After more than ten years, five feature films and half a dozen TV shows, the news came out recently that Lucasfilm still hasn't made back its purchase price for Disney.
How do you acquire a property like Lucasfilm and NOT make a dime off of it??!! It wasn’t from lack of trying. The utter incompetence of the Disney empire is staggering.
Maybe they want to kill uplifting franchises to put in their newer, differently abled franchises. Making the older ones so bad that newer ones will seem better by comparison. Or am I too deep in conspiracy theories?
You are close, but wrong. No family of four wants to spend $100 to go to a theater movie when they can watch it at home streaming on their own big screen TV. Movie ticket sales are down for all movies. Nothing to do with woke lecturing.
@@mikecally5720he is right and you are wrong. Families will pay anything to get out of the house and keep the kids entertained while you rest in your theater seat in relative peace for 2 hours. The individual doesn’t have those burdens and can easily select something else to do.
@@clos3078 You are all wrong. Total movie theater ticket sales from 2015-2019 averaged $11 billion. Since 2020, the average is only $5 billion. I know you think the answer is woke hollywood, but you're wrong.
@@mikecally5720 I like how you selected the years when COVID started and the writer strikes to make your point. Don’t want to mention that to ruin the “own”you think you just did on us.
@@clos3078 It's the truth. We are in the fifth year since covid, and movies have not made it back to pre-covid levels, and maybe never will. Streaming is taking a bite out of theater ticket sales.
Yep, people need to realize that if all the top investors of the company really cared about PROFIT, then they'd have forced the board (including Bob Iger) to change things up and actually make money. But the fact that 12+ years later they still haven't even paid back their INITIAL INVESTMENT, let alone generated any real profit for the shareholders? Yeah, the shareholders are in on it. It's not just Bob Iger (or the temporary fall guy Chapek). It's probably people like Larry Fink from Blackrock and his ilk who are gladly letting their money propagandize everyone and everything.
The worst part is, they're doing it with YOUR money---your IRA's and 401-k's. If you have one of these accounts, check where the funds are being invested. If it's one of those ESG hedge funds or private equity firms, insist that your account be invested elsewhere.
The director Milos Forman once said in an interview that in communist Czechoslovakia a filmmaker could make bad film after bad film but had no problem getting state funding as long as they followed the Party line. There is nothing new under the sun as they say...
Funny enough, I've seen some CZECH films in the last few years, all hilarious COMEDIES, and the only time one of them got political was the 1964 western "The Lemonade Kid" was apparently had an ANTI-CAPITALIST slant to it. (The crazy part is, so-called "Communist" Russia and its satellites, were NOT and NEVER WERE actually "Communist" or "Marxist", but instead, were "STATE CAPITALISM", where the goverenment, not the people, own everything. Which is actually FASCIST. Which is how it is in the US, except here, the Capitalists OWN the so-called "government". It's sickening, and self-destructive.
@@henrykujawa4427 How do you think communism ultimately functions? That is how communism functions too, to achieve perfect equality the state has to micro-manage and take all the money from the high earners to distribute it "Equally." ... It is gonna be state-controlled either way. Now the difference between communism and fascim is that communism will have FULL control of every single corporation in the name of the people. While in Fascism the government has an alliance with the corporations and they follow the party line in return of favors basically merging the two into one as if it was the same... and thus communism. So yeah basically... Fascism is just communism while pretending not to be. having the illusion of private ownership of corporations.
but was it a live grenade? when did KK get hired? I woulda put Rick McCallum in charge...it's a male brand it shoulda been helmed by a guy.... eh maybe it was more of a timed nuke.....I don't deny that the franchises were in bad shape, we know SW and the last Indy movie was....yeah and SW never fit Disney....as much as it was for kids it was very adult too, disney ruined everything!
@@M4sterSamwise i know but i looked it up, NO she was under Spielberg in the 80's and the first lucasfilm thing she did was producer on crytsal skull.... she had zero hands in or on the first 6 SW movies.... but my issue is when did she become so high up that nobody else that was capable could be appointed?? McCallum coulda done it, Ben Burt could have as well and there were a few others who coulda been a decent head of the studio.... look if I had a really cool mountain bike that everyone wanted i'd give it to someone i know and trust, not a side looker on..... or a recent addition to the group, it's another bag of issues with a company but you stil have to put someone in place who knows the company and the product SW was betrayed on all levels
Imagine the level of incompetence necessary to be unable to profit from the _cash printing machine_ which is Star Wars. I wonder what the problem could be?
It was one of the biggest IPs when they bought it, where they could have easily made the measly $4 billion dollars back that they paid for all of Lucas Film IPs, which is "measly", because at that time, $4 billion for Star Wars alone was SUPER cheap. A huge steal. And STILL they have not only not made that money back in over a decade, but I would bet they lost wayy more by spending costs and not making that money back.
They have a job for the same reasons why Disney has been failing: they're too afraid of taking chances. They would rather stick with people who produced results 20 years ago than take a chance on new talent. Sticking to their guns hasn't worked out for them. They might as well start taking chances at this point
i work in retail. We're at that point in the year where we're clearing inventory space for summer. Recently we just went about cleaning out the toy department 90% of the clearance space went to wish, black panther 2, and star wars (mostly ahsoka)... yeah, there's a reason why Disney never talks about it's merchandising anymore....
@@airsoftbuddy83 the saddest thing about it is it wasn't undermined by politics or anything, it was just incredibly fucking lazy. the 100th anniversary of Disney, a company once a gold standard of american creativity.... and we get a movie that i swear was written mostly by AI....
Nah, Disney has tons of old Lucasarts properties they haven't ruined yet. Properties Lucas didn't care about because they weren't made by him, he just owned them.
I'd be suprised if Disney have made more that a few million from Lucasfilm at the end of the day. You have all of the operating costs for a decade plus the hiring and firing sprees. You have all of the straight to Disney plus shows that haven't made Disney a single dime yet have cost hundreds of millions to make. Obviously we don't know how much the video games/merchandise/licensing and everything else like that makes for the company. It would be interesting to get a look at the Disney accounts to really find out what's happening.
They are already being investigated for SEC violations 100%. No way after that RCID/CFTOD sh*t they tried to pull. They admitted to wrongdoing when they settled. That genie doesn't go back into the bottle...
Wonder why no one is investigating Disney. Probably their accounting records will be more creative and entertaining than everything they put out in the past 10 years
@@EvilMAiqno, it’s deliberate. If all your media is just garbage quality propaganda, you either consume it anyway and let your mind be captured or you go work to power the machines, so to speak. Distract yourself with something else. All intentional
Because that makes no logical bit of common sense. Do you really believe that a money-hungry mega-conglomerate corporation whose primary purposes are to make as much money and spread as much influence as they possibly can paid over $4 billion to purchase a competing intellectual property and spend more money to promote what is now their property only to ultimately lose more money than they gained and devalue the franchise ON PURPOSE???? This isn't the plot to the movie Major League. If Disney intentionally wanted to devalue the franchises they spent their own money in buying ownership of, they would just be dismantling them themselves afterward. You know, as EA did with various game studios, or Vince McMahon's WWF/WWE did to WCW and almost every other U.S. pro wrestling company in the 80s and 90s. At the very least, the public devaluing would be occurring before they bought the franchises so they would be cheaper and the simple dismantling would still occur after. But then again, I'm not so self-absorbed as to believe that Disney has a personal agenda against me specifically, so I tend to think about this more practically.
The funny thing is that Star Wars as an IP enjoyed peak popularity and profitably during the years when they weren’t making new Star Wars movies or shows. Star Wars used to be something special. We don’t want more Star Wars; we want better Star Wars.
Knights of the old Republic 2 had a female main character. That was 20 years ago. Mara Jade was the main character in Jedi Knight mysteries of the Sith. That was in 1997. 2 female characters loved by the Star Wars community. People at Disney don't even know their own history.
It's such a shame Disney took a treasured IP that would easily have been a cash cow for them if they had just committed to good storytelling instead of political platforming.
All Woke Disney had to do was make Ben Solo the hero from the very start and Woke Disney could've watched the money roll in. Rey the female hero was destined to flop I'm afraid.
@@mosesdouglas4325Simple, you hate the man that made those characters and that your messianic heroine will be more beloved despite being a plank of wood.
There's a line in the movie The Big Short (brilliant movie, btw) about the bankers that caused the 2007 housing market crash, and it really makes me think of the current execs at Disney: "They weren't being stupid. They just didn't care." While there is some catharsis in watching Disney falling apart at the seams, I do think it's sad that something that so many people once loved is now being burned to the ground by greedy suits.
Doomcock did a video today recounting an interview with a Hollywood insider who claims that individual producers are receiving instant bonuses for DEI casting. They're not just being trendy and virtue signaling to their peers. It translates _directly_ into money in their pockets.
@@heartysquid only a few possess such a terrible skill with anti creativity and all the luck in the world. Christian Weston Chandler was one and Bob Iger is another. A confidence of totally being a creative and not as someone who rips off other's work without shame and think people won't notice.
Come now, it took some special Disney magic to corrupt a quest to show off the full range of human variation into a factory for soulless, homogeneous, corporate drivel. I don't think most of us could fail at anything so completely if we tried.
I'm guessing those numbers didn't include the hundreds of millions they wasted on the star wars hotel. That was probably costed off to another balance sheet.
The detioration of Lucas Films is a prime example of essentially the leaders of a global brand subjecting everybody to their mental health health episode
You know that scene in The Dark Knight when the Joker lights the huge pile of money on fire because he’s not interested in wealth?? ….that’s Disney Also, for Disney to not understand that viewers were invested in Star Wars because of the developed characters and not just the title, speaks volumes about their incompetence. Did no one do any investigation of the LOST series debacle due to JJ’s massively failed mystery box method?!?!
Peter Jackson is an exception that makes the rule in going from small time budget to blockbuster success. But that's a testament to both his talent and his passion for the project.
But he had experience with practical effects-heavy and fantastical movies going in. The main variable that changed was the amount of money at his disposal.
@@mattandrews2594 They do at Disney, as long as they have the "right" genitals and the "right" level of melanin. Those are all the "qualifications" Disney needs lol.
“First playable female protagonist in a Star Wars game.” The honor goes to Princess Leia in the NES Star Wars game, and you can play as Leia in the SNES game Super Return of the Jedi as Boushh Leia, Slave Leia and Endor Leia, she’s the only character in that game to have three different outfits. And then you’ve got Dark Forces II Jedi Knight expansion Mysteries of the Sith where the main character you play for the majority of the expansion is Mara Jade.
Turns out selling popular characters to HR department doesn't make the HR department popular. It just turns those characters into 6ual Harassment Panda sans the charm.
I haven’t spend a dime on anything Star Wars related all year. I used to be a die hard fan that was delusional enough to think there was a shred of hope after TLJ. I used to be embarrassingly invested in the franchise. I couldn’t imaging a world where I didn’t love Star Wars no matter what Disney did. I hate what they we turned it into. They’ve turned super fans completely apathetic. They truly do work miracles.
Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.05 billion cash and $1.855 billion in stock. If Disney had converted that stock to cash and added it to the $4 billion, then invested the $5.9 billion at 5% compounded annually: It would now have $10.6 billion pre-tax, minus the initial investment, for a pre-tax profit of $4.7 billion. And that's conservative...I invested in an indexed mutual fund during the 2012-2022 period with a very conservative portfolio and had an average annual return of 9%. So if Disney had given me the $5.9 billion to invest, they'd now have $16.6 billion risk-free, a pre-tax profit of $10.7 billion. And my fee would've been a measly 1%, because I'm not a greedy man. Disney's business model doesn't make any sense. Either the company is very badly run by ideologues who put politics before profit or else it's a massive money laundering operation. You decide.
That's another Reason I'll defend at least a portion of Rogue One because Gareth Edwards was a True Star Wars Fan, he'd even visited the Actual Tattooine location in Tunisia. He held the Original 1975 Skyhopper that Luke held in the movie like he was holding the mythic Holy Graile. He was a True Fan, and I think KK hated him for it.
Star Wars: Lethal Alliance had a female lead character back in 2006. Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith had Mara Jade as the playable main character back in 1997!
There's a chain of stores from Australia and recently they had a whole display of new products with the Star Wars licence. The whole range of designs was original trilogy. For example, mugs with Yoda and Vader on them. It's all nostalgia, because Star Wars as a brand has had to revert back to nostalgia for the old movies. The new stuff doesn't sell, it isn't merchandisable because no-one has any connection to the characters, the stories or anything.
When you think how fiercely Disney comes down on any copyright violation of the Star Wars franchise, you have to think - why? It's not like it's the _amateurs_ that are losing you profit.
So a complete loss on the purchase of golden IP that should've generated billions in excess of the purchase price AND they irretrievably trashed the IP through completely incompetence. That is quite a record for Disney. That level of failure is hard to do, so I can see why Igor and KK get paid tens of millions of dollars. This high level of incompetence doesn't come cheap, you have to work at it. Disney and Lucasfilm shit the bed, rolled in it, smeared it on the walls then complained that no one appreciated their modern art masterpiece.
I would say maybe SW could be resurrected if someone else bought the IP and ret-conned out everything Disney produced, but the sad thing is we'll never have the opportunity Rian Johnson squandered in TLJ to get Han, Luke and Leia together again
They're never gonna make their money back period. Collectively their movies and series are unprofitable, not to mention the 4B they dished in 2012. for SW should be worth 8B now. And nobody is buying SW even for todays 4B ill tell you that.
@@marccreation1052 If the price goes low enough, all manner of buyers will become viable... But, Disney would rather hold onto it, and endlessly lose money than sell it and see someone else make money off of it. Hell, Disney would rather loser money than even license it out to someone else, someone who might do a good job, someone who might put out a superior product, someone who would then make Disney look incompetent... This is why you never sell out if you're someone who makes a new IP and you care in any way about it... Instead make it public domain and let your fans enjoy it to the fullest and let all "artists" go nuts... Addendum - Instead of selling out, make it public domain... And in your will, make it so the IP goes to public domain - because as Tolkien has demonstrated, ultimately your 'family' will only care about a paycheck...
Mara Jade in Mysteries of the Sith was a main female protagonist in a Star Wars video game prior to whatever video game was being discussed around the 7:52 mark or so.
Weren't there Star Wars video games made under LucasArts that already had female protagonists as the star of some of their games? Like, wasn't Mara Jade the main character in Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith in like 1998?
Sure. That, inflation, distributor cost (40% to the theaters!), re-shoots, etc., etc. AND. Real fiscal analysis would take into account the money that that $4 billion would have made if used in any other manner or investment. And all this loss while they were paying money to be badly-advised by DEI extremists.
Star Wars used to have entire aisles in Walmart, Target, and toy stores right up until the second sequel trilogy movie. One the quality of the figures dropped drastically while the price went up, and two the movies killed interest in adults collecting the figures so the space for Star Wars action figures shrank drastically. And it’s wild because the old Expanded Universe stuff sold figures like crazy, and those old figures are high value items to this day. And the Black Series figure are sooooo expensive now in comparison to what they were pre Disney. It’s insane how badly they messed up.
When Disney can get away with misinformation, convinces me that we are living in a Clown World, and a dystopian future. Decades ago, I enjoyed dystopian sci fi films (e.g., Mad Max, Terminator, etc.). Now, because we are living in one (which I thought would never happen), I do not want watch another dystopian film/tv again. I miss the days of OLD Star Trek.
Looking at the state of Star Wars is heartbreaking: Films haven't even gotten 50% of the $4 billion back, piles of toys rotting at discount stores, $1 billion into the High Republic (that no one cares about), several more billions into the Galactic Starcruiser (which barely lasted a year and a half and was "Too hard to explain to people") and Galaxy's Edge (the largest expansion at Disneyland with the least amount of attractions in it), the comment sections are vitriolic civil wars, numerous fumblings on the games side (Jedi Survivor's awful PC port, Battlefront collection being absolute garbage, Outlaws), and every single new show being terrible, overpriced and having abysmal viewship numbers. And of course there is now two back-to-back trailers for Star Wars projects breaking dislike records, which is still somehow the fans' fault! I used to love Star Wars from the 90's into the 2010's, but this is just painful. Just like Obi-wan said, "I can't watch any more..."
People forget that Iger overpaid for Disney in the first place. They crunched the numbers and decided it was not worth 4 billion, but Lucas insisted because that is what Marvel got. Iger paidit because how could they NOT make money on Star Wars?
That's the sad thing, by spending years pushing out garbage fan-hating content and promoting women on the screen and behind the camera, they've forged the very stereotype they fancy themselves as trying to tear down
They deviated too far from the original comic book story lines. It got to the point where it wasn't actually marvel anymore...which made it all pointless. We waited all this time to finally have the comics brought to the big screen and do them justice...only to have them hijacked.
I recall what valliant said about disney buying lucasfilm: they couldve just sat on it n let the money roll in. Seriously. 6 movies. A few animated shows. A massive line of merch. Licensing rights. That 4 billion upfront woudve recoup itself within the first few years. Was there a clause by Lucasfilm that the new owner need to make a theatrical product within a few years of purchase? Maybe so, but do a Sony damnit. Just make a decent enough movie once every 3-4 years simply to meet that clause.
@@maxmazzotti6651 indeed. Alot can be said about the prequels, thats true. But its story was mostly consistent, it had an objective, and the character/vehicle designs were topnotch: designs that were in spirit with SW lore, but different enough to stand on their own. Basically, great for merching
But they ARE getting answers, John. They are terrible horrible answers, but we can't expect those shareholders to notice the answers are made of pixie dust, gossamer, dragon molt and fictional numbers. When Disney doesn't adjust for inflation, doesn't account for the exhibitors' cut (40%), obfuscates the cost of re-shoots, and forgets to include marketing costs (up to 40% of production budget) in their public accounting, it's easy for the public shareholders to just accept that soothing warm liquid isn't urine, and that everything's gonna be fine. This is something Disney's always been able to do and it's the single corporate skill that they've retained from the days when they were creative, innovative, family-oriented...and fiscally slippery.
Correct me if I'm wrong but though they were both Character generation games, the canon gender of thr protagonist of Knights of the old Republic 2 & Jedi Academy was female
@@maddlarkin I mean even if you're wrong there's still lethal alliance and for the sake of rubbing it in WHT not say leia in any lego star wars game where she's the pre-set character that you will spawn in as when you star the game
First female protagonist in a Star Wars videogame? Battlefront 2 was 2017 but if you count games with character customization there were two in 2003, Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Academy. If you want to stretch a little bit the the game X-Wing released in 1993 never names or describes the player character except as a pilot. Other media have given the character a name and description but while playing you could easily imagine the player to be any gender or race of your choosing.
The cost of buying Lucasfilms in 2012 adjusted for inflation is about 5.5 billions now. And the article doesn't cover up the marketing cost either. It would not be 2.8 billion lost but more around 5 billions.
No matter what platform you obtain, if you SUCK at something, you’ll always fail. You could buy the newest hypercar on the market but if you don’t have a driver’s license and have no idea how to drive, you’ll never even break the speed limit. Owning a thing means NOTHING if you have absolutely zero ability to use it properly.
With Drinker’s brogue “instead of shooting it in the United States” sounded like “instead of sh!tting in the United States” (4:45) which actually works better, all things considered.
Jedi Academy came out 21 years ago, and it allowed you to select a female or male protagonist! I know having an option makes it somehow not good enough for these types. Same with Nights of the Old Republic. They had their female lead, so they switched to "it has to be a fixed protagonist" for it to count. They don't seem to get that when a property, Star Wars, and a medium, video games appeal primarily to men it makes sense to have a male lead. There are games that appeal to women, such as story driven puzzle or hidden object games that have female leads. They aren't huge money makers, because they are only a niche genre, but like SciFi and comics, these people seem intent on learning the hard way that you can't force women into male dominated fields and expect to make money!
It's like acquiring Tom Brady in his prime for your football team and then benching him for the entire season just so you can make your own klutzy kid the quarterback.
Work history and ability isn't even the worst of it. I would just love it if Hollywood stopped hiring people who actively hate the source material to take on popular IP's.
In 1998 Lucas Art released an expansion pack for Dark Forces 2 called “Mysteries of the Sith” where the player controls Mara Jade, who went on the be Luke’s love interest in the expanded universe. That’s the earliest female led Star Wars game I can think of.
Dammit Britain, why would you pay millions of your tax payer's money to ruin Star Wars? I know we spilled your tea and all, but shit man... that was a low blow.
No one wants to buy Disney SW merchandise. Meanwhile the market for classic SW merchandise has skyrocketed (albeit it's used). People vote with their wallets.
Disney never got the full merch rights until the bought Fox. Disney had rights to all Star Wars films except the original film, then they bought Fox and got the the entire franchise.
Genres tend to burn out. Iron man was 15 years ago. The Force Awakens was 10 years ago. Given the money in play on the acquisitions, they needed to milk these things across a long time frame - which set them up for oversaturation and being screwed if the mood changed. Then they went into streaming. And the lack of discipline that results in extensive reshoots and longer development time frames. Being an enormous juggernaut comes with not being able to change directions quickly. The titanic didn't have a great turning circle, and while it had compartmentalization, it was susceptible to damage that crossed compartments. So if you view Star Wars as one compartment, Marvel as one and established Disney IP as another, they have tonal similarities, have similar production issues (long development times, design by committee, reshoots) and are potentially overworking the same CGI teams. Another analogy might be having 3 petri dishes. You think they're separate, but if they're next to each other or in the same incubator, then maybe they aren't three independent entities. If the incubator malfunctions, maybe it takes all of your little experiments. You aren't hedging your bets if conditions on one of your petri dishes applies to the others.
Analogies are on point, although I'm not sure the genres burned out and moods changed by themselves. I would argue those things happened as a direct consequence of Disney putting out movie after movie and show after show disrespecting the IP and the fanbase until people finally got fed up. We didn't get burned out on Star Wars and Marvel, we got burned out on character assassinations, lore-obliterating retcons, and present day political messaging shattering our immersion
The way Disney pitched this info to shareholders is criminal! People would go to jail for this sort of behavior in smaller firms. People keep screaming, "But the toys, but the merchandise, but the parks..." And nobody has found the marketing budget for anything tied to Lucasfilm's projects, which means the negative numbers have to be so much worse.
