Walt Disney used to say, “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.” It’s good to see that ethos is still alive and well at Walt Disney Co.. When a bunch of Wall Street analysts and toy retailers expressed doubts about the financial potential of Disney’s new Pixar movie, Up, CEO Robert A. Iger told The New York Times:
We seek to make great films first. If a great film gives birth to a franchise, we are the first company to leverage such success. A check-the-boxes approach to creativity is more likely to result in blandness and failure.
Well said. It is easy to fall prey to a “check the boxes” approach and veer away from the core beliefs and values of your company. If that happens, you’re left with forgettable products that lack vision.
Re: Walt Disney used to say, “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”
Disney’s films were almost all financial failures and the only thing that saved the Company was the ancillary marketing of the Brand – the comic books, the watches, mugs, lunch boxes, the Mickey Mouse Club, Disney on Ice…whatever.
Heck, even Disneyland was a huge marketing gambit to keep the Company afloat, while Disney’s more recent foray into live theatre achieves the same thing.
Disney’s ethos was never to make to great films – though more by fluke than intent they did several, and those only considered so decades later – but to make money off the franchising of the product.
Pity then poor Pixar – they may wish to create a worthwhile product, but all Disney is interested in is whether it have characters they can franchise to MacDonalds for ‘Happy Meals’…
Well I guess that’s where they get their “money to make more movies” from? Afterall, they’re doing a business. They produce great Animated films but their life action movies like the race to witch mountain aren’t exactly under the “great films” category. But I do hope they keep trying anyway.