EXCLUSIVE: Nautilus, the U.K. live-action Captain Nemo series commissioned by Disney+ two years ago, is no longer headed to the streamer, Deadline has learned.
09.08.2023 - 20:17 / deadline.com
Disney saw direct-to-consumer losses shrink and adjusted EPS top estimates for the three months ended in June as CEO Bob Iger said the company’s on track to exceed $5.5 billion in anticipated cost savings.
Total revenue of $22.3 billion (down 2%) was shy of forecasts. Linear television was softer — a trend Iger called out in a controversial CNBC interview last month. A jump in Parks & Experiences, about a third of Disney’s sales, was driven by international parks and cruise lines. Domestic parks saw profit fall with lower attendance at Walt Disney World.
There was a big $2.44 billion content impairment charge related to removing content from its DTC service and terminating third-party licensing agreements, plus another $210 million hit from severance. A broad restructuring Iger launched after returning to Disney’s helm last fall eliminated 7,000 jobs.
The company swung to a net loss of $490 million for its fiscal fourth quarter from a $4.1 billion profit the year before.
Subscribers: Disney+ had 146.1 million total global paid subscribers at the end of June, down from last year and quarter. But excluding Disney+HotStar (which lost12.5 million subs from 2022), core Disney+ subs rose, to 105.7 million from 104.9 million. The hit from HotStar was expected after Disney declined to renew its rights to hugely popular IPL cricket programming starting in the 2023 season.
ESPN+ subs were about flat at 25.2 million. Hulu’s 44 million SVOD subs were up from 43.7 million. Live TV+ SVOD was 4.3 million, for a 48.3M total Hulu.
At linear networks (U.S. and global) profit fell 23% to $1.9 billion on sales of $6.69 billion, down 7%. Stateside, Disney noted lower advertising revenue and viewership at ABC. Cable ad revenue rose,
EXCLUSIVE: Nautilus, the U.K. live-action Captain Nemo series commissioned by Disney+ two years ago, is no longer headed to the streamer, Deadline has learned.
EXCLUSIVE: Amid a focus on content curation and Disney-owned IP, Disney+ is not proceeding with The Spiderwick Chronicles, its live-action series adaptation of the popular children’s fantasy books, Deadline has learned.
Disney+ has “pretty much” hit its target of creating 50 original international titles, according to its Europe content boss.
“I know how to change bad news into good news,” Edward L. Bernays, the father of public relations, used to boast. Since he was a nephew of Sigmund Freud, I wonder how he’d find a positive mind-set among today’s practitioners of his craft.
Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer TSG Entertainment, which has invested more than $3 billion in 140 Fox films including “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Shape of Water,” accused Disney in a lawsuit on Tuesday of using Hollywood accounting tricks to cheat it out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The slate financier alleged that Disney had engaged in “self-dealing” by diverting Fox films from a lucrative HBO license to its own Disney+ and Hulu platforms. The lawsuit also alleges that Fox engaged in “sweetheart” deals when it licensed its films to the FX cable channel.
So it looks like there might be a big change to the planned Marvel/Disney+ release schedule in 2023.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urged The Walt Disney Co. to drop its lawsuit against him, while telling CNBC that he has “moved on” from his battle with company and that it should drop the lawsuit against him.
As the ongoing WGA strike hits 100 days, the entirety of Hollywood wonders how long both that and the SAG-AFTRA strike will last. In the case of WGA, this strike is no officially longer than the 2007-2008 strike, but has a ways to go before it hits the 1988 writers’ strike 153 days, the longest in the union’s history. Disney CEO Bob Iger hopes neither strike lasts that long, though.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney is coming for the streaming password-sharing freeloaders. Taking a page from Netflix’s playbook, Disney chief Bob Iger announced that the media conglomerate has put a priority on finding ways to convert password-borrowing users into paying customers.
Disney CEO Bob Iger shook up the entertainment industry and Wall Street last month when he declared to CNBC at Sun Valley that linear television may be non-core and that he’s looking for partners for ESPN as the company pivots to streaming.
Hulu will increase its ad-free subscription from $14.99 to $17.99 per month.Disney+ will also see a jump from $10.99 to $13.99 for its monthly ad-free plan.And before you and your close circle decide to chip in for a shared account, you should know that Disney CEO Bob Iger also announced Wednesday that the company is “actively exploring ways to address account sharing and the best options for paying subscribers to share their accounts with friends and families.”In other words: a crackdown on password sharing, perhaps similar to what Netflix introduced in May, is coming to Hulu. What’s more, the company introduced a new ad-free Disney+ and Hulu bundle — without ESPN+ — called “Duo Premium,” available Sept.
Disney interim chief financial officer Kevn Lansberry said the company is “very comfortable with our current liquidity position” as the time approaches for it to buy Comcast’s one-third stake in Hulu.
Disney’s giant theme park division was first out of the gate in a post-pandemic recovery, showing giant jumps in revenue and profit due to pent-up demand. But the engine is sputtering.
Get ready to pay more for Disney+ and Hulu if you’re a subscriber.
“It is my fervent hope that we quickly find solutions to the issues that have kept us apart these past few months, “said Bob Iger today of the Writers Guild and actors’ union’s strikes on Disney’s earnings call. “And I am personally committed to achieve this result.”
Disney is following through on stated plan to raise streaming prices (welcome news to investors if not to many consumers), as well as launching a bundled version of Disney+ and Hulu and expanding the ad-supported version of Disney+ to Europe and Canada.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney, trying to swing its streaming business into the black, has set substantial price hikes for Disney+ and Hulu standalone premium plans in the U.S. — while also rolling out a heavily discounted Disney+/Hulu ad-free combo bundle. As of Oct.
Cynthia Littleton Business Editor The Walt Disney Co. saw its streaming losses narrow in the second quarter amid an exodus of 12.5 million subscribers from its Disney+ Hotstar streaming platform in India. For the quarter, Disney exceeded Wall Street’s targets on earnings per share but missed on revenue.
Zack Sharf Digital News Director Billy Porter revealed in a recent interview with Evening Standard that he has to sell his house amid the ongoing strikes in Hollywood in order to save money. Porter, an Emmy winner for his work on FX’s “Pose,” was speaking to the outlet to promote his music career and stayed clear of discussing any of his film and television work. When the topic of the strikes was brought up, Porter said he’s having to take cost-saving measures in his real life as various projects he was set to work on in September have been tabled.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said linear television is still the best way to protect the company’s sports programming, which, at the moment, “derives the most value from being behind a paywall, behind the traditional cable and satellite pay-TV universe.”