On Wednesday, Disney top brass made public their last quarterly earnings as well as what they were doing as a result of it. The good news: The final three months of 2022 were actually up 8% from the previous stretch. Hoorah! The bad news: That was mostly thanks to their amusement parks and “experiences,” which shot up after a low stretch probably due to…well, you know. In fact, they lost millions of Disney+ subscribers, albeit all of them overseas. Still, that was enough to drag down what could have been even larger revenue. Perhaps that’s why the company announced more good news: sequels to three of their biggest behemoths.
As per Deadline, Toy Story, Frozen, and Zootopia are all suddenly getting new sequels. For the former, it will be the fifth, which means they’ll probably have to find a way for Woody, who effectively went freelance at the end of number four, to regroup with the old gang (who almost all died in outing three). For Frozen it will be a threequel, while Zootopia had so far only netted a Disney+ series involving spin-offs.
When Disney finally gets these three sequels off the ground, they’ll have to do it with less staff at the overall company: In order to save some $5.5 billion, they’re cutting 7,000 jobs.
This may be why Disney seems to be adding new installments in three of their biggest cash cow franchises — or as newly returned CEO Bob Iger has talked about “leaning into our unrivaled brands and franchises.” The four Toy Story films have amassed over $3 billion. Frozen has made nearly that in only two films. Zootopia was the fourth highest-grossing film of 2016. Seems like a safe bet — a way for one of the biggest mega-corporations in the world to see more than just a pretty good uptick in quarterly revenue.
(Via Deadline)