Disney’s quarterly earnings call reveals the price of removing films and TV shows from the Disney+ service over the past few months.
Disney boss Bob Iger isn’t having the best of years at the helm in 2023. The company is in uncharacteristically choppy waters, with film box office falling just a little short of expectations, and losses mounting up at the Disney+ streaming service.
Furthermore, Iger’s trademark diplomacy has been somewhat lacking as strike action continues to endure in Hollywood. Unusually, he’s poked the bear with comments this year, rather than dealt with and resolved the issue.
Now comes Disney’s latest quarterly earnings call and it makes difficult reading for the company. Its direct to consumer unit, that covers its ESPN+, Hulu, and primarily Disney+ platforms, has lost over half a billion dollars in the last financial quarter, with $512m pile of red ink.
That said, the $2.4bn Disney has spent in the last quarter on ‘content impairment charges’ might have something to do with it. This, you might have seen, has led to Disney removing many of its original films and TV shows from its Disney+ service, in some cases just months after they debuted. Furthermore, given that Disney has significantly dialled back its physical media footprint, it means many of the films and shows concerned are impossible to find anywhere else at the moment.
To give you a flavour as to just how much has disappeared, here’s a list purely of the original Disney films that have been removed from Disney+ over the last few months.
Disney has also completed a round of significant job cuts, that has seen 7000 people lose their position over the last year or so.
Has the company turned the corner? Iger will hope so, and he’s finally making the right noises about resolving the ongoing strike action. But crikey, it’s been a year…
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