Pixar boss Pete Docter, speaking at a private media event at Disney’s D23 convention earlier this month, said there was enormous pressure to deliver. “This is not a science, this whole thing is a mystery,” Docter said. “Otherwise, we would just consistently do $US2 billion movies. It’s always a little bit of a crap shoot.
“We’re trying to make every one of these the best they possibly can be,” Docter added. “Once in a while the stars align and it happens. I think the main pressure that we feel is our own internally generated pressure to just make something as great as we can based on our own standards.”
Marvel boss Kevin Feige.Credit: The Walt Disney Company
Docter was joined by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer Jennifer Lee and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. The mini-panel, which was not open to the public, was led by Alan Bergman, the co-chairman (with Dana Walden) of Disney Entertainment.
Feige said expectations were a dangerous threshold in an uncertain business. “We were very lucky, year after year, to exceed expectations to the point where … within the company, or within the press, it becomes expected. It becomes expected that everything will break records.
“When we had some disappointments for the first time [last year], I don’t say it was good, but you try to find the good in everything, and one of those things is that you don’t take [the successes] for granted, you understand what you were.”
The success of Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine was, Feige says, a reminder to “everybody that this doesn’t happen all the time, and we should celebrate it”. “That was the silver lining to having some disappointments and beginning to build yourself back up.”
The studio is not holding back its plans, with Mufasa: The Lion King and live-action Snow White and Moana adaptations coming, an unprecedented integration between the studio’s iconic characters and the Fortnite gaming world (following Disney’s $US1.9 billion investment in Epic Games) and confirmation of Toy Story 5, Frozen 3, Frozen 4 and The Incredibles 3. Sequels, anyone?
To that content pile, you can add the buzziest streaming series in recent memory (Agatha All Along), a live-action Goonies-esque Star Wars series, Skeleton Crew, the return of the Russo brothers to direct two new Avengers movies, and a decade-long planned $US1.9 billion expansion to Disneyland, the 69-year-old theme park that is arguably still the most valuable asset in the studio’s arsenal.
But all of that is not to say Disney does not have its challenges. Pixar and Marvel have both had billion-dollar babies, but stablemate Lucasfilm is struggling to fire cinematically. The fandom-rattling Star Wars “sequel trilogy” pulled in $US4 billion in total box office, but that trilogy launched almost a decade ago.
The Mandalorian demonstrated the studio’s command of Star Wars in the streaming TV world, but even there they have batted up almost as many false starts (The Book of Boba Fett, The Acolyte) as they have genuinely commercial or creative hits (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, Ahsoka).
The Mandalorian and Grogu.Credit: AP
Kennedy said Lucasfilm’s shift into TV was “sort of moving into territory we didn’t frankly know a whole lot about”.
“Baby Yoda [in The Mandalorian] took the world by storm. And that was the point in time that we started saying, OK, we’re moving into a new area of storytelling in Star Wars.
“You commit yourself to doing the best work you possibly can, you try to take risk, you try to move outside of your comfort zone, and you hope that that’s going to connect with people,” she added. “When it does, it’s the most thrilling thing ever. When it doesn’t, it’s a disappointment.”
While its most valuable assets may be fictional characters, Bergman attributed the company’s success to the human beings overseeing them, saying, essentially, that Docter, Feige, Lee and Kennedy were as important to the Disney commercial algorithm as the labels they represent. “Brands, if you don’t keep them strong, weaken and go away,” Bergman said. “The people really keep them going.”
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Bergman also emphasised the studio’s relationship with producer/director James Cameron, who is delivering the Avatar films to Disney, another inheritance from the 21st Century Fox merger. The first of those returned $US2.9 billion at the box office, and its sequel, 2022’s The Way of Water, pulled in $US2.3 billion. Avatar: Fire and Ash is due next year, with a fourth and fifth film coming in 2029 and 2031.
“Only six films have done $US2 billion [at the box office] and [James Cameron] has three of them,” Bergman said – Cameron’s third was 1997’s Titanic – adding that the other three belong to Feige (Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame) and Kennedy (The Force Awakens).
“We try to make every movie a hit … but it’s very hard,” Bergman said. “Sometimes I know right away when we have it. And sometimes, quite frankly, we’d make it the best we can, and we can’t quite get there, but that’s part of the business.”
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