When rumors swirled that one of 2009’s biggest hits, The Proposal, may spawn a sequel, Disney gave a very curt answer: NO!
The Mouse House only wants to make big money blockbusters that include merchandising in anything that they already own (i.e. based off of Disneyland rides, characters from Marvel or Pixar) or the $30 million project with cheap young, breakout movie stars.
“Everything in the middle is toast,” divulged a producer on the Disney lot.
This new business model came after the studio’s CEO Robert Iger publicly admitted that 2009 was an embarrassing year after they put out such flops as Confessions of a Shopaholic, G-Force, Surrogates and Old Dogs.
Iger states:
“The value to our company of a really high-quality, successful Disney/Pixar ├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥ and down the road, Marvel ├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥ film is going to be a lot greater over time than any we could create from a non-Disney branded, or non-Pixar or non-Marvel film. That is where we are headed.”
And in order to pay for the $10 billion Disney spent on Pixar and Marvel, Iger decided that their films need to do better than hits at the box office, they need to sell a shizload of merch. We don’t know how they’re going to improve! In 2008, Disney sold $30 billion worth of licensed consumer products!!!
It’s definitely business savvy, but it’s also too bad the American public will be inundated with Disney’s creative mediocrity (sans Pixar, we hope)!
They’ll be fine! People would buy Mickey Mouse toilet paper if they could! Sigh.