's what I've been following so I know the most about it. It's also the easiest to get reported numbers on, and the easiest to model projections on, given there's so much applicable data:

Captain America: Bomb. Reported budget of $180 million. I (and many others) suspect that number should be much higher, but that's the reported budget so we'll go with it. Going by the standard 2.5x multiplier for break even, it needed to make $450 million. But it was reported that it only needed to make $425 to break even. Again, not really buying it but we'll go with it. Actual worldwide box office? $415 million. So it lost $10 million even by the most easy standards.

Thunderbolts: Bigger bomb. Again, $180 million. Again supposedly only needing $425 million to break even. Unfortunately it only made $382 million. So it lost Disney $43 million.

Finally, we get Fantastic Four, which just left theaters. Budget "North of $200 million." So we'll be charitable and say $201 million. Again, that's probably way low for the actual number. But at that rate it needed about $503 million to break even. It actually pulled close to $522 million. So it probably manages to cover the losses on Captain America.

So we'll say net loss to Disney from the MCU of around $43 million.

I probably need to get to something productive so we'll have to dig into everything else later but we've got Snow White which was a big bomb. They continue to erode the Pixar brand with the big bomb of Elio. The bright point is the live action version of Lilo & Stitch which was a pretty big hit. Over a billion worldwide, IIRC. In the golden years Disney could pull that in the US market alone, but that's neither here nor there.

Tron is out right now. The sequel no one asked for. Waiting a couple decades between each film is...interesting, I guess. We'll probably have to wait until this leaves theaters to really dig into it anyway.

There's also Freakier Friday, a sequel that comes decades after the remake of an even more ancient Disney film. It didn't make much money, but compared to animation or a sci-fi epic, it probably didn't have to make much to be profitable. We'll have to look into it.

Beyond that, continuing the trend of long pauses between sequels, we've got another Avatar movie in December. It's hard to not make money on that (for some reason) but we'll see. There's also probably a ton of other movies I'm missing because these days Disney owns like, 75% of the studios. But that will have to wait.

Then there's the Parks, Dr. Who, Disney+, and ABC. We'll see if we get around to them or not.

Looking at their 2025 films...

Disney/Pixar:
Snow White...bomb
Elio...bomb (Pixar movies used to be an event!)
Lilo & Stitch...big hit, paid for everything else
Zootopia 2...no data yet
Freakier Friday...may be profitable after streaming

Marvel:
Captain America: Brave New World...almost certainly lost money, reshoots inflated the budget
Thunderbolts*... probably not profitable (shame, I really liked it)
Fantastic Four: First Steps... probably profitable, but disappointing

20th Century:
TRON: Ares...bomb
Predator: Badlands...good opening, probably a modest success
Avatar: Fire and Ash...earlier films did $2-3 billion each, will probably save their ass

Not a great year, but a couple of big hits and a few more modest successes will probably keep it from being a disaster.

I am SO glad that Disney wont be getting their hands on any properties owned by Warner Bros.

FWIW

Did anyone else fall asleep watching Fantastic Four? I did. That's pretty weird for me cuz the last time I took a nap while not sick was 1987. The other two MCU films this year were great for my web and socials surfing.

Interestingly, after Lilo & Stitch, Freakier Friday was their next most profitable movie so far. I was shocked. But it cost like, $42M to make. So pulling in something like $154M, it wound up grossing $40-50M above the 2.5x budget rule of thumb. Just going off the top of my head right now, I'll have more solid numbers later, but I wanna say it did about as much box office as Elio for, like 1/3 of the budget. And right now Tron: Ares is trending about the same as Elio--but at a reported budget of $220M it needs to make significantly more than Fantastic Four which is never going to happen.

I just have to take that at face value. Trying to drill into it and see what it means would take a lot more time and energy than I'm willing to commit. It's one thing to look up what movies came out in 2025, what their reported budgets were, what their box office was, and have an idea if they made or lost money. It's completely another thing to be able to look into ABC, Disney+, parks, merchandising, licensing, etc. If one wanted to sit down and really dig into the Form 10-K and some other documents required from publicly traded companies, you might be able to coax some info out of this graphic. But on the other hand I just reread "The Smartest Guys in the Room...", the story of Enron. If a company wants to hide bad news there are so many ways they can do it. It could be that there IS no bad news, but it would be very hard to know one way or another.

I will mention that not that long ago in another thread I mentioned that Disney's stock was trading at $115, which was basically where it was 10 years ago. Well today it's trading at $105. I've seen writers who are bullish on the stock but I don't buy it. Having said that, I'll point out that back in the mid 1990s Apple stock was bumping along in the single digits and I was waiting for it to go under like Commodore. Then they brought Steve Jobs back and I thought he made some very stupid decisions that were going to make things worse. And we know how that turned out.

if you're gonna presume bad faith in the reported numbers just because Enron did it, than there's no conversation to be had. As you say, it's provable by anyone who knows how and where to dig.

between the acquisitions and retention of the wider demographic they've been going for (along with all the ancillary markets those touch like merch/licensing, etc).

I glanced at the stock history, seems to match the recovery pattern shown here...

Bullshit.
You just don't want to read anything that proves you wrong.

God, I hate to take the Volpone side of an argument, but presumably there is a difference between Disney's overall income (which Spaceturkey's chart shows and which presumably includes revenue from such sources as its theme parks and its merchandising) and its movies' box office performance in 2025. It certainly is possible that Disney had a mediocre or even a bad year at the box office while is overall net income is sky high.

That said:
1. Why does any non-Disney stockholder care about whether Disney made a big profit, a little profit, a big loss or a little loss?
2. Is there any proof of the rule of thumb of "a movie must make 2.5x its production budget to not be a flop" from an actual person with insight into the ways of Hollywood? Especially because basic math says for something to require 2.5x its production budget as its break-even figure means the studio would need to spend 1x its production budget (on actual production) plus 1.5x its production budget on marketing and other expenses before it breaks even. Does anyone have a credible accounting of a studio spending more on marketing a film than on actually producing a film?

Because they're obsessed with trying to "prove" that woke is dead. Or that it's ruining movies. Or something.

Short answer? No.

None of that math even makes sense, at least from my own experience running a medium-scale business. Maybe (maaaaaaybe) some films spend more on marketing than the budget of the movie, but I am 100% certain that is not the case for all films. Or most films.

Any sort of honest attempt to look at that subject would look at how Disney/woke movies did compared to non-Disney/non-woke movies.

And it would look at other profit centers, including streaming, DVD, merch and licensing deals.

And it would also recognize that Disney presumably does an aggregate portfolio of movies. So even accepting the 2.5x rule as substantial and all reported numbers for production budgets as accurate, it would recognize that Disney's live action Lilo & Stitch was had more than a billion in box office against a production budget of $100m, meaning that the $750 million in profit from that alone more than covers the entirety of the remaining Disney slates alleged losses.

You forgot the third question:

3. Why are you responding to a troll thread, especially one started by an imbecile?

Sorry, also forgot the fourth question, that renders all other questions moot:

4. How well is @We Are Borg's Disney stock doing, after he bought it in his retirement account back in 2013 for about $55 per share?

Anyone who bought at $55 / share is pretty happy right now.

That's been the general rule for Hollywood for as long as I can remember.

That's because......

Has there ever been a credible accounting of any studio in Hollywood like ....ever? Hollywood is notorious for reporting movies that make huge profits as losses like Yesterday and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. There was also the Batgirl movie that Warner Bros spent 80 million to make just to shelve and make a tax write off. Shady Hollywood accounting is pretty much common knowledge for anyone that's followed how that system works for any period of time.

Also, I really don't care what Disney or anyone else is profiting or losing. Just wanted to clear up why that line has been generally accepted for so long.

Which is why I pay zero attention to people like @Volpone .

And even if all those numbers were true, what does it prove?
Thunderbolts made less than Thor: Love And Thunder, but is anyone going to argue that Thor was the better film? So talking about box office, especially in relation to quality, is a fools errand.
Which, of course, explains why Volpone obsesses over it.

Oh I could go on for days about high grossing movies that I feel are inferior to others. Chief among them Avatar. I could name at least 20 films easy that are IMO superior....

1. Dances with Wolves (did that story better)
2. Back to the Future
3. Star Wars (no, not a new hope. It was just called Star Wars before Lucas started fucking with it)
4. Empire Strikes Back
5. Return of the Jedi
6. Star Trek The Wrath of Khan
7. Star Trek The Voyage Home
8. Star Trek The Undiscovered Country
9. Star Trek First Contact
10. Halloween (or any other John Carpenter film)
11. A Nightmare On Elm Street
12. The Godfather
13. The Godfather Part 2
14. Goodfellas
15. Scarface
16. Bram Stokers Dracula
17. Psycho (or any other Hitchcock film)
18. Pulp Fiction( or any other Tarantino film)
19. Forest Gump
20. Any of the Batman films

etc
etc
etc

And those are just off the top of me head..

I could have went in more horror, science fiction or superhero movies and even some documentaries like Pumping Iron (or any Arnold film) that I would prefer to watch over that CGI puke fest crap called Avatar.

Not as well as if he'd sold it all in March 2021.

Ouch. OK. Snow White. Apparently its budget was on the order of $270 million. That means it needed around $675 million just to break even. It wound up grossing under $206 million--losing almost $470 million.

Elio: Reported budget of $150 million. Box office of $154 million, losing around $221 million for the Mouse.

On the bright side, Lilo & Stitch. $100 million budget. Worldwide gross of $1.037 BILLION, bringing in around an estimated $787 million in profit.

So this side of the Disney world is up around $96 million. Hang on. Let's look at Freakier Friday. OK. Reported budget of $42 million. Times 2.5 puts us at an estimate for $105 million to break even. The movie wound up doing $153 million worldwide, bagging a tidy $48 million. So around $144 million in profit. Whacking off the losses from the MCU, they're still up $100 million or so for the year.

WB had a pretty good year compared to Disney.

Little piece of advice. If you’re going to keep doing these types of posts/threads, keep in mind that if a production does a film in the UK, they have to disclose their actual budgets. Not a criticism, just saying. Those numbers don’t come out until later and often times these companies will reveal their true figures during earnings calls. Disney had an earnings call last week I believe and the shareholders often get lied to. Keep all of that in mind. Also, check out That Park Place for more accurate reporting.

I just took a look at that website and it's abundantly obvious, even to a casual observer, that it's extremely biased.

Biased, maybe, but they still accurately report on things.

The Amateur. Budget: $60 million. Break even point: $150 million. Worldwide box office: $96 million. Net loss: $54 million.
The Roses. Budget: $30 million. Break even point: $75 million. Worldwide box office: $51 million. Net loss: $24 million.
Tron: Ares. Budget $220 million. Break even point: $550 million. Worldwide box office: $126 million (to date)
Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Budget: $55 million. Break even point: $138 million. Worldwide box office: $20 million (to date)
Predator: Badlands. Budget: $100 million. Break even point: $250 million. Worldwide box office: TBD
Rental Family. Unable to find any financial information.
Zootopia 2. Unable to find any financial information.
Avatar 3: Fire & Ash. Budget $250 million. Break even point: $625 million. Worldwide box office: TBD

So that knocks them down to $22 million in net profit for 2025 cinematic releases that have completed their theatrical runs.

Talk about having absolutely no self-awareness.

*Injects Volpone with truth serum*

Volpone- I want Disney to cater to white Christians again.

There!

Catering to the alphabet community hasn't really panned out too well, has it?

Not dog-whistle-y enough.
Totally a low-pitched people-whistle there.

Show your work.
If you can.