Once the public face of squeaky-clean, harmless family entertainment, the Walt Disney Corporation has evolved into a widespread conglomerate known as much for the properties it controls as the films it produces. With subsidiaries including Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, National Geographic, A&E, 20th Century Fox, ESPN, Hulu, and Pixar, Disney has a commanding control of some of the world’s most lucrative franchises, plus an extensive library of film and TV classics. Its streaming service Disney+ signals a new interest in controlling its own online distribution, setting aside decades of licensing partnerships. Follow along with The Verge as we look at Disney’s new films and shows, and its strategies for dominating the box office and the streaming dollar.
Visual effects workers at Disney voted 13-0 to form a union with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) on Tuesday.
The 18-member division is looking for fair compensation, better health care, and retirement benefits, Variety reports. Just last month, Marvel’s VFX workers voted to unionize with the IATSE as well.
From its new writers room staffing minimums to guarantees that staffers will receive a bigger cut of streaming residuals, the WGA’s new labor contract is set to fundamentally improve working conditions in the entertainment industry.
Wish is meant to blend modern CGI animation with the gorgeous watercolor animation Disney was originally known for. That should make it similar looking to films like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Those are gorgeously animated films with the latter looking like a hand drawn book brought to three-dimensional life.
Wish definitely has more of a Frozen vibe than that, but you can see sparks of that blended animation in a few moments...in between clips of a goat talking about its butt.
The Hollywood Reporter has a good read this morning on the last-minute negotiations to end the writers strike. It seems to come pretty much entirely from the studios’ perspective, but it’s a good read anyway.
Apparently the writers guild and the studios were barely even negotiating — everybody was waiting on the other side to make a move. But with the help of some showrunners and some late-night negotiating, a deal finally got done. And then almost fell apart. And then finally got done for real.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
The company is planning to drive growth by pumping roughly $60 billion into its parks, experiences, and cruise lines, noting in a blog post that Disney parks have “significant room for further expansion on land and at sea.”
Here’s hoping these new experiences will be more affordable than the $5,000 Star Wars hotel that Disney is shutting down later this month.
All 118 discs (including Pixar special features) are available exclusively at Walmart, and it’s $1,499.96. Before you run out and buy it, though, a word of caution: these are HD Blu-rays, so you won’t be watching Frankenweenie in crispy 4K resolution.
I’m not sure who feels this is worth the price of entry, but there you go.
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Disney and Charter’s historic agreement has introduced a new kind of cable bundle, and it could be the thing that saves cable TV... or destroys it.
The channel blackout that cut off an eventual US Open finalist from legitimately watching the tournament he was playing in appears likely to end before Monday Night Football kicks off tonight.
That’s according to CNBC’s David Faber, and the outlet has now confirmed it includes a “discounted wholesale price for subscribers for Disney streaming services, and an increase in marketplace, or subscriber fees, paid to Disney.” Also, there is no word on how this will impact the Hulu discount offer.
Update: And there it is, it’s over.
Disney has amended its federal lawsuit against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to only include claims about free speech. The entertainment giant will take its development contract disputes to a state-level court instead.
Disney’s lawsuit accuses the DeSantis Administration of “government retaliation,” alleging the state took away Disney’s self-governing power after the company pushed back on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) union announced that over 80 percent of the 18 in-house Visual Effects (VFX) crewmembers at Walt Disney Pictures expressed a desire to unionize. Their organizing follows a push at Marvel that started earlier this month and is in the midst of ongoing strikes by the actors’ and writers’ guilds.
IATSE VFX Organizer Mark Patch:
Today, courageous Visual Effects workers at Walt Disney Pictures overcame the fear and silence that have kept our community from having a voice on the job for decades. With an overwhelming supermajority of these crews demanding an end to ‘the way VFX has always been,’ this is a clear sign that our campaign is not about one studio or corporation. It’s about VFX workers across the industry using the tools at our disposal to uplift ourselves and forge a better path forward.
The two may work together on the in-development streaming version of the popular sports channel, according to The Information. Amazon may take a minority stake in the network, the report says.
The Information also reports that the new ESPN streaming service could cost between $20 and $35 per month and says that the price could go beyond that “if ESPN is able to add a significant amount of new content” — it’s also been in discussions with other sports leagues.
[The Information]
The Information reports that Disney, seeking a “strategic partner” for ESPN, has had talks with Verizon. This is a bad idea: mobile carriers are historically terrible at distributing content and software, because their only distribution idea is installing bloatware on midrange Android phones. You will recall that the entire thesis of the AT&T / Time Warner merger was distributing bloatware on midrange Android phones, a “vision deal” which produced a grayscale 4:3 Snyder Cut before collapsing into the arms of David Zaslav.
[The Information]
TSG, a major movie financier, is suing Disney for alleged breach of contract. TSG has helped finance a lot of movies in Hollywood over the years, including films at Sony and Warner Bros., and Fox, and claims that the folks at Disney “have tried to use nearly every trick in the Hollywood accounting book” to hold onto cash that TSG feels its owed.
As the Wall Street Journal notes, its super unusual for a spat between a studio and film financiers to become public. Unfortunately that was before studios like Disney were so well integrated vertically that they that they could own everything from ideation to production to distribution and keep it all on their own platform—effectively keeping all the money in their own pockets too. We’re in a new era of streaming, and the rules of Hollywood are being rewritten before our very eyes.
With streaming services across the board raising their prices, you owe it to yourself to have a good deep think about what you want out of all these subscriptions and what you’re actually getting for your money.
Yesterday Bloomberg reported on what might be some of the most fascinating news around the contract negotiations in Hollywood right now: the names of the 12 studio execs meeting weekly to work out the AMPTP’s bargaining positions.
According to Bloomberg these 12 execs are: David Zaslav (Warner Bros. Discovery), Ted Sarandos (Netflix), Jen Salke and Mike Hopkins (Amazon), Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht (Apple), Donna Langley (NBCUniversal), Tony Vinciquerra (Sony Pictures), Brian Robbins and George Cheeks (Paramount), Dana Walden and Alan Bergman (Disney).
You might have noticed Bob Iger is missing from that list, but Bloomberg says he’s apparently started attending recently.
[Bloomberg.com]
and wondered how an unlicensed two hour film could exist when even Disney had to negotiate with Sony to use the character in films. Sony, Disney, and Marvel are all very protective of the character so it’s a surprise to see this film still live. It’s also super unusual to see a fan film of this scope outside of the Star Trek fan film community, especially as the last time a Star Trek fan film attempted a project of this high a production quality level Paramount sued the creator.
Spider-Man: Lotus’s other major problem is it was funded by a non-profit more than two years ago and immediately faced challenges after the VFX team quit due to racist remarks previously made, separately, by the lead actor and the director.
[Yahoo Entertainment]
