Thread by @Maustallica

The whole media industry seems determined to turn streaming into a creatively damaging war of franchise/IP star power that only Disney is equipped to fight. It’s a bizarre misunderstanding of how audiences perceive and engage with non-Disney media, and it will have costs!

https://twitter.com/jessehawken/status/1364702467687071750

Much like Nintendo, Disney has always, always been a company dedicated to creating a unified identity around their studio name. If Disney makes a film, its “Disneyness” becomes part of its identity, in a way audiences recognise (for better or worse).

This is why Disney has become the uncontested champion of IP-driven media: because they have convinced audiences to meaningfully connect the franchises it owns. The Disney brand has star power, and bringing Marvel, Star Wars etc under the label strengthens its power.

*Audiences do not perceive any other studios this way.* They just don’t. Nobody cares that Mission: Impossible is a Paramount franchise, or that Jurassic Park is from Universal.

If DISNEY made a Godzilla film? A big deal! Warner Bros makes Godzilla? The studio is a non-factor.

Of course, many of these series are super-popular! But the point is, none of these other studios has spent a century developing their brand name to function as an all-encompassing master identity, so their franchises don’t gain any extra power from being under the same label.

Unfortunately, Disney has gotten so ruthlessly good at absorbing the world’s biggest franchises into its corporate branding that other studios now want to compete on the same terms, and it simply doesn’t make sense for them. It’s not their business model! But they’re gonna try!

Look at these Paramount+ announcements. Just a spray-and-pray fire hose of disparate brands they own, that mean nothing when combined together. Star Trek! Mission: Impossible! A Quiet Place! Halo! Avatar! Uh, Rugrats? SpongeBob! Frasier...? Clifford the Big Red Dog!

It’s hardly “Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars + The Simpsons”, is it? That’s because Disney has defined the terms of this IP war, according to their own strengths and others’ weaknesses. The fact that Paramount and WB are trying to engage on those terms is bad for everyone.

Well, not for Disney. But bad for these other studios, who will not be able to do this sustainably, and bad for audiences, as original ideas get shunted out by rival studios searching desperately for safe, proven brands to reboot into Disney-style mega-franchises.

This is one area where the games industry compares favourably to movies: Sony and Microsoft successfully plough their own furrows, driven by risk-taking new franchises, and gave up on trying to copy the Nintendo/Disney “happy unified world of mega-franchises” model years ago.

I really hope the other movie studios wise up soon, because this current trend is a creative disaster. Mainstream cinema has become hopelessly dominated by endlessly rebooted franchises due to mindless Disney-chasing, and the currently diverse TV/streaming market is now at risk.

Best case scenario, this trend burns out, and WB/Paramount/Universal go back to diverse creative-led media, and leave the brand-driven stuff to Disney.

Worst case, everything is Disney in 10 years, either through copycats, or because it all crashes and Disney buys the wreckage.

And I say this as a Disney fan! Who hosts a Disney podcast! The (likely failed) Disneyfication of the entire entertainment industry is not a desirable outcome to me, and that’s all I see any of this new wave of streaming platforms offering.

Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong!