[COLUMN] Disney's D23 Bets the Company's Future on Past Successes | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

This was the weekend of the D23 Expo, effectively a convention for the Walt Disney Company designed to showcase the corporation’s existing properties and upcoming plans. Coming a couple of weeks after Comic Con, it provides Disney with an exclusive stage. It doesn’t have to compete for attention. As a result, while the company’s biggest announcements might go to Hall H at Comic Con, there is a steadier and more diverse stream of announcements and materials from the D23 Expo.

There were a couple of high-profile trailers released at D23, including previews of new streaming shows like Agatha All Along or Skeleton Crew. There was news related to the company’s theme park holdings, including the construction of a Villains land in the Magic Kingdom. However, the steady trickle of announcements, trailers and teases coming out of D23 pointed to a company that still had one eye firmly on its own past.

This isn’t a surprise. The company’s big announcement at Comic Con was that Robert Downey Jr. and the Russo Brothers were returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Disney has released the two biggest movies of the year to date, and both are obvious nostalgia plays. Inside Out 2 is a sequel to the most successful Pixar original film released between 2010 and 2020, and as of this column has grossed almost $1.6bn. Deadpool and Wolverine went hard on nostalgia for Fox’s X-Men franchise, and just crossed a billion.

“More of the same” has been a long-term strategy for Disney, at a time when both the company and the larger industry are facing existential threats. Indeed, much of the news out of D23 concerned projects that audiences already knew to be in the works. There were new teases of projects that had been announced years ago, like Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa: The Lion King, David Derrick, Jr., Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller’s Moana 2 or Dean Fleischer Camp’s Lilo & Stitch remake.

Of course, over the past year, it’s become clear that more is riding on those projects than even Disney had originally planned. Moana 2 is reportedly based on material that was originally intended to launch a streaming series, but was hastily reconfigured into a major theatrical release. As recently as November 2022, the Lilo & Stitch remake was “intended for initial release on Disney+.” These shifts are even more proof that the streaming wars are over, as the studio pivots back to theatres.

There were some new developments around sequels that Bob Iger announced in February 2023: Zootopia 2 (2ootopia?) and Frozen 3. The studio unveiled a new logo for Zootopia 2 and offered a first look at (and release date for) Frozen 3. On stage, Disney’s chief creative officer, Jennifer Lee, stated that Frozen III was so large that the film had to be broken into two halves, functionally announcing Frozen IV – a film rumored since at least November 2023.

There were, unsurprisingly, a lot of Pixar announcements out of D23. Some of these announcements concerned original films. The studio confirmed that Elio would enjoy a competitive summer release date, having originally moved from March 2024. The studio also announced Hoppers, a body-swapping beaver movie starring Jon Hamm, for an early 2026 release date. However, the bulk of announcements concerned sequels and spin-offs from existing properties.

There was a sneak peak at the studio’s Toy Story 5, an announcement that Brad Bird was working on Incredibles 3 and confirmation of a spin-off streaming series based around the dream studio from the Inside Out films. Although there was no official announcement of Inside Out 3, Bob Iger teased the possibility in conversation with Good Morning America, musing, “I would love to see Inside Out 3 as well, and I'll just leave it at that.”

That is a lot of very familiar material. Of course, it’s a pragmatic decision. These properties are massively successful for Disney. Toy Story 4 made over a billion dollars, so a sequel makes sense. Zootopia also grossed over a billion dollars, so it would be corporate malfeasance to leave all that money on the table. Incredibles 2 made $1.2bn, so a follow-up is just good business sense.

Frozen made $1.3bn and Frozen II made $1.4bn, so why not commit to two sequels? Moana was arguably something of a more modest performer, “only” earning $643m at the box office, but the film has become the most streamed children’s movie ever. Even Jon Favreau’s much-maligned Lion King remake made $1.6bn, meaning there’s a solid argument that Inside Out 2 isn’t really the highest-grossing animated film of all time.

There is something very strange about all this. Obviously, these movies are going to make a lot of money. Of course, there are no sure bets in Hollywood. It is entirely possible for sequels to successful movies to massively underperform. Captain Marvel grossed $1.1bn, but The Marvels topped out at $206m, becoming the lowest-grossing film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Aquaman made waves with $1.1bn, but Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom settled for “just” $434m.

However, animated movies are generally less risky gambles than four-quadrant entertainment. It’s very hard to lose money on a major theatrical release of an animated feature, particularly during school holidays, as parents desperately search for any excuse to get the kids out of the house. Just this year, Despicable Me became the first animated franchise to cross the $5bn mark at the global box office, in just six films. It is no wonder that Shrek 5 is coming.

So, given that these movies are very likely to be hits, there is a strange sense of desperation around these announcements. It feels like Disney has hit an emergency lever, and is cashing in all of its chips at once. Even scattered across the next three years, these big announcements feel a lot like an attempt to recreate the strange alchemy of 2019 – right down to bringing back Downey and the Russos for a big Avengers sequel.

In 2019, Disney had the best year of any studio ever. The company made more money at the box office in the first seven months of the year than any other studio had made in any other year ever. The studio dominated the box office, releasing seven of the year’s ten highest-grossing movies and seven of the year’s nine films to gross over a billion dollars. This happened through a perfect storm, with several of the studio’s major franchises paying off within months of one another.

Avengers: Endgame and The Rise of Skywalker served as capstones for their Marvel and Star Wars brands. Remakes of The Lion King and Aladdin mined nostalgia for the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s. Toy Story 4 and Frozen II were sequels in massively successful franchises. Even Captain Marvel was in the right place at the right time, positioned between two massive Avengers movies. When Bob Iger resigned early the following year, it seemed like his legacy was secure.

As such, it makes sense that Disney is chasing the highs of 2019, trying to force its major franchises to align once again. This was, to a certain extent, the promise of Bob Iger’s return. When Bob Iger was reinstalled as CEO of Disney in November 2022, the unspoken promise was that he would find a way to restore the company to its former glory, that he would guide the studio out of the darkness of the pandemic and back towards global dominance.

However, there is a certain blinkeredness to this approach. Disney is chasing the highs of 2019, but has forgotten the subsequent fall. This mode of extracting every last dollar from existing intellectual property – let’s call it “cultural fracking” – comes at a price. The pandemic and the streaming bubble disguised the ultimate cost of the hedonistic excess of 2019, a period in which the company’s ruthless exploitation of its core properties had exhausted audiences’ enthusiasm for the brands.

The Lion King and Aladdin made money, but that didn’t mean that The Little Mermaid was destined to be a hit. There are plenty of reasons why Marvel Studios has found itself facing a decline, but at least part of the problem is that Endgame was packaged and sold as a grand finale, which makes it harder to keep audiences invested long-term. The most lasting legacy of The Rise of Skywalker is that it effectively turned Star Wars into a television franchise.

It is perhaps a bit much to argue that nostalgia is an exhaustible resource, even if some nostalgia works better than others. However, paradoxically, the key to successfully cashing in on familiarity seems to be at least some sense of novelty in the media evoked. Deadpool and Wolverine might have been a nostalgic ode to the Fox X-Men movies, but it benefited from the fact that Disney had not yet exploited that property for everything it was worth. Inside Out 2 was the first sequel to a beloved original film.

This is the first truth of nostalgia: there has to be something for audiences to be nostalgic for. Even if that original material isn’t (initially) as successful as the inevitable follow-up, it’s still a necessary long-term investment. It’s basic agriculture; the best way to ensure the growth of future crops is to let the soil go fallow. For example, Encanto might not have been a massive hit at the box office, but it attracted huge audiences on Disney+. It seems like a viable future candidate for a sequel.

It's worth considering Inside Out 2, the biggest film of the year to date. Disney’s strategy with Pixar has pushed the studio to make lucrative follow-ups to their early original films: Toy Story 3 ($1bn), Cars 2 ($559m), Monsters University ($743m), Finding Dory ($1bn), Cars 3 ($383m), Incredibles 2 ($1.2bn), Toy Story 4 ($1bn). However, the result of this strategy was that Pixar only made a handful of original films between 2010 and 2020: Brave, Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur and Coco.

As a result, there aren’t really many other options available for the studio to sequelize. Inside Out 2 was really the only viable candidate. While it paid off this time, that’s a lot of weight to put on one property. This is true across the entire Walt Disney Company. It’s not a sustainable long-term model. Indeed, it feels somewhat appropriate that one of Iger’s blind spots has been succession planning, preparing for the company’s future beyond his tenure.

Disney’s likely to have a very profitable couple of years, but somehow there’s a lingering uncertainty over the company’s future.