This is like every company right now, and it's entirely because shareholders are parasites
Streaming is a bad business model. It's all a shell game because it doesn't work on its own. They're all afraid to not have a streaming service because they don't want one service to emerge as the sole winner and dictate licensing terms to them.
It's like the prisoner's dilemma: the best business decision would be to stick with direct sales of physical media and digital downloads (which once upon a time made studios a lot of money), but they're all forced through competition to choose streaming, which means they all lose money hand over fist.
Most people don't know that Netflix funded a lot of its original programming by taking on a lot of debt. The company currently has over $11 billion in outstanding debt, most of which comes due in 4 years.
Disney is buoyed by its parks and linear programming (network and cable TV), but the latter is constantly eroding.
Paramount is the same story, but without the parks.
Amazon of course has its retail shopping ads (sponsored products) and AWS. Prime Video as an "investment" is a drop in the bucket. And of course they recently raised prices and leaned more heavily into streaming ads to try to claw back losses.
And when faced with the choice of protecting this money-burning business or laying off workers, cutting costs, and so on, studios repeatedly choose the latter. No other option than protect the prestige business that so many executives have tied their reputation to...
Do we get a Pixar movie about talking office supplies that have to reckon with the layoffs?!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Disney said it expects to get its streaming service out of the red by Q4 2024 as a result of the “restructuring” of the company that “enabled tremendous efficiencies,” CEO Bob Iger told investors during earnings.
Pixar’s “Elemental” was cited as one of the popular titles to hit the streaming platform in the quarter alongside other Disney and Marvel releases, like “The Little Mermaid” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
3.” “Elemental” had grossed half a billion worldwide, Disney said, and was the most-viewed film on Disney+ in the quarter, but was initially considered a box office bomb and one of the worst debuts in Pixar’s 28-year history.
The film made up for its poor opening over time, but had followed other under-performing titles like “Lightyear” and “Onward,” which forced Disney to reconsider its release strategy.
“Disney had more or less trained audiences to expect big, hot Pixar content at home,” explained Brandon Katz, an entertainment industry strategist at Parrot Analytics.
Earlier in 2023, Pixar laid off 75 positions including two executives behind “Lightyear,” Reuters reported, including longtime animators Angus MacLane (“Toy Story 4,” “Coco”) and Galyn Susman, who had been with Pixar since the original “Toy Story.” Those cuts were part of Iger’s plan to reduce headcount by 7,000 jobs and $5.5 billion in costs, the report said.
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