They brought some of the accountants from Hollywood to the bay area and now all equity not owned by the founders or investors mysteriously becomes worthless right before a liquidation event.
None of these figures matter a damn. Gross figures aren't profit. And you need to adjust for inflation. Avatar 2 doesn't even show up in the top 25 all time when you adjust for inflation.
If the prod cost for Ava2 is $250 as reported, and marketing is roughly the same, then you're down to $1.5B before all the theaters take their cut. It doesn't mean that Disney netted $1.5B.
But theater attendance is way down either way - and streaming make have cannibalized other revenue streams more than people think.
It's debatable whether these films feel like "sequel direct to DVD" or not, but I don't think it's debatable that audiences are watching them.
https://www.adweek.com/lostremote/nielsen-top-15-stranger-th...
The problem with streaming is that you can stream repeatedly (believe me I know that) without incurring anything additional to Disney but costs. In the "old days" going to see Encanto in theaters would have cost our family easily $80+ - now that's just the cost for Disney+. And we would have gone, but why bother when it's available to stream?
They also cannot milk for MORE than the streaming cost/yr. I've noticed a lot of Encanto merchandizing on the clearance aisle, but I don't really have a way to track that.
I think Disney intentionally took a lot of family-oriented films and kept them out of theatres during covid (reminder Encanto released in 2021) to avoid the optics of creating super spreader events where children are at the forefront. In their conference call they mention going back to theatrical releases.
Their parks and live experiences made a huge profit last year: $29 billion in revenue, and approximately $8 billion in operating profits.
Their tech-heavy streaming division was the part that lost money: over $4 billion for the year, almost entirely offsetting the gross revenue made by the the film division from theatrical releases.
Yep, that's right: the only part of Disney that lost money was the tech-focused part.
They're running out of franchises to milk, and making something new and original is not in their corporate culture.