Disney is a company in a constant state of evolution, and it should continue to change in the 2020s. Even under the multiple decades Walt Disney ran the outfit, Disney expanded greatly from just a producer of animated feature films to also being a producer of live-action features and then further expanding to add theme parks to its belt. Constant evolution is as much a part of the company as Mickey Mouse’s ears or singing princesses.
This means the next decade will see a number of changes for Disney, especially since the last year of the preceding decade saw the Mouse House radically expand itself with the addition of all the 20th Century Fox entertainment divisions as well as the debut of Disney+.
Plenty of changes are on the way as those entities become more ingrained into the machine while already-existing Disney branches look to also incorporate their own tweaks in the new decade. Here are the different ways Disney is going to be changing over the 2020s.
Disney Is Focusing On Streaming
Part of the new reality for modern movie studios is splitting focus between traditional theatrical features and feature films made for streaming platforms. This is especially true of Disney, which is creating a bevy of original films to debut on their Disney+ streaming service. Paradoxically, this new move for Disney is rooted very much in the past since many of the Disney+ original features are evocative more of classic Disney family films than of modern-day Disney tentpole blockbusters. The likes of Togo and Noelle, for example, are clearly hewing closely to classic ’90s Disney movies White Fang and The Santa Clause, respectively.
Disney is clearly trying to differentiate their streaming movies from their theatrically-released fare to ensure that they don’t cannibalize each other. Two months into Disney+’s existence, it doesn’t appear that the presence of Disney+ fare like Lady and the Tramp is detrimentally impacting the box office of theatrical Disney fare like Frozen 2. The real test will be over the coming years as Disney has got to keep creating a steady slate of original films for their Disney+ platform while also realizing their ambitions to have 20th Century Fox produce a similarly consistent slate of original movies for fellow Disney streaming service Hulu.
The Infinity Saga Is Over
It feels like just yesterday that Kevin Feige took the stage at the El Captain Theater to announce a slate of Marvel Studios Phase 3 movies consisting of what would come to help make up The Infinity Saga and run through the then-far-off date of May 2019. Now we’re firmly in 2020 and that saga has come to a close, in the process turning the Marvel Cinematic Universe into Disney’s most financially lucrative cash cow. With its most expansive storyline coming to an end, what’s next for Marvel Studios? For the near future, it looks like there’s an emphasis on introducing new solo franchises (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi) and incorporating the Marvel characters previously situated at 20th Century Fox into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The lack of a new Avengers movie in the near future might send some Disney stockholders into a tizzy but Marvel Studios has found some of its biggest successes in the last decade making films like Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther that took characters who had never been seen on film before and translating them into broadly-appealing blockbusters. More uncertain is how Marvel Studios will fare exploring the uncharted waters of Disney+ television programming. They’ve got at least seven different shows slated to drop over the next two years but will the studio be able to translate their cinematic success over to the world of streaming television?
Star Wars Is On Hiatus (& Letting Go Of Skywalker Saga)
With The Rise of Skywalker closing out the Star Wars saga, the new decade begins with theatrical Star Wars movies going into a brief period of hibernation. While they’ll return in December 2022, in the meantime, Disney and Lucasfilm brass will figure out what direction to take the Star Wars saga. Leaving behind the familiar Skywalker saga behind will be challenging given how much Disney, the home of 2019s The Lion King remake and a previous decade dominated by PIXAR sequels, likes familiarity in their feature film lineup. However, the box office failure of Solo and the fact that The Rise of Skywalker received criticism for relying on fan-service and callbacks related to older movies may help to make the idea of embracing newer storytelling a more enticing one for Disney executives.
Also helping to make the idea of Star Wars movies focused on brand-new stories is how The Mandalorian, the first Star Wars TV show and a piece of Star Wars content totally devoid of previously-existing characters, has become a wild success. The Mandalorian’s success is a big boost of confidence for Disney in the next decade which will rely heavily on expensive Disney+ content like this Star Wars TV show. If The Mandalorian can work, so too can both future Disney+ shows and more original Star Wars content, two entities that will be integral to the radically overhauled version of Disney that will take shape over the next decade.
The Finite Nature of Live-Action Disney Remakes
Ten years ago, Disney released Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and massively changed Walt Disney Pictures. Suddenly, the studios’ theatrical film slate became almost exclusively focused (save for the occasional Artemis Fowl) on producing live-action (or lifelike CG animated) remakes of classic animated Disney movies. Such titles have produced recurring critical derision but the likes of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King have managed to become some of the biggest Disney movies of all-time. Prior to 2010, live-action remakes of classic animated Disney movies had only occurred twice in Disney’s history. As the 2020s begin, they’re now an integral part of the Disney empire.
While Disney has plenty more live-action remakes in the pipeline, there’s a finite amount of these that they can still make. Walt Disney Animation Studios only has 58 movies in their catalog and Disney has already burned through their biggest titles. Another ominous sign for this trend was how year’s Dumbo was a box office misfire that proved that not all of these live-action remakes will inherently be a success. As the bottom of this barrel gets scraped with inevitable live-action remakes of films like The Fox and the Hound, Walt Disney Pictures will have to learn throughout the coming decade how to make successful theatrical movies again that aren’t just remakes of old animated Disney features. Their current live-action remake fixation is a lucrative business but it’s a finite one that won’t be able to last through the forthcoming decade.
What About 20th Century Fox & Fox Searchlight?
The biggest question mark going forward for the Mouse House in the next decade is how Disney incorporates the two Fox movie brands (20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight) into its larger cinema empire. Disney’s previous forays into incorporating adult-driven studios like Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures and DreamWorks SKG into their catalog were marked with successes (especially Touchstone and Hollywood in the ’90s) but also plenty of low points. Whereas the lowest box office point for Star Wars was still a movie that cleared $210 million domestically, the lowest Disney/DreamWorks release was the dismal $3.3 million gross of The Fifth Estate.
While the larger annual slates of the two Fox studios compared to the 2-4 annual slates of PIXAR and Marvel Studios means box office misfires are both inevitable and understandable, Disney will be trying to avoid creating any Fifth Estate-level box office disasters as they work to revamp the two Fox studios. Currently, it looks like the next decade of 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight will, at least for the time being, see both studios release 8-10 movies a year. That’s a sharp contrast to the significantly smaller amount of annual movies released by DreamWorks in its time as Disney as well as Touchstone in its last years of existence.
The biggest adjustment for Disney with releasing these Fox titles will be juggling a heavily expanded plate of movies. For the last decade, Disney has been relying on an annual slate that usually hit around 10-12 movies a year. Even in 2011, when they released five DreamWorks films (the most DreamWorks titles they ever released in a single year), Disney still only released twelve movies. For 2020, though, Disney currently has a projected 30 releases on the docket across Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight, and Marvel Studios. Will they be able to market all these movies properly? Will the smaller non-tentpole releases from the two Fox studios consistently get the scraps while the mighty Disney tentpoles get all the prime marketing and release dates? There are so many unanswered questions when it comes to what the future holds for theatrical Fox releases under Disney ownership. Disney will be changing radically over the next decade but its greatest change will likely come from how it handles its newly-purchased Fox film studios.
Next: Every Fox Franchise Disney Is Planning To Reboot
