Woke-Broke? Disney's Revenues Drop By $636 Million in the Second Quarter; Miss On Subscription Goals for Disney+

Note that their revenues dropped from the first quarter. So this isn't just covid. Covid's been going on for five quarters now.

Though their movie release pipeline still being closed probably accounts for some of the loss.

The Walt Disney Company recently released their second quarter earnings for fiscal year 2021 and they revealed their revenue dropped by over $600 million compared to the first quarter.

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That means Disney’s revenues decreased $636 million in the second quarter. Not only did they decline $636 million from the first quarter to the second quarter, but they declined over $2.4 billion from the second quarter of 2020. Disney posted second quarter revenue of 2020 at $18.024 billion.

More of a case for Get Woke, Go Broke can be made for Disney missing its subscriber projections for its streaming service Disney+.

Lucasfilm made a lot of bad PR for itself when it fired fan favorite Gina Carano for stating, correctly, that before the Nazis took more extreme measures against "internal enemies," they first dehumanized them and encouraged their neighbors to turn on him.

Lucasfilm defamed Carano by claiming that this was an attack on Jews' "cultural and religious identity."

Seriously, this is defamation, and if there is no lawsuit being filed, it's a crime. You are entitled to fire someone for petty political reasons -- but you are not entitled to defame them.

Firing Gina Carano touched off a #CancelDisney+ hashtag.

Rumor has it that the sudden loss of sign-ups sent waves of panic throughout the organization.

That was just rumor, though.

But now we see Disney's actual numbers.

And yes, people stopped signing up for Disney+.

Specifically for Disney+, they reported that subscribers increased to 103.6 million at the end of the second quarter. That's an increase of 8.7 million subscribers from the end of the first quarter where they posted they had 94.9 million subscribers.

Motley Fool's James Brumley claims "that growth marks the slowest pace of quarterly additions since the streaming service launched in the final quarter of 2019." Brumley also notes the 103.6 million subscriber number is well below expectations which were at 109 million.

The guys at Midnight's Edge claimed that this article in Variety about Bob Chapek asserting himself at Disney can be read as Chapek getting people ready for Disney to let Kathleen Kennedy go.

The Walt Disney Company is in the throes of a major leadership shift, with newly minted CEO Bob Chapek asserting more authority as the longtime leader he replaced, Bob Iger, prepares to surrender his executive chairman role for emeritus status at year-end.

The two men's once-warm relationship has grown strained, according to four insiders. This comes as Chapek has overseen a 2020 reorganization that centralized the media company’s content distribution and ad sales.

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Bergman and his team will have to manage competing fiefdoms of power to ensure that the studio’s various brands play nicely together. These include Pixar, under the leadership of president Jim Morris and chief creative officer Pete Docter, as well as LucasFilm, overseen by Kathleen Kennedy, and Marvel, ruled by Kevin Feige. Of these heads, Feige is seen as the most essential executive, having proved his mettle with the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and streaming shows like "WandaVision."

I mean, this is obvious -- Fiege makes tons of money and Kathleen Kennedy loses tons of it -- but Disney has been trying to pretend they're happy with Kathleen Kennedy. Maybe they're done with pretending.

In other Hollywood news, AT&T unloaded the costly Warner Bros. entertainment division on Discovery. AT&T had no business buying Time-Warner in the first place, and seems to have realized that a bit too late.

AT&T, owner of HBO and Warner Bros studios, and Discovery, home to lifestyle TV networks such as HGTV and TLC, said they will combine their content to form a standalone global entertainment and media business.

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Monday's move marks the unwinding of AT&T's ambitious plan to forge a telecoms and media powerhouse through a flurry of deals including the 2018 $108.7 billion acquisition of U.S. media conglomerate Time Warner and the 2015 purchase of satellite TV service DirecTV for $68 billion.

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AT&T said it will use the $43 billion proceeds from the tax-free spin-off of its media assets to pay down its more than $160 billion of debt.

Two more rumors:

Supposedly MGM studios has decided it can't keep limping along and is discussing its sale to Amazon for $7 billion.

And supposedly there is some kind of limited merger or complete buyout being discussed between Disney and struggling Sony.

The good news is that most of the studios seem to be failing.

The bad news is that Disney and Amazon are still doing fine.

May they all burn.

posted by Ace at 03:41 PM

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