Since the shutdown began, we knew this day was coming. But really, since it became clear about four years ago that The Streaming War would become the all-devouring narrative that would swallow Hollywood, we knew.
Maybe we knew even earlier—when every major chased Disney into Big IP land, and year-round movie programming became an afterthought.
So this moment was put into place, say, about ten years ago.
And here we are.
Shakeups underway at Disney and Viacom; ones looming at Warners and Uni; question marks blaring in bright neon colors at Sony and MGM.
And the band plays “Waltzing Matilda,” as they fall into line to parade forward.
This all started with the relative journeys over the past decade of Disney and Netflix.
Netflix achieved the miracle of a generation, building a service that took on a sleeping entertainment industry from nothing. Even if the numbers are still an open question, what they pulled off is astonishing. And if there’s one thing Wall Street loves, it’s miracles. No wonder: When the 2010’s began, Netflix stock sold at $10.50. When the decade closed in December it went out at $455.
Meanwhile, while Netflix was creating a miracle, Disney was building the entertainment business of the century—a full flywheel of goods and services built outward from the gold standard of entertainment brands, sub-brands, and micro-brands.
Disney was so successful in this that it managed, for years counting, to defy the most basic law of entertainment: the hits-and-flops ratios. Call it the Big Brother of Entertainment, if you will, argue with its role in stamping out the middle range of filmmaking, but if the game is building on box-office success, no one has come close to achieving what Disney did in the 2010s—a string of monster hits so big that it came darn close to giving one company near monopoly power over the theatrical world. Then it built on top of that an endless stream of goods and experiences: consumer products, theme parks, cruise ships, Broadway shows, spin-off TV series.
And Wall Street looked at that monumental business and yawned and pointed to the Netflix stock chart and said, Yeah, movies, toys, rides, whatever . . . we want one of those!
With all of Disney’s success stories, the only thing that got the investment communities’ heart going pitter pat was when the company would make some announcement or other about Disney Plus.
You might have just made the biggest movie in the world, and have a machine in place to make 50 more in the next few years, with toy sales to the end of eternity, but did you see? Bird Box is the second most-watched movie in Netflix history! 80 percent of subscribers watched at least one second of it! Get my buy order in quick!
So was written the future of entertainment. If you are a public company, dependent on the good graces of the investment community, there aren’t lots of ways to make money off entertainment. There aren’t a bunch, or even several, ways to support the business of show.
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