Even Financial Analysts Can Recognize Reality When It Hits them in the Face

Though I have to say that it took longer for them to notice that Disney is hemorrhaging cash than I would have expected. Disney stock downgraded at KeyBanc on 'meaningful uncertainty'

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brandon Nispel downgraded Disney stock (DIS) to Sector Weight from Overweight on Thursday, citing "meaningful uncertainty" as the 2024 financial setup "feels a lot like the 2023 setup."

Nispel called out five areas of concern, which include stalling direct-to-consumer (DTC) subscriber growth, a failure to differentiate DTC churn, sagging Disney content sales, a "materially harder" reality for moving ESPN to streaming, along with fears that domestic park expectations appear too high in the US.

Now this is one analyst making one comment about "content sales." That content would be movies, and TV shows, and Disney has proven singularly inept at creating both types of "content" in recent years. Lightyear was the first Pixar flop that I can remember, followed shortly by Strange Worlds. Both lost money, and it was in part (I think) do to the Social Justice message they are trying to cram down everyone's throat. Elemental is currently doing the same thing.

Then there is the dumpster fire that is Lucasfilm. The last 3 Star Wars movies were crap, and the associated/spinoff Disney+ TV shows are also (mostly) crap. The latest movie from Disney/Lucasfilm, Indiana Jones and the Insufferable Feminist, is in the process of dying at the box office. I could say the same thing about Disney/Marvel that I've said about Disney/Lucasfilm, with the exception that people hadn't quite given up on the Disney/Marvel brand. Well, that was before Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came out. Despite making $464 million at the global box office, I don't think that there is anyway that film turned a profit. (It depends on some things that the studios never tell us, like the marketing budget, and the amount of money spent on re-shoots.)

Disney isn't alone of course. Paramount has all but destroyed Star Trek, and Warner Bros. are in the process of destroying the DC franchise, but we are talking about Disney today.

The analysts are still talking about streaming. Disney+ is losing a lot of money for the company, and the long-term viability of ESPN is sort of up in the air.

But what the analysts never seem to take into account is the destruction of good will. No one went to see The Flash from DC because they produced a series of awful movies. No one is going to see Indiana Jones and the Insufferable Feminist for the same reason. After several BAD movies people no longer give Hollywood their money until people that they trust (not the shill media) say a movie is good. And most of them are not good. I thought we learned in the 1990s that special effects couldn't substitute for good storytelling, but Corporate Hollywood doesn't seem to know that even today.

And so the corporate studios, who can't seem to tell the difference between trash, and good storytelling, will drive every film franchise, and a few literary franchises, into the ground, because they don't know word "timeless." They have to produce everything for the Los Angeles in which they live. And that would be fine if you were making a art-house film for 10,000 people in the SF Bay Area, but they are trying - or so they say - to produce movies for a mass market.