I said scheming to force, not "scheming" --ie, doing the best to make money, like a business -- in the entertainment business -- where you give people more of want they want, and less of what they dont. They have an undeniably successful model. You keep running away from the unquestionable preference of the masses. You want them to serve you, the shrinking minority. Doing that has been a losing proposition for a long, long time. Disney didnt twist any arms. They, and others, who you dont mention for some reason, have realized that pre-sold is the way to go. The interesting, chance-taking films dont draw. Studios are reluctant to take chances b/c the audience is reluctant to take chances. Simple fact. You look right past the audience and blame the content providers. You have it backward. They spend gobs of money trying to identify what people want. They have it clocked right now but you're pretending they just made it up to crush you and other small film fans. It's the movie-going public that calls the shots. The vast majority of people want the familiar, the same, rather than the edgy and original. Disney delivers. It's that simple. Why bother with the others when those people dont go. You're skipping the most obvious fact b/c it doesnt gel with your personal tastes. They dont care about you, me and the rest of the 5%. They care about retaining the 95%, as any smart business would. It's never been harder to get people to come out (another fact you keep skipping over). If they're coming, you keep them coming. If another Avengers film wasnt playing but some film that you'd prefer were playing, the 95% stay home. They dont change their mind and go out to see Tolkien or The Aftermath (both from Fox Searchlight). They watch something on Netflix that they've seen a few dozen times before. Only big and pre-sold bring em out. They didnt make that up. They just realized it and served the market.
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samoanjoes (58610)
6 years ago
Well, I would consider buying a portion of a company just so they can close it down as scheming by force. It's almost like getting rid of it because they don't like the very fact they exist. Don't get me wrong, I'm putting blame on the stupid audience too for falling for it .
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dmac8 (5050)
6 years ago
I think you're way too high on Fox 2000. They're not like Searchlight. They've served up a lot of mediocre midrange movies. I'd sooner watch a Marvel or Pixar movie than the bulk of Fox 2000's offerings over the years. And you're pretending that Disney reorganized to deprive the audience rather than a larger goal to serve it with what works best. They doubled their number of film units with the Fox acquisition. There's overlap, so some consolidation was inevitable -- as with any takeover.
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samoanjoes (58610)
6 years ago
But I question why they even bought it as part of the deal if that was their plan. Maybe they only wanted the profits from the movies that were already made and didn't want to bother doing lower budget films.
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dmac8 (5050)
6 years ago
Mid-budget is actually a worse proposition than low budget, indie films. It's the weakest category. And Fox 2000 wasnt killing it there. No one does any longer. You go epic, tentpole, more-is-better -- or you go low budget where the risk much less. Midrange is more expensive but with the small return of a low budget indie. I read that it's harder to get financing for that category than the other two. Blumhouse is killing it by keeping budgets extremely low. Marvel is killing it with huge budgets. The middle is becoming extinct b/c the track record of success stinks. And Disney already has units to do these things. The smaller end will go to Searchlight. The bigger stuff will go to 20th Century Fox. The middle will vanish b/c audiences dont push them into the black with consistency.
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