Disney To Cut $3 Billion In Content Costs
During Disney’s latest quarterly financial results investor call, Disney CEO Bob Iger has announced that the company is looking to make over $5.5 billion in cost savings, which include $3 billion in non-sports related content.
This will see Disney looking at the cost of making their shows and films, plus they will be taking a look at how much they are creating. It’s likely that we will now see an increase in the number of shows cancelled, the number of projects being greenlighted and releases spread out, but with a focus on its core brands like Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar, but it will be more selective in these projects, due to the cost involved in making them.
Bob Iger said during the call:
“We are going to take a really hard look at the cost for everything that we make, both across television and film. Because things in a very competitive world have just simply gotten more expensive, and that’s something that is already underway here. In addition, we’re going to look at the volume of what we make. And with that in mind, we’re going to be fairly aggressive at better curation when it comes to general entertainment,”
Disney will also become more selective in what content it makes for its general entertainment business, which will likely see more content being shared between streaming and linear. We are also likely to see more films getting a theatrical release, rather than going straight to streaming, plus more content being licensed out to other platforms to increase revenue.
It’s also why we are likely to see the number of expensive shows from Marvel and Star Wars much more spaced out, as Disney had scheduled at least five Marvel shows and three Star Wars shows, for Disney+ in 2023, so we are likely not to see the overlap between shows like last year and have shows delayed to spread out the costs.
The other $2.5 billion in saving will be in general operating costs, with $1 billion of cost-cutting already underway. Bob Iger has also revealed that over 7000 jobs are set to be cut from the company.
With costs going up around the world and the boom in subscriber numbers slowing down, Disney+ needs to become profitable by 2024, and ultimately, Disney has been spending too much on creating new content for streaming than it can bring in.
What do you think of Disney cutting costs?