Disney Downsizing?

Seems like Disney will be making their company a little smaller (which will result in a lot of money made…since the movies that they do make will be better choices–at least one would hope).


Darkhorizons.com has the scoop (like there was ever anyone else?):

Disney – Jobs & Films Have Got To Go
Posted: Wednesday July 12th 2006 3:09pm
Source: Variety
Author: Garth Franklin

Disney Pictures will announce within the next ten days that it’s cutting back on the number of films it makes to around eight per year – it currently releases around 18 – and will substantially reduce its workforce reports Variety.

All movies will be Disney-branded, meaning companies like Touchstone could be vastly diminished. The cutbacks will be far greater than many anticipated, as Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook looks to reinvent the architecture of his studio.

Move reflects an effort to improve the studio’s return on investment and get infrastructure back into line which, despite high profile success like “Pirates” and “Cars”, has seen some failures too like “Annapolis”, “Stay Alive” and “The Wild”.

Yeah, I don’t even remember ever seeing a commercial for Stay Alive or The Wild, maybe that should be there first step, making their products known. Annapolis I did see commercials for and wanted to see it, but it was in and out of the theaters in like three weeks. I’ve heard that it was actually good and may check it out on DVD soon.

I think its a great new step for the company, I don’t think all the names should go under the Disney label, because what if there is a need to make a rated R movie. The highest rating a Disney movie ever made was a PG-13 (that was for the first Pirates movie) and before that was a PG (which started with Tarzan and later followed a whole bunch more of the animated or CG movies like The Incredibles). Here’s a question I’d like answered, Disney used to own not only Touchstone Pictures but also Hollywood Pictures (which made a few movies here and there but I can remember the name for two reasons, number one it was called Hollywood Pictures (or films or productions or something along the lines of that, but never the less, it was Hollywood) and its symbol was a sphinx, which was always bizzare to me. The second was that the first time I saw the name was for Super Mario Bros. the movie, for all I know it could have been around a lot longer than that, but that was the first time the name caught my eye.

Anyway, Disney also owns Miramax and Diminesion (both previously owned by Bob and Harvey Weinstein who now own The Weinstein Co.) which usually do dramas and horror movies respectively. So, part of me wonders why they would throw all of that away and then I realized that if they are restructuring everything, its best to just have one company, first of all you don’t have to pay all of those people in all of those companies and you’d be saving a ton of money, and second they could eventually bring back the names of the companies as they see fit to make certain types of movies. So, I’m fine by that.

Disney is doing good right now, they have my blessing.

–Socram

18 thoughts on “Disney Downsizing?

  1. flammable says:

    Dunno, man…I think they should just sell Dimension, Miramax, Hollywood, and anyone else they own. I can remember hearing that Disney threw a fit over Quentin Tarantino making a Miramax film, so I don’t think the whole thing fits. Put the studios in someone else’s capable hands.

    While working at Target, I saw a lot of kids’ books for The Wild, but never heard much about it at all. There was a PS2 game that seemed to sell pretty well, when it first came out a lot of kids brought their parents in to buy it.

    As for Annapolis, never heard of it at all. Then again, I don’t watch TV, so if they had ads for either one, I wouldn’t know.

  2. socramforever says:

    I did want to see it and my cousins (whom I’m working with) saw it and said it was good. They also said that the Kiera Knightly movie Domino was good too, but I haven’t heard anything good about that movie from anyone.

  3. socramforever says:

    I heard it sucked from critics, but I’ve only met two people who actually saw the movie so I can’t really say. They both have said they liked it…but I’m the judge of my own movie likingness…does that make sense?

  4. flammable says:

    Oh, I should mention…when I worked at Target, the dude who trained me made fun of anyone who liked Domino. Apparently it was that bad (he had decent taste in movies).

  5. flammable says:

    Yes, absolutely. I haven’t met anyone who didn’t enjoy Pirates.

    In fact, he was a Disney fan, big time. Every chance he gets, he takes his wife to Florida to go to the theme park.

  6. flammable says:

    I totally haven’t been there since I was a kid, cause my parents stopped taking us on trips…all of hte misbehaving and stuff.

  7. socramforever says:

    I guess its a good thing when you’re an only child and the only thing you have to worry about is a cat (who doens’t even go on the trips with you…).

Leave a Reply to flammable Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.