As Disney celebrates its 100th anniversary, the brand’s true legacy is business acumen.
“100 Years of Wonder” is the theme of Disney’s annual promotion commemorating its 100th anniversary. From special Disney on Ice events to retrospectives at the British Film Institute and limited edition Disney 100 merchandise, Disney celebrations are big business.
The wonder and magic of Disney is consistently promoted. Yet I would argue that Disney’s greatest legacy is not its animated stories and characters, but its more mundane history of mergers, acquisitions, and intellectual property rights.
The business acumen of Disney’s behind-the-scenes people has been central to the peaks and troughs of Disney’s enduring presence in the film industry and popular culture in general.
The Walt Disney Company was founded in Hollywood in 1923 by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Disney.
Prior to this, the brothers had founded Laugh-O-Glam Studios in Kansas City with friend and animator Ubu Iwerks. He then moved west after finding success with his comedy series Silent Alice, which featured both animation and live-action.
Animation is what Disney Studios became famous for. We’ll start with the studio’s first sound film, the third Mickey Mouse film in Steamboat Willie, and short films including the Silly Symphony series. It also appeared in feature films, starting with 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The studio’s first two decades established Disney’s desire for innovation and profit. This was illustrated through merchandising (Mickey Mouse merchandise brought him profits in the mid-1930s) and the early introduction of various technologies such as Technicolor and sound.
With most of its profits funneled into its expensive animation business, Disney was forced to find ways to cut costs. This included producing live-action nature series and television shows, and he opened the first amusement park, Disneyland, in Los Angeles in 1955.
Although their animated work is no longer as groundbreaking as it once was, their introduction to television in the 1950s was a lucrative one, with “The Mickey Mouse Club” (1955) and “Davy Crockett” (1954) being particularly popular. did.
In addition, television gave the company an opportunity to promote its products and prove Disney’s position at the forefront of animation. However, in the 1960s, live-action films dominated releases because they were faster and cheaper to produce than animation, and stars Hayley Mills, Fred MacMurray, and Dean Jones appeared in multiple Disney films.
Walt died in 1966. Roy then died in 1971, the same year Walt Disney World opened in Florida. In many ways, the Disney company was never the same after losing its founding brothers.
Disney without Walt
A template was established for how the company would function for the next 50 years. Disney Animation innovated again through computer animation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A renaissance occurred with the release of The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994).
They also expanded into cable television with the Disney Channel and founded Touchstone Pictures, a distribution label focused on adult films.
There was dissatisfaction among the studio’s animators with the company’s bureaucracy and the perception that profits always went back into the movies rather than improving working conditions and pay (a major strike against Disney occurred in 1941). Ta).
The list of former Disney animators who have worked elsewhere or founded their own animation studios is long and diverse.
Walt learned the importance of owning rights early in his career after losing his intellectual property to his first successful animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. The imperative to maintain ownership and diversify a company can be seen in many of Disney’s transactions and mergers.
In 1991, Disney agreed to make a film with Pixar. Pixar has been considered an innovative animation studio. Then, in 2006, it acquired Pixar.
Disney today
In 1995, Disney acquired the ABC Television Network, which also owned the cable sports network ESPN. In April 2004, Disney acquired the Muppets franchise. Marvel Entertainment was acquired in 2009 and Lucasfilm was acquired in 2012.
These acquisitions have made Disney one of the most important entertainment companies in the world, and one of the few early Hollywood studios that still maintains a high profile today (Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019).
For earlier generations, Disney was the symbol of Mickey Mouse, animated fairy tales, and family entertainment; for younger generations, Disney was the streaming service, the amusement park brand, and the creator of TV shows in the Star Wars universe. There is also.
Traces of the pioneering animation established in Walt, Roy, and the studio’s early years can be seen in animated releases such as Encanto (2021) and the recently released live-action version of The Little Mermaid.
The commercial environment of the entertainment business is constantly changing. Many companies operate their own streaming services, but the long-term success of these services is questionable. This is most evident in the recent Hollywood writers and actors strike, which focused primarily on outdated royalty models that do not account for streaming media content.
Disney’s last few films haven’t been as successful as expected at the box office, and Disney+ has lost a lot of subscribers this year. But this is a trend happening across Hollywood, and while Disney is struggling, it remains an important brand in the global media market.
And there’s no question that Disney theme parks continue to be popular with families looking to immerse themselves in all things Disney.
The magic of Disney animation and the memories created at our theme parks are part of Disney’s 100 Years of Wonders. But so have successful business models that have continually adapted to changes in the entertainment business and its deep cultural relevance.
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Julie Lobalzo Wright, assistant professor of film and television studies; University of Warwick
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
