I think people thought that Netflix would be dead when Amazon launch their Prime streaming platform...but that isn’t the case.

Netflix lacks direction. Their self produced stuff is all over the board and generally has a movie-of-the-week quality with a few curse words thrown in. The rest of their catalog is a bunch of left overs that no one wants to see.

Disney owns a ton of non-family stuff. Touchstone Pictures, for example, is a Disney owned studio that produces R-rated films. It is currently dormant but has a huge catalog of PG-13 and R rated films. They also gained a lot of non-family stuff in the Fox acquisition.

(05-22-2019 06:59 AM)MWC Tex Wrote:  I think people thought that Netflix would be dead when Amazon launch their Prime streaming platform...but that isn’t the case.

Its not going to die. However if balkanization of content occurs as is trending---Netflix wont have nearly the mass audience it has now because there simply wont be much content to aggregate. Its appeal will be far more limited than today. In a balkanized future, Netflix will basically only appeal to those who want access to Netflix's wholly owned and produced content.

Netflix's problems are not limited to Disney. AT&T/WarnerMedia and Comcast/NBCUniversal are also planning to launch new streaming services to go after Netflix. CBS already has two streaming services in Showtime and CBS All Access. Each of these companies will be vertically integrating, owning both significant production facilities, TV networks from which current and recent shows can be drawn, movie studies from which recent movies can be drawn, plus extensive catalogs of older movies and television shows.

According to numerous analytics firms in 2018, these were the most-watched licensed shows on Netflix in 2018:

The Office (NBCUniversal)
Friends (WarnerMedia)
Parks and Recreation (NBCUniversal)
Grey’s Anatomy (ABC/Disney)
Criminal Minds (CBS)
New Girl (Fox/Disney)
Supernatural (WarnerMedia)
Frasier (WarnerMedia)
NCIS (CBS)

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18623...-streaming

Netflix is likely to lose most or all of these and never receive the newer shows from its competitors that would replace them.

Netflix original content only accounts for around 30% of its viewing today, so these other programming sources are incredibly important, particularly if they expect to maintain a much higher price point than Hulu, Disney+ and others. https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/ne...203085230/

I have no doubt that Netflix will survive and thrive. However, with the loss of important programming and the entry of multiple strong competitors, it may be quicky approaching the mature industry phase at least in the US, meaning that its growth is likely to slow substantially.

(05-22-2019 06:49 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 03:27 PM)hawghiggs Wrote:  Netflix will be fine. But cable might as well be dead.

+1

Netflix is more of a world market I'd say. A lot of their 'new content' these days is stuff that aired first overseas (Korea, China, Mexico, Spain, etc.).

Ironically though, their demise lately is because they sort of have drifted into ESPN territory, throwing away money left and right on pretty average programming. They need another Stranger Things hit or two.

Some of these new shows have god-awful writing. The worst culprit is the new Twilight Zone reboot on CBS All-Access. That's just brutal - I keep waiting for an episode to come close to the original classics.

I was an early subscriber to DirecTV and was with them at least 15 years before cutting the cords almost 5 years ago. Haven't looked back once. When I need my sports fix, I'll watch it live, on an over-the-air channel or through my computer.

Most broadcast television is frankly awful. I have simply stopped watching. I am too busy to catch a series every week. If the quality and content were there like TWD was a few years ago I would make time. Instead I put in the Firestick and watch an old movie.

I never thought I would consider myself a television snob but I am. Hollywood has gone off the rails, I can’t relate to anything they consider entertaining. I didn’t think it was possible but network television is worse. Nothing for a Christian Conservative to watch.

I can’t remember the last great movie or television series I watched. Maybe The Strain a couple of years ago.

Thank God for European football or I wouldn’t have anything to watch this time of year. Champions League, Bundesliga, Premier and Italian A keep me busy.

(05-22-2019 08:48 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  Thank God for European football or I wouldn’t have anything to watch this time of year. Champions League, Bundesliga, Premier and Italian A keep me busy.

Yes, sad it's almost over. We have the German Cup and Copa del Rey this Saturday, then the Europa League and Champion's League finals next week, and then that's it for the season.

I plan on getting the Disney+/ESPN+ package whenever it is out, but we'll probably keep Netflix too. They have some really great stuff.

Honestly, at that point, Cable may be the one to go as long as I can watch college football/basketball.

(05-21-2019 10:59 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  It's not just about Marvel or Star Wars as far as what Disney can offer.

Disney will have their entire team of studios from here on out focused on creating content for this service. That and remember, they just bought a ton of content from FOX so basically everything with a FOX label on it that's been created in the last few decades is now under Disney control. They've got National Geographic now as well. Their library will be much bigger than the blockbuster franchises that have come to garner the headlines.

More than that, the real reason those particular franchises were mentioned in the article is because of the flexibility they give Disney to move their films away from movie theaters and make them exclusive(or at least have joint releases) to the streaming service. That's potentially huge leverage in the marketplace. Rumors have been swirling for a while now that production companies might be moving in that direction. The theater industry will absolutely hate that innovation, but they are under threat just as much if not more than cable companies.

The strength of this streaming product is actually its diversity. Couple that with a sports offering in ESPN+ and they could very well dominate the market. Yes I know, ESPN+ doesn't have a ton of great sports on there right now, but that will change. The current product is an experiment more than anything.

It's probably premature to say Netflix will be run out of business, but I think the thesis of the article is a sound one. What Netflix did was alter the delivery method for content, it didn't alter what people actually watched. Sure, Netflix has people working on new shows and movies all the time, but you have to look at the profit margins of their new investments. Much of the value that Netflix built was created in a world where they just leased content made by someone else and then reaped the rewards of renting it to millions of people around the world. That can't be their business model going forward, however, because Disney and just about everyone else is creating their own platform. When everyone is doing what Netflix is doing then Netflix isn't special anymore.

Also, when you have companies like Disney that have the capital to not only create content but outright purchase some of the largest producers of content then that is something a new company like Netflix can't just counter.

Time will tell, but even if Netflix isn't substantially hurt by this move then that doesn't mean Disney+ won't be a huge success. And if ESPN reaps the rewards of that increase in market share then that could alter the sports landscape as well in a more significant way...which is really why I posted the article.

Yes, agree with all of this. The people that think Disney is just about The Lion King and Avengers are being a bit naive. It will be successful and most people in this thread will buy it.

(05-21-2019 06:46 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 05:56 PM)Foreverandever Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 05:28 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 04:34 PM)MWC Tex Wrote:  The loss for Netflix is the Marvel stuff which isn’t a big deal since they are only a slim amount of content. Also, Disney isn’t going to show other networks shows so that limits their scope for Disney +.

Disney banked hard on an endless slew of billion dollar Marvel movies but I just don't see those type of sales sustainable without Robert Downey Jr. in the picture.

He only played a substantial character in 9 movies but the other marvel films were on the coattails of the larger avenger story. Otherwise there is no way Ant Man is pulling 600 mill at the box office for example.

This last movie was the big blowout, the end of the peak marvel era from Avengers one until this one. Now its downhill for phase 4.

Which is the run up to phase 5, avengers vs x-men.

These storylines are endless and the comics have always led the way in cross overs, guest appearances, and reboot/plot twists. Like Bond they won't be running out of steam anytime soon.

Ant-Man/Wasp, Dr. Strange, Guardians 2 (863.8-622 million)

Avengers, Age of Ultron, Infinity War, Endgame (2.62-1.47 billion)

Avengers have hauled down triple of the b list character movies.

Robert Downey Jr in a costume without a plot can haul down as much as the b-list films. Avengers put a story and supporting cast around him.

That last avenger movie cost 356 billion dollars to make. I just question if Marvel can hang in with no Ironman or Captain America. Digging up The Eternals for the next story arc reeks of desperation.

I think that you mean that End Game cost $365 million (as opposed billion) to make.

Regardless, I think everything that you're arguing is actually a feature as opposed to a bug. Black Panther actually made more domestically than Avengers: Infinity War and that featured no Iron Man. Disney's deal with Sony allows Spider-Man (which was the most valuable Marvel character by far prior to this decade) to be a part of the Avengers and other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Finally, the Disney-Fox deal means that the X-Men and Fantastic Four (which were the 2nd and 3rd most valuable Marvel properties prior to this decade) can be used in the MCU going forward, too. In the Marvel comic book world, Wolverine is actually the character that connects the whole universe more than anyone else, so now that can be finally shown on-screen with the Fox acquisition.

Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man is definitely an iconic character, but note that when Iron Man was released back in 2008 (the same year as The Dark Knight), most people on the street didn't even know who Iron Man was at all. (I certainly didn't.) If you had said in 2008 that within a decade, the third Thor movie (Thor: Ragnarok) would end up grossing nearly 40% more than a movie released in the exact same month that had Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman on the big screen together for the very first time (Justice League), you would have been committed to an insane asylum. Yet, that's exactly what happened. If anything, the MCU has made essentially every actor besides Robert Downey, Jr. expendable... and I'm not talking about the MCU itself, but Hollywood overall. The Marvel *brand* has become so powerful that the bankability of the actors themselves are less and less important.

To be sure, Marvel movies have consistently had great writing and casting. They don't just phone it in on the value of the Marvel IP on any given movie (which too many studios do with their most valuable IP), which is part of why the brand itself has grown so strongly over the past 10 years. With each new Marvel movie, I'm confident that it's going to be 2 to 3 hours of great entertainment and they're not going to f**k it up (which is something that I definitely *cannot* say about Warner Bros. and Batman, which was my favorite superhero when I was growing up).

I'm being 100% serious here: what Disney was able to do with secondary and tertiary Marvel characters (where once again, they didn't have access to Spider-Man, the X-Men and Fantastic Four previously) and turn it into a juggernaut with multiple massive box office grosses per year in a movie business environment where consistent success has been almost impossible even for those with great IP to work with (see the aforementioned Justice League) is the single greatest business achievement that The Walt Disney Company has had since Walt Disney himself passed away besides the building out of Walt Disney World.

It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight, but Marvel was a *huge* risk for Disney and they essentially stuck the landing on every single move that they made. Disney buying Marvel without the rights to Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four was perceived to be at the time to be a potential boondoggle (where other studios such as Paramount passed on it). Having several highly serialized movies based on individual characters that were thought of as secondary properties (e.g. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor) leading up to the first Avengers movie was absolutely a huge risk - that really was never done before and Hollywood legitimately didn't know if that would work. Guardians of the Galaxy was a big risk on a largely unknown segment of the Marvel universe and now that might be the biggest "sub-franchise" of the MCU other than The Avengers. Hollywood-types questioned how much Black Panther would make with a largely African-American cast and it is now the #4 biggest domestic box office movie of all time with the only Marvel movie ahead of being Avengers: End Game (which is currently #2 out of all domestic movies all-time behind another Disney property, Star Wars: The Force Awakens). (By the way, the #3 domestic movie and #1 worldwide box office movie of all-time is Avatar... which Disney now owns via its Fox acquisition.)

There will be business case studies written for many years about how Disney shepherded the Marvel Cinematic Universe - it is legitimately an unbelievable feat. (I can't emphasize enough that when they set the MCU plan into motion, characters like Iron Man, Captain America and Thor were thought of as the bargain basement bin Marvel characters compared to Spider-Man and Wolverine.) Regardless of what people might think of the Marvel movies personally, what Disney has done with Marvel over the past decade is unparalleled in the entertainment industry (and they've done it in an environment where it becomes harder and harder to make money on movies with each passing year).

(05-22-2019 01:35 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 06:46 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 05:56 PM)Foreverandever Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 05:28 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 04:34 PM)MWC Tex Wrote:  The loss for Netflix is the Marvel stuff which isn’t a big deal since they are only a slim amount of content. Also, Disney isn’t going to show other networks shows so that limits their scope for Disney +.

Disney banked hard on an endless slew of billion dollar Marvel movies but I just don't see those type of sales sustainable without Robert Downey Jr. in the picture.

He only played a substantial character in 9 movies but the other marvel films were on the coattails of the larger avenger story. Otherwise there is no way Ant Man is pulling 600 mill at the box office for example.

This last movie was the big blowout, the end of the peak marvel era from Avengers one until this one. Now its downhill for phase 4.

Which is the run up to phase 5, avengers vs x-men.

These storylines are endless and the comics have always led the way in cross overs, guest appearances, and reboot/plot twists. Like Bond they won't be running out of steam anytime soon.

Ant-Man/Wasp, Dr. Strange, Guardians 2 (863.8-622 million)

Avengers, Age of Ultron, Infinity War, Endgame (2.62-1.47 billion)

Avengers have hauled down triple of the b list character movies.

Robert Downey Jr in a costume without a plot can haul down as much as the b-list films. Avengers put a story and supporting cast around him.

That last avenger movie cost 356 billion dollars to make. I just question if Marvel can hang in with no Ironman or Captain America. Digging up The Eternals for the next story arc reeks of desperation.

I think that you mean that End Game cost $365 million (as opposed billion) to make.

Regardless, I think everything that you're arguing is actually a feature as opposed to a bug. Black Panther actually made more domestically than Avengers: Infinity War and that featured no Iron Man. Disney's deal with Sony allows Spider-Man (which was the most valuable Marvel character by far prior to this decade) to be a part of the Avengers and other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Finally, the Disney-Fox deal means that the X-Men and Fantastic Four (which were the 2nd and 3rd most valuable Marvel properties prior to this decade) can be used in the MCU going forward, too. In the Marvel comic book world, Wolverine is actually the character that connects the whole universe more than anyone else, so now that can be finally shown on-screen with the Fox acquisition.

Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man is definitely an iconic character, but note that when Iron Man was released back in 2008 (the same year as The Dark Knight), most people on the street didn't even know who Iron Man was at all. (I certainly didn't.) If you had said in 2008 that within a decade, the third Thor movie (Thor: Ragnarok) would end up grossing nearly 40% more than a movie released in the exact same month that had Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman on the big screen together for the very first time (Justice League), you would have been committed to an insane asylum. Yet, that's exactly what happened. If anything, the MCU has made essentially every actor besides Robert Downey, Jr. expendable... and I'm not talking about the MCU itself, but Hollywood overall. The Marvel *brand* has become so powerful that the bankability of the actors themselves are less and less important.

To be sure, Marvel movies have consistently had great writing and casting. They don't just phone it in on the value of the Marvel IP on any given movie (which too many studios do with their most valuable IP), which is part of why the brand itself has grown so strongly over the past 10 years. With each new Marvel movie, I'm confident that it's going to be 2 to 3 hours of great entertainment and they're not going to f**k it up (which is something that I definitely *cannot* say about Warner Bros. and Batman, which was my favorite superhero when I was growing up).

I'm being 100% serious here: what Disney was able to do with secondary and tertiary Marvel characters (where once again, they didn't have access to Spider-Man, the X-Men and Fantastic Four previously) and turn it into a juggernaut with multiple massive box office grosses per year in a movie business environment where consistent success has been almost impossible even for those with great IP to work with (see the aforementioned Justice League) is the single greatest business achievement that The Walt Disney Company has had since Walt Disney himself passed away besides the building out of Walt Disney World.

It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight, but Marvel was a *huge* risk for Disney and they essentially stuck the landing on every single move that they made. Disney buying Marvel without the rights to Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four was perceived to be at the time to be a potential boondoggle (where other studios such as Paramount passed on it). Having several highly serialized movies based on individual characters that were thought of as secondary properties (e.g. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor) leading up to the first Avengers movie was absolutely a huge risk - that really was never done before and Hollywood legitimately didn't know if that would work. Guardians of the Galaxy was a big risk on a largely unknown segment of the Marvel universe and now that might be the biggest "sub-franchise" of the MCU other than The Avengers. Hollywood-types questioned how much Black Panther would make with a largely African-American cast and it is now the #4 biggest domestic box office movie of all time with the only Marvel movie ahead of being Avengers: End Game (which is currently #2 out of all domestic movies all-time behind another Disney property, Star Wars: The Force Awakens). (By the way, the #3 domestic movie and #1 worldwide box office movie of all-time is Avatar... which Disney now owns via its Fox acquisition.)

There will be business case studies written for many years about how Disney shepherded the Marvel Cinematic Universe - it is legitimately an unbelievable feat. (I can't emphasize enough that when they set the MCU plan into motion, characters like Iron Man, Captain America and Thor were thought of as the bargain basement bin Marvel characters compared to Spider-Man and Wolverine.) Regardless of what people might think of the Marvel movies personally, what Disney has done with Marvel over the past decade is unparalleled in the entertainment industry (and they've done it in an environment where it becomes harder and harder to make money on movies with each passing year).

I completely agree. Marvel's future is not a problem. Black Panther and Captain Marvel are the two highest grossing solo outings by Marvel characters, Spider-Man has multiple movies left, Disney can now reboot X-Men characters, and Marvel has demonstrated a clear ability to introduce new lead characters that resonate with its audience.

Disney's problem, like that of every other media company, is how to navigate the transition from the cable-centric revenue model to the direct-to-consumer model in a manner that provides solid earnings growth. It has made an incredibly bold series of moves with the purchases of BAMTech, Fox, Hulu and the launches of Disney+ and ESPN+. Start up costs will be extremely high, and lost revenue from sales to Netflix and other video distributors are going to hurt earnings significantly over the next two to three years. If they pull it off, however, they will be well positioned for indefinite strength by establishing revenue streams derived directly from customers in the form of subscription fees, and with programming sourced from its own studios and intellectual property that will provide new programming at a lower cost than competitors relying on third party sources. I am confident they will be successful. The big question is how successful? Netflix has demonstrated the enormous upside potential of this business model. Disney enters with one massive advantage as compared to Netflix at launch -- its vast production capabilities, existing catalog and incredibly valuable intellectual property. Netflix benefited from being first mover and from the availability of cheap programming. That latter advantage is quickly disappearing. That said, there is plenty of room for multiple players, as demonstrated by Disney's own offering of three separate services.

(05-21-2019 03:28 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 02:55 PM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  I remember when the Palm Pre was going to put an end to the iPhone.

Hmmmm... I don’t know if that’s a great comparison. If anything, Disney is in the Apple position in the sense that there’s an unusually high devotion and loyalty to anything that the company releases compared to its competitors (where product preferences are much more transactional in nature). Disney and Apple have loyalty from a critical mass of passionate devotees in a way that, say, Comcast/Universal and Samsung don’t have and probably will never have.

That being said, the argument in the OP link is a bit too simple. While Netflix does rely on third party content more than it would like to admit, it still has essentially a decade-long head start on streaming and they’ve been adjusting their model to rely less on third party content for many years at this point.

Disney+ definitely has some killer top end content (Marvel, Star Wars, Disney Animation, Pixar), but I think it will end up being complementary to Netflix as opposed to replacing it for most households.

We’re also starting to see the end of the “arbitrage period” where streaming is clearly less expensive than getting rid of cable. When Netflix was essentially a one-stop-shop for movies and old TV shows in its earliest streaming days, it was an unbelievable deal compared to cable. Now, you essentially need Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Disney+ subscriptions to replicate what a single Netflix subscription used to achieve... and Comcast and AT&T/Time Warner are going to start their own streaming services, too. As I’ve been saying for a few years, we’re eventually going to end up paying more for the same content that we had receive previously with a basic cable subscription and that time might be coming even earlier than expected. Streaming is what is causing huge losses to the cable bundle, but we’re going to end up needing a bundle of all of the newstreaming services.

This is something we talked about on here a couple of years ago about how unsustainable Netflix was at that price with that content, and how one would have to give.

The other thing is this: if Disney is charging $6.99 per month for its aftermarket content, and espn charges $4.99 per month for the stuff that used to be free on its website, what do you think they’ll charge for ala cadre for ten real channel? I said previously I thought it'd be somewhere around $40 per month for espn alone (more for its other channels), but now I think I might be estimating low.

(05-22-2019 01:35 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man is definitely an iconic character, but note that when Iron Man was released back in 2008 (the same year as The Dark Knight), most people on the street didn't even know who Iron Man was at all. (I certainly didn't.) If you had said in 2008 that within a decade, the third Thor movie (Thor: Ragnarok) would end up grossing nearly 40% more than a movie released in the exact same month that had Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman on the big screen together for the very first time (Justice League), you would have been committed to an insane asylum. Yet, that's exactly what happened. If anything, the MCU has made essentially every actor besides Robert Downey, Jr. expendable... and I'm not talking about the MCU itself, but Hollywood overall. The Marvel *brand* has become so powerful that the bankability of the actors themselves are less and less important.

This is so true. Ironman was so unknown to the general public that a member of the Wu-Tang clan (ghosttface Killah) used Tony Stark as sort of an alias, and few knew he was, and marvel never even bothered to sue or trademark fight it. When I was a kid the popular comic book hero’s were Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and maybe the Incredible Hulk. X-men became popular in the early 90s due to a badass afternoon cartoon and then later the movies.

I’ll be honest I’d never heard of Captain Amarica until the marvel movies. And was only vaguely familiar with Ironman. I think hulk is the only character in the mcu (until spidey came in two years ago) I could have picked out of a lineup in say 2007.

(05-22-2019 03:40 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(05-22-2019 01:35 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 06:46 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 05:56 PM)Foreverandever Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 05:28 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  Disney banked hard on an endless slew of billion dollar Marvel movies but I just don't see those type of sales sustainable without Robert Downey Jr. in the picture.

He only played a substantial character in 9 movies but the other marvel films were on the coattails of the larger avenger story. Otherwise there is no way Ant Man is pulling 600 mill at the box office for example.

This last movie was the big blowout, the end of the peak marvel era from Avengers one until this one. Now its downhill for phase 4.

Which is the run up to phase 5, avengers vs x-men.

These storylines are endless and the comics have always led the way in cross overs, guest appearances, and reboot/plot twists. Like Bond they won't be running out of steam anytime soon.

Ant-Man/Wasp, Dr. Strange, Guardians 2 (863.8-622 million)

Avengers, Age of Ultron, Infinity War, Endgame (2.62-1.47 billion)

Avengers have hauled down triple of the b list character movies.

Robert Downey Jr in a costume without a plot can haul down as much as the b-list films. Avengers put a story and supporting cast around him.

That last avenger movie cost 356 billion dollars to make. I just question if Marvel can hang in with no Ironman or Captain America. Digging up The Eternals for the next story arc reeks of desperation.

I think that you mean that End Game cost $365 million (as opposed billion) to make.

Regardless, I think everything that you're arguing is actually a feature as opposed to a bug. Black Panther actually made more domestically than Avengers: Infinity War and that featured no Iron Man. Disney's deal with Sony allows Spider-Man (which was the most valuable Marvel character by far prior to this decade) to be a part of the Avengers and other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Finally, the Disney-Fox deal means that the X-Men and Fantastic Four (which were the 2nd and 3rd most valuable Marvel properties prior to this decade) can be used in the MCU going forward, too. In the Marvel comic book world, Wolverine is actually the character that connects the whole universe more than anyone else, so now that can be finally shown on-screen with the Fox acquisition.

Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man is definitely an iconic character, but note that when Iron Man was released back in 2008 (the same year as The Dark Knight), most people on the street didn't even know who Iron Man was at all. (I certainly didn't.) If you had said in 2008 that within a decade, the third Thor movie (Thor: Ragnarok) would end up grossing nearly 40% more than a movie released in the exact same month that had Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman on the big screen together for the very first time (Justice League), you would have been committed to an insane asylum. Yet, that's exactly what happened. If anything, the MCU has made essentially every actor besides Robert Downey, Jr. expendable... and I'm not talking about the MCU itself, but Hollywood overall. The Marvel *brand* has become so powerful that the bankability of the actors themselves are less and less important.

To be sure, Marvel movies have consistently had great writing and casting. They don't just phone it in on the value of the Marvel IP on any given movie (which too many studios do with their most valuable IP), which is part of why the brand itself has grown so strongly over the past 10 years. With each new Marvel movie, I'm confident that it's going to be 2 to 3 hours of great entertainment and they're not going to f**k it up (which is something that I definitely *cannot* say about Warner Bros. and Batman, which was my favorite superhero when I was growing up).

I'm being 100% serious here: what Disney was able to do with secondary and tertiary Marvel characters (where once again, they didn't have access to Spider-Man, the X-Men and Fantastic Four previously) and turn it into a juggernaut with multiple massive box office grosses per year in a movie business environment where consistent success has been almost impossible even for those with great IP to work with (see the aforementioned Justice League) is the single greatest business achievement that The Walt Disney Company has had since Walt Disney himself passed away besides the building out of Walt Disney World.

It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight, but Marvel was a *huge* risk for Disney and they essentially stuck the landing on every single move that they made. Disney buying Marvel without the rights to Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four was perceived to be at the time to be a potential boondoggle (where other studios such as Paramount passed on it). Having several highly serialized movies based on individual characters that were thought of as secondary properties (e.g. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor) leading up to the first Avengers movie was absolutely a huge risk - that really was never done before and Hollywood legitimately didn't know if that would work. Guardians of the Galaxy was a big risk on a largely unknown segment of the Marvel universe and now that might be the biggest "sub-franchise" of the MCU other than The Avengers. Hollywood-types questioned how much Black Panther would make with a largely African-American cast and it is now the #4 biggest domestic box office movie of all time with the only Marvel movie ahead of being Avengers: End Game (which is currently #2 out of all domestic movies all-time behind another Disney property, Star Wars: The Force Awakens). (By the way, the #3 domestic movie and #1 worldwide box office movie of all-time is Avatar... which Disney now owns via its Fox acquisition.)

There will be business case studies written for many years about how Disney shepherded the Marvel Cinematic Universe - it is legitimately an unbelievable feat. (I can't emphasize enough that when they set the MCU plan into motion, characters like Iron Man, Captain America and Thor were thought of as the bargain basement bin Marvel characters compared to Spider-Man and Wolverine.) Regardless of what people might think of the Marvel movies personally, what Disney has done with Marvel over the past decade is unparalleled in the entertainment industry (and they've done it in an environment where it becomes harder and harder to make money on movies with each passing year).

This is so true. Ironman was so unknown to the general public that a member of the Qi tang clan used tony stark as an alias, and few knew he was, and marvel never even bothered to sue or trademark fight it. When I was a kid the popular comic book hero’s were Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and maybe the Incredible Hulk. X-men became popular in the early 90s due to a badass afternoon cartooon and then later the movies.

I’ll be honest I’d never heard of capitan amarica until the marvel movies. And was only vaguely familiar with Ironman. I think hulk is the only character in the mcu (until spidey came in two years ago) I could have picked out of a lineup in say 2007.

I was actually familiar with Captain America and his general backstory. He had a movie back in the 80s, I believe. That and he was sort of a cultural phenomenon during WWII. I believe his character predates the founding of Marvel Comics although I'm not sure how they came to acquire him.

Some of the scenes in The First Avenger were an homage to the character's role as a fundraiser. And if I remember correctly, most of the early Captain America stories revolved around him finding a way to defeat Hitler and usually punching him in the face while doing it. The MCU film makes light of that.

But yeah, the majority of MCU characters I had never heard of or perhaps vaguely heard of, but didn't know anything about them.

(05-22-2019 03:26 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 03:28 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 02:55 PM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  I remember when the Palm Pre was going to put an end to the iPhone.

Hmmmm... I don’t know if that’s a great comparison. If anything, Disney is in the Apple position in the sense that there’s an unusually high devotion and loyalty to anything that the company releases compared to its competitors (where product preferences are much more transactional in nature). Disney and Apple have loyalty from a critical mass of passionate devotees in a way that, say, Comcast/Universal and Samsung don’t have and probably will never have.

That being said, the argument in the OP link is a bit too simple. While Netflix does rely on third party content more than it would like to admit, it still has essentially a decade-long head start on streaming and they’ve been adjusting their model to rely less on third party content for many years at this point.

Disney+ definitely has some killer top end content (Marvel, Star Wars, Disney Animation, Pixar), but I think it will end up being complementary to Netflix as opposed to replacing it for most households.

We’re also starting to see the end of the “arbitrage period” where streaming is clearly less expensive than getting rid of cable. When Netflix was essentially a one-stop-shop for movies and old TV shows in its earliest streaming days, it was an unbelievable deal compared to cable. Now, you essentially need Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Disney+ subscriptions to replicate what a single Netflix subscription used to achieve... and Comcast and AT&T/Time Warner are going to start their own streaming services, too. As I’ve been saying for a few years, we’re eventually going to end up paying more for the same content that we had receive previously with a basic cable subscription and that time might be coming even earlier than expected. Streaming is what is causing huge losses to the cable bundle, but we’re going to end up needing a bundle of all of the newstreaming services.

This is something we talked about on here a couple of years ago about how unsustainable Netflix was at that price with that content, and how one would have to give.

The other thing is this: if Disney is charging $6.99 per month for its aftermarket content, and espn charges $4.99 per month for the stuff that used to be free on its website, what do you think they’ll charge for ala cadre for ten real channel? I said previously I thought it'd be somewhere around $40 per month for espn alone (more for its other channels), but now I think I might be estimating low.

Hulu+Live is $44.99 and will have all of the Disney owned channels. The bundle with Disney+ and ESPN + will probably be $50 unless they bump the price of all 3 up.

(05-22-2019 10:15 PM)spenser Wrote:  Hulu+Live is $44.99 and will have all of the Disney owned channels. The bundle with Disney+ and ESPN + will probably be $50 unless they bump the price of all 3 up.

Keep in mind that’s the price now with the majority of subscriptions coming from cable. At this point it’s still ancillary income. Imagine when it’s the sole Income stream?

(05-21-2019 02:39 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  From Forbes:

Quote:Netflix changed how we watch TV, but it didn’t really change what we watch…

Netflix has achieved its incredible growth by taking distribution away from cable companies. Instead of watching The Office on cable, people now watch The Office on Netflix.

This edge isn’t sustainable.

In a world where you can watch practically anything whenever you want, dominance in distribution is very fragile.

Quote:To fund its new shows, Netflix is borrowing huge sums of debt. It currently owes creditors $10.4 billion, which is 59% more than it owed this time last year.

The problem is that no matter how much Netflix spends, it has no chance to catch up with its biggest rival…

Quote:But over the past decade a core part of its business has been disrupted.

More than a third of Disney’s revenue comes from its cable business. As you may know, Disney owns leading sports network ESPN and ABC News.

It makes money delivering this content to millions of Americans through cable providers like AT&T. As you can imagine, cord cutting has hit this business hard.

Disney’s cable business has stagnated over the past seven years. But in about 175 days, Disney is set to launch its own streaming service called Disney+.

It’s going to charge $6.99/month—around $6 cheaper than Netflix.

And it’s pulling all its content off of Netflix.

This is a big deal.

I'm just bringing this up because Disney+ and ESPN+ will likely be bundled together for a discount price.

So Disney/ESPN is probably going to get richer in the next several years as they have become both a content creator and a content supplier. The only thing they won't own is the distribution side...cable or internet infrastructure. But who knows? They might find a way to jump into that as well.

If Disney essentially destroys the market share of Netflix then that's a very interesting scenario and one that could affect sports rights fees.

Is Disney pulling their content from Amazon Prime?? If Disney views Netflix as a competitor, they should definitely view Amazon as a competitor also.

I dont watch TV except for college sports (mostly ESPN+) and all my family watches on Netflix is reruns of Disney Channel shows, so I'd venture a guess that we will be migrating over to Disney+. I will wait to give The Witcher series a chance, and if it's no good (and I'm expecting it to be), I will likely drop Netflix all together.

(05-23-2019 01:00 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 02:39 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  From Forbes:

Quote:Netflix changed how we watch TV, but it didn’t really change what we watch…

Netflix has achieved its incredible growth by taking distribution away from cable companies. Instead of watching The Office on cable, people now watch The Office on Netflix.

This edge isn’t sustainable.

In a world where you can watch practically anything whenever you want, dominance in distribution is very fragile.

Quote:To fund its new shows, Netflix is borrowing huge sums of debt. It currently owes creditors $10.4 billion, which is 59% more than it owed this time last year.

The problem is that no matter how much Netflix spends, it has no chance to catch up with its biggest rival…

Quote:But over the past decade a core part of its business has been disrupted.

More than a third of Disney’s revenue comes from its cable business. As you may know, Disney owns leading sports network ESPN and ABC News.

It makes money delivering this content to millions of Americans through cable providers like AT&T. As you can imagine, cord cutting has hit this business hard.

Disney’s cable business has stagnated over the past seven years. But in about 175 days, Disney is set to launch its own streaming service called Disney+.

It’s going to charge $6.99/month—around $6 cheaper than Netflix.

And it’s pulling all its content off of Netflix.

This is a big deal.

I'm just bringing this up because Disney+ and ESPN+ will likely be bundled together for a discount price.

So Disney/ESPN is probably going to get richer in the next several years as they have become both a content creator and a content supplier. The only thing they won't own is the distribution side...cable or internet infrastructure. But who knows? They might find a way to jump into that as well.

If Disney essentially destroys the market share of Netflix then that's a very interesting scenario and one that could affect sports rights fees.

Is Disney pulling their content from Amazon Prime?? If Disney views Netflix as a competitor, they should definitely view Amazon as a competitor also.

I dont think Disney has any content on Amazon Prime. You can buy specific movies off of Amazon but none are included with a Prime Subscription

(05-22-2019 10:18 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(05-22-2019 10:15 PM)spenser Wrote:  

(05-22-2019 03:26 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 03:28 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 02:55 PM)Yosef Himself Wrote:  I remember when the Palm Pre was going to put an end to the iPhone.

Hmmmm... I don’t know if that’s a great comparison. If anything, Disney is in the Apple position in the sense that there’s an unusually high devotion and loyalty to anything that the company releases compared to its competitors (where product preferences are much more transactional in nature). Disney and Apple have loyalty from a critical mass of passionate devotees in a way that, say, Comcast/Universal and Samsung don’t have and probably will never have.

That being said, the argument in the OP link is a bit too simple. While Netflix does rely on third party content more than it would like to admit, it still has essentially a decade-long head start on streaming and they’ve been adjusting their model to rely less on third party content for many years at this point.

Disney+ definitely has some killer top end content (Marvel, Star Wars, Disney Animation, Pixar), but I think it will end up being complementary to Netflix as opposed to replacing it for most households.

We’re also starting to see the end of the “arbitrage period” where streaming is clearly less expensive than getting rid of cable. When Netflix was essentially a one-stop-shop for movies and old TV shows in its earliest streaming days, it was an unbelievable deal compared to cable. Now, you essentially need Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Disney+ subscriptions to replicate what a single Netflix subscription used to achieve... and Comcast and AT&T/Time Warner are going to start their own streaming services, too. As I’ve been saying for a few years, we’re eventually going to end up paying more for the same content that we had receive previously with a basic cable subscription and that time might be coming even earlier than expected. Streaming is what is causing huge losses to the cable bundle, but we’re going to end up needing a bundle of all of the newstreaming services.

This is something we talked about on here a couple of years ago about how unsustainable Netflix was at that price with that content, and how one would have to give.

The other thing is this: if Disney is charging $6.99 per month for its aftermarket content, and espn charges $4.99 per month for the stuff that used to be free on its website, what do you think they’ll charge for ala cadre for ten real channel? I said previously I thought it'd be somewhere around $40 per month for espn alone (more for its other channels), but now I think I might be estimating low.

Hulu+Live is $44.99 and will have all of the Disney owned channels. The bundle with Disney+ and ESPN + will probably be $50 unless they bump the price of all 3 up.

Keep in mind that’s the price now with the majority of subscriptions coming from cable. At this point it’s still ancillary income. Imagine when it’s the sole Income streams?

Sling Orange with the Sports Extra add on is $30/month and includes ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ACCN Extra, SEC Network, SEC Network+, ESPNU and ESPNews, in addition to TBS, TNT, MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network, Pac 12 Network, BEIN and the Tennis Channel. It is probably the closest thing to a proxy for the price of a stand alone ESPN service.

You're point is well taken, though. Virtual Multichannel providers like Sling and Hulu+Live are paying the same price as cable providers for these channels. However, if cord cutting accelerates, ESPN and other cable networks may not be able to sustain current revenue levels, which will affect future rights fees.

At this point, ESPN's revenues appear stable despite subscriber losses due to increased subscription fees and the addition of SECN. It is still extremely profitable, but profits have stopped growing. Disney is essentially scrambling to replace this source of growth with the launch of its various direct to consumer streaming services.

(05-22-2019 05:28 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  Ironic that Frank mentions platforms starting their own streaming. Spectrum just launched its first original content streaming series. LA Finest with Gabriella Union and Jessica Alba. Haven’t read anything about it or watched an episode yet. Interested to see if it catches on.

Both Spectrum and Comcast will be stuck in the old cable service model and are likely to fail.