A Disney Sale To Apple? Don't Count It Out This Time
I have no idea about the credibility of this speculation, but these kinds of rumors have been circulating for some time. And Disney is far from the only big name under discussion. The topline story is that the big technology companies, with the deepest pockets in all of corporate America, all got infatuated with the idea of synergies between the tech platforms and content creators of all descriptions. The big data companies want to sell subscriptions. They really don't care about the nature and quality of the content as long as people subscribe. Trash is a lot cheaper to produce than quality, so they're pulled that way. They're focused on the future, and they don't think they're really competing against the legendary giants of the film industry (and, here and there, quality tv), which are in the past; they're competing with TikTok for content consumers with ten second attention spans. It's all the same to the subscription peddlers who own the distribution platforms. And they are global platforms, so eyeballs in Nairobi, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and Delhi are as valuable as eyeballs in the U.S. They are now in the final stages of swallowing the legacy television networks and movie studios. They all decided to chase Netflix, they overexpanded, and everyone seems to expect consolidation.
Forget about Disney per se. Personally, I'd be happy to see it carved up and sold. But here are the key takeaways, at least to me, in the THR article:
Some Hollywood executives have been anticipating a future in which the studio herd will continue to thin — dramatically. “There will end up being three or four platforms and everybody else gets hollowed out and acquired,” says one industry veteran. “There will be Apple, Amazon, Netflix and one other. If you could put NBCUniversal, Warners and Paramount together, you probably have enough to survive.”
And a bit later:
The idea that Disney might sell is top of mind for some Wall Street analysts. Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin has contended for some time that Disney could sell to Apple. She predicts that Disney “will be purchased during the next three years,” noting that takeover premiums for media companies have typically been in the 30 to 40 percent range. “If they don’t sell, Disney will be competing against those [tech] companies in an industry with deteriorating economics (because they never need to make money from content), we believe,” Martin wrote July 14.
Hollywood always had a dark side. Not everyone in the industry was a scoundrel -- I suppose that most of them weren't -- but enough were to give the whole industry a bad name. Still, whatever their sins offscreen, they were selling a consumer product the success of which was measured by ticket sales. The consumer was king. To make money, they had to put butts in seats. By and large, the industry was run by people who lived, ate and bled cinema. Even if they were also-rans trapped in BMovieLand, they wanted to swing for the fences when they got the chance. And once in awhile, they created truly great films. They've been replaced by people who want to sell subscriptions and who know that trash has a higher average ROI than challenging films that make big investments hoping to catch lightning.
I couldn't care less if Disney survives, as long as the classic films are available somewhere. But I don't want four giant, vertically integrated global companies -- in today's world, all if them woke -- controlling all content from project origination to production to distribution --- with their algorithms dictating what shows up on your home screen. The problem is that the Borg has now swallowed most of the legacy studios. Newcomers can arise, but the question is where they can find financing and distribution.
As the Borg becomes increasingly dominant and continues its qualitative race to the bottom, the question is where people who are trying to do quality work, as well as people with nonconforming, non-PC perspectives (e.g. conservative creatives), can find a footing. I've recommended Columbus from time to time to the movie ping list and won't repeat my schtick here. The cinematography and acting are first rate. It is definitely slow cinema, which may not be to your taste, but put that aside. (If you like Lost in Translation, Paterson, A Ghost Story (2017) or Remains of the Day, there a good chance you will enjoy it; it is, among other things, a beautiful Serenity Prayer movie, albeit without one word of 12 step language.) For the present discussion, the interesting thing about it is that the financial backers very deliberately decided to reject conventional distribution models. They were very much concerned with the Borg, and they wanted to experiment with avenues for self-distribution for small independent films -- and movies don't get more indie that this. In retrospect, it seems to me that they underestimated the appeal of their movie, which disappeared almost without a ripple when it was released and then grew gradually as a word of mouth breakout. I'm betting 99 percent of the Spandex Man films down at your local theater have never heard of it, but if you hang around movie sites, you will find that most people do at least know of it, and most like it. But that's another story. Here is a deliberate experiment about end-running the Borg: 'Columbus will bypass Netflix after theatrical run
Let Disney die. But we need to preserve an ecosystem that allows independent and heterodox voices to find a market.
Spandex Man films = Spandex Man fans.
I am starting to think that autocomplete is creating more errors than it used to. I wonder if switching “fans” to “films” is the kind of mistake, given the context of my previous remarks, that ChatGPT or other AI system would produce.
Logically, the giant tech companies WILL swallow everything until overconsolidation creates an economic black hole. It will start with “synergy” plays (like content creators). The saving grace is that most of these are the hype that fails. When business nabobs start talking about “synergies” (or whatever the newer buzzwords are), especially when that is used to justify overpaying for the acquisition, prepare for the company to get skinned when the anticipated growth and savings never materialize. Some of the Hollywood studios likely need to be consolidated to survive, since they seem to have lost their mojo.
IDIOCRACY is their model.....................
Talk about your woke -- Tim Cook, head of Apple, bats for the LGBTXYZ team. If those companies merge, the Disney parks and all future movies will be Groomin' Central 24/7/365.
Yes, Big Tech and the Entertainment & Media corporations are pushing us towards actual fascism, with government and corporations dictating, inculcating and enforcing all thought and action.
Amen to that...