Disney Shows Off For The Fans

Today was the first day of Comic-Con in San Diego, the annual geekfest that has become a mandatory destination for studios trying to generate buzz for their big tent-pole movies.  Disney made a splash two years ago when it surprised attendees with test footage for a new TRON film that was early in development.  Flash-forward to today, as Disney hosted a full panel on TRON: Legacy, it's big holiday release film for 2010.  The new full trailer is a stunner.

Not too shabby, eh?  Pay close attention to the "young" Jeff Bridges.  Does he pass muster?  Or does he take you to the uncanny valley?  I think it works for me, so long as they don't linger on the eyes for too long.  And unlike recent so-called 3D movies that were only converted to the 3D format as an afterthought to sell more ridiculously high-priced tickets  (I'm looking at you Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender), TRON: Legacy was actually filmed in 3D, which means you'll be getting a much more authentic experience should you choose to fork over the extra money.

But Disney, which has been surprising adept at putting on a good show for the Comic-Con crowd, had a couple of additional surprises.  First there was a taped greeting from Johnny Depp, in character as Jack Sparrow, and in 3D (natch), teasing the audience about the zombies and mermaids that will be featured in next summer's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.





But wait, there's more!  Disney had one last surprise up it's sleeve.  Are you ready for another attempt at making a movie out of The Haunted Mansion attraction?  What if I told you that this version was being created by director Guillermo Del Toro and that Eddie Murphy would be nowhere in sight?  Del Toro promises it will be "scary and fun at the same time" and that if you take your kids they will scream.  Sounds good to me!

Looking for Prince Charming

After the billion-dollar performance of Alice in Wonderland earlier this spring, Disney executives must have been thinking that 2010 would be a record setting year for the studio at the box office. With Toy Story 3 and Tron: Legacy still to come, that may yet be the case. But with Memorial Day weekend now behind us, it’s clear that Disney’s path to box-office glory has hit a speed bump.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was supposed to be the next big Disney franchise. Based on a popular video game, Prince of Persia was an opportunity to launch a new adventure series in the mold of Pirates of the Caribbean that would appeal to audiences of all ages, spawn multiple sequels, sell shelves of merchandise, and maybe even inspire new attractions in the parks. The film had a promising pedigree, with hit-maker Jerry Bruckheimer producing and Harry Potter veteran Mike Newell directing. Leading up to its opening weekend, the marketing was so ubiquitous that clearly no expense was spared. Alas, the film opened in second place for an anemic $37.8 million for the four-day Memorial Day weekend (only $30 million for the Friday to Sunday period). Prince of Persia, which cost an estimated $200 million to make and heaven only knows how much to market, will be lucky to gross even $100 million at the domestic box office, and so this new franchise is already over before it got started.

Ironically, Prince of Persia was conceived, at least in part, as sort of a replacement for another adventure franchise that Disney had chosen to abandon for its perceived poor performance. 2005’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ended up as one of Disney’s biggest all-time hits, with a domestic gross of nearly $300 million and a global gross of over $700 million. With Narnia, Disney had seemingly found its own family-friendly, fantasy-literary series on par with Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings.

But unlike the Harry Potter franchise, which has released nearly all of its films on a compressed 12 or 18-month schedule, there was a gap of two and a half years between Lion and its sequel, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.*  In addition, Prince Caspian was pushed from the holiday release date that had served its predecessor so well and was released in May 2005, the start of the summer movie season, right between the much buzzed-about Iron Man and the intensely anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. To make matters even worse, the film was marketed badly . Instead of building on the goodwill held toward the first film and the returning characters, Disney pushed Prince Caspian as a dark and intense action movie and tried to position the new title character as a teen heartthrob.

With the long gap between films, the unfavorable competition and an ill-suited marketing effort, Prince Caspian unsurprisingly debuted to a soft $55 million on its way to a total domestic box office take of $141 million and a total global box office haul of $419 million.**  Given that this was far below the performance of the first Narnia film, Disney re-considered its commitment to the franchise. The decision was complicated by the fact that Disney shared the costs and profits for the Narnia films with Walden Media, which actually controls the rights to the books. Walden Media had already begun pre-production on the third Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was originally slated to be released in May 2010. After haggling with Walden over budget costs, release dates and other issues, Disney walked away from the partnership and Walden will now release Dawn Treader in December with 20th Century Fox.  Prince of Persia was then fast-tracked by Disney to fill the May 2010 slot and here we are.

In hindsight, Disney would have been much better off sticking with the Narnia franchise instead of trying to build a new franchise from scratch. While both Prince of Persia and Prince Caspian cost north of $200 million to produce, Walden had agreed to scale back the budget for Dawn Treader to something in the range of $140 million. Furthermore, Disney would have only been on the hook for half of that because it shared the financial risk (and reward) for Narnia with Walden Media, limiting its exposure in the event of failure. With Prince of Persia, Disney shoulders all of the loss on its own but would have probably been obligated to make significant payouts to Bruckheimer had the film been a success.  With regard to marketing costs, it’s always easier to sell an existing brand then to introduce something new and unknown to the masses.

Finally, the fact the Narnia is already an established brand with at least one well-regarded and popular film to serve as an anchor makes it easier to profit from subsequent films, regardless of how successful they are at the box office.***  The release of a new franchise film inevitably reinvigorates interest in the older films resulting in new sales of DVDs and other merchandise. Simply the ability to bundle the films together as a new box set of the "Narnia Trilogy" could provide new revenue. And because of Narnia’s literary roots, it has a much higher likelihood of enduring as an “evergreen” property that can sustain ventures long after the movies are done, such as theme park attractions.****

In this tale of two princes, Disney simply chose the wrong prince.  Had Dawn Treader been released by Disney in place of Prince of Persia, it is very plausible that it would have out-performed Prince Caspian or at the least done no worse than Prince of Persia.  But Disney would have spent less money overall and had more opportunity for ancillary revenue.  Nonetheless, I have a feeling that a certain cowboy and space ranger will still provide a fairy tale ending for Disney’s summer.



* The tight release schedule serves three purposes: 1) it maintains public interest in the franchise, particularly among fickle younger movie goers; 2) it achieves some efficiency in production costs; and 3) it ensures that the young actors don’t age beyond their characters in between films.
** Although Prince of Persia has debuted to a decent start in international markets and could still prove to be a success in that regard, its opening weekend abroad was 17% lower than the foreign debut of Prince Caspian.
*** It's worth noting that among fans of Narnia, Dawn Treader is widely considered to be the most popular book in the series, while Prince Caspian is generally one of the least popular. 
 **** Disney created a temporary walk-through attraction the Narnia films at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando.  Rumors of a permanent Narnia-themed attraction have percolated on Disney fan message boards for years.

Connect Four

Well, there's really nothing connecting these four items, they are simply a few of the stories and blogs that have caught my attention this week that I wanted to comment on.

1) When I first read that the FCC was going to look at issuing new regulation regarding so-called "net neutrality" I planned to write a lengthy blog post on it.  But then I saw this posting over at RedState.com and I decided that there is no use parroting what someone else has already said so well.  The fundamental question is this:  Do you really want to put the federal government in charge of the Internet?  Because that's what this is.  It's about giving the government the authority to decide the right way and the wrong way to manage the Internet, it's about allowing the government to pick winners and losers among Internet companies and service providers, and it's about the government limiting your choices as a consumer.  I don't understand how anyone could think this is a good idea.

2) Hollywood celebrities have taken on a new urgent cause with the arrest of Roman Polanski in Switzerland and his pending extradition to the United States over 30 years after he fled the country.  Lest anyone feel sorry for this man, here is a stark reminder of exactly what he did to put him in his current situation.  Do not give this man your sympathy.  Hollywood knows no shame.

3) I hesitate to put too much stock in unproven, unattributed speculation, but this item suggesting that Disney may attempt future "Pirates of the Caribbean" films without Johnny Depp raises interesting issues given Depp's reported disappointment with the firing of Dick Cook.  As I've said before, Depp is to Pirates what Harrison Ford is to Indiana Jones.  It just won't work without him.  Remember when George Lucas launched the "Young Indiana Jones" tv series?  You probably don't.  It flopped.  I'm personally a big fan of that show, but audiences just weren't interested in Indy if Ford wasn't the guy on the screen.  Disney needs to understand that there is no chance that a big screen Pirates movie will succeed without Depp.  He appears to still be commited to number four.  Let's just take it one at a time and not get too far ahead of ourselves, okay?

4) Finally, there's a couple of interesting looks at the business of big media.  A NY Times piece previews an upcoming book positing that media companies have embraced rapid growth in pursuit of short-term gains and trends while in fact losing long-term value.  The AOL-TimeWarner merger is the obvious example of this, but News Corp's purchase of MySpace is another example.  Disney has experienced their own headaches of this sort, notably the acquisitions of Infoseek and the Fox Family Channel.  Then there's this interesting speech given by Bill Mechanic, former studio chief at Fox who was also once an executive at Disney, regarding the state of the motion picture industry.  His remarks contain a certain amount of self-aggrandizing pats-on-the-back, but he articulates a pretty compelling grasp of the challenges that face the studios.  I can't help but think he would be an attractive candidate for Disney's new studio vacancy.