Disney Sucks

@Twiface  
If Reedy Creek’s infrastructure is stopping them after a year of pushing this, then Florida’s government is incompetent and stupid. The debt was always a sticking point, and I’ve not heard a good answer for it yet from any party. Integrating the utilities and services is what they set out to do. If it wasn’t, then what did they think dissolving the district meant?

@ANoobis  
Florida’s government is incompetent and stupid.

@ponypony221  
If that’s what happened, that’s a severe disappointment. That’s the minimum requirement for making it not Disney’s district anymore.

@ANoobis  
Ultimately, this whole thing strikes me as an attempt by Desantis to score some quick points that developed into a quagmire for him. Now he is looking for the easiest way to “win” by any definition the majority of his supporters will accept. Drawn-out lawsuits that last well beyond 2024, tax increases, and the state accepting Disney’s debt will all look bad. The solution can’t have any of those aspects. This sounds like his silver bullet to get just close enough to appear to be doing something without stepping on one of those landmines.
 
I wonder how well it will actually work. It is probably illegal for a state to run a special district just to add extralegal restrictions to one company’s operations and sets a bad precedent if it isn’t.

Disney had its investor call. They lost Disney+ subscribers for the first time since 2020 last quarter, to the tune of 2.4 million net subs lost. Nelson Peltz has ended his attempt to take over the Disney board, since Bob Iger adopted many of his proposals in his restructuring announcement. As part of that restructure, 7,000 employees will be laid off.
 
Bob Iger announced Frozen 3 and Toy Story 5 as the next few projects. It’s not surprising that Disney would return to focusing on safe, bland brand content with Iger back. I wouldn’t be surprised if they start announcing Star Wars films soon. At least Tim Allen is back as Buzz Lightyear.

Reedy Creek is under Florida’s control now. Disney isn’t going to fight it.

@ANoobis  
I suspect they will instead try to fight any unfavorable decisions the new control structure makes. Maybe they don’t expect any.

One nice thing about this fight is that it makes it more likely that the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse will finally hit the public domain. The copyright is up for expiration again in 2024, and Disney would need another act of Congress to push it back.

@ANoobis  
Can’t wait for the excuse Disney will come up for why they need an extra “X” amount of years to profit from that one thing Walt and co. did that one time before any of the current Disney executives was born

@ponypony221  

 
I don’t think that’s the intent. I think the intent was to take away their ability to write their own building code and hold them accountable for all the municipal bonds used to build infrastructure on their behalf. Rather than having restrictions added, the state is simply taking away Disney’s unfair advantages over its competitors, bringing them down to the same level as everybody else.

For some reason, Disney stock is up since the earnings call. I don’t know why. It was an absolute disaster by all metrics. The stock is back over $100 per share, and is now down by about 25% compared to a year ago, rather than the 60ish% it had been.

@ANoobis
The power of backroom collaboration. And massive layoffs.

Indy 5 is one of the most expensive films ever, with a budget of approximately $350 million. We’re looking at a break-even point of nearly $900 million. They do have a trick they’re using to disguise the budget, however. Disney is claiming that it’s only $300 million. They’re getting that figure by misrepresenting what they spent because it was in British Pounds. According to the current exchange rate, it’s about $300 million, and they’re reporting what they spent at the time according to today’s rates. But when they actually spent that money, the GBP was worth more relative to the USD.

And I just saw that LucasFilm’s YouTube channel disabled dislikes on the new teaser. They must be getting nervous.

@ANoobis
Wokesters worried by naked blue aliens showing them up.

Ant-Man 3 is sitting at 51% on RT and 50 on Metacritic. I don’t know if that means that it sucks so bad that not even shills can defend it, or if it just isn’t political enough.

Disney pit out new images for their Little Mermaid remake.

I boosted the brightness on Ursula’s pic, I don’t think Disney was happy with how she looked or something.

I’m surprised they’re pushing forward now that Avatar 2 has set a standard for underwater filming. It already made people go back and realize how shit Black Panther 2’s water effects look, and that had the advantage of coming out first.

@ANoobis
Underwater scenes peaked with this.

The initial projections for Ant-Man 3 seem wildly optimistic. They were revised downward as the release approached, but it’s instructive to note what they expected to get from the film. Every downward revision is money they were counting on that they’ve had to strike from future budgets. Everything they fail to gain from their current projections is just more chaos downstream.

@ANoobis
It’s OK, you can’t criticize anything that stars a nigger. Social media will love it.

@ANoobis
They’ve been doing that with a lot of movies lately.

User reviews are starting to trickle in. Ant-Man 3 sounds like it sucks.

@ANoobis
It’s Hoovering pretty hard.

Disney turned off comments on their latest Little Mermaid teaser. They forgot to turn downvotes off on this one, so I can see that it’s currently sitting at 41k upvotes to 345k downvotes.

@ANoobis
Is it the one where you can’t see anything?