CEO Bob Iger offers new details about their upcoming Disney+ streaming service, which includes mention they won’t be creating any new movies from their big budget franchises, such as Marvel or Star Wars.
Almost every movie the studio makes is a $100 million-plus movie, and we’re not looking to make movies at that level for the service. We’re looking to invest significantly in television series on a per-episode business, and we’re looking to make movies that are higher budget, but nothing like that. We wouldn’t make a Star Wars movie for this platform. When everybody goes out on the weekend and you have a movie that opens up to $200 million, there’s a buzz that creates that enhances value. We like that. And eventually the movies we’re making are going to [end up on] the service.
While Disney won’t be creating new Marvel or Star Wars movies for Disney+, they are creating series for their Marvel and Star Wars brands, with the good news from Iger being the series will be of a higher budget than their ABC shows.
We’re also making a Marvel series and a Star Wars series.
I guess we could have made the Star Wars series for ABC if we wanted. But the budget and what we’re spending on it and the nature of the material suggested it would be a perfect anchor for the new service. Because it’s a priority for the company, that needs to be reflected in the trafficking or the direction of where a lot of content goes. There have to be some subjective decisions made on where stuff goes because we have to feed this new beast.
Iger also offers he is excited for their upcoming 2019 movie slate as it will gross over $7 billion, which includes The Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: Episode IX.
The slate for this coming year is extraordinary. We have Captain Marvel coming in March, which is our first Marvel female superhero movie, with Brie Larson. Then we have Dumbo, which is Tim Burton. And then we hit Avengers and Toy Story 4 and Aladdin and Lion King. And toward the end of the year we have Frozen 2. And I forgot, Star Wars IX. We’re going to hit $7 billion [in 2018] as a studio [in] global box office. That’s only the second time in history that this has been done, and we were the ones that did it the first time, in 2016. That’s $4 billion in international box and $3 billion U.S. And that’s on eight or nine movies. It’s not on 25.
The Marvel series currently in the works for Disney+ include a Tom Hiddleston Loki series, an Elizabeth Olsen Scarlet Witch series, and a team-up series featuring Anthony Mackie as Falcon and Sebastian Stan as Winter Soldier.
The Star Wars series include The Mandalorian from Jon Favreau starring Pedro Pascal, and a Rogue One prequel starring Diego Luna reprising as Cassian Andor.
(via Barrons)
