Earlier today Disney reported their financial results for Q4/2023, which is their fiscal Q1/2024. And I will make it short: anyone who hopes Disney will go bankrupt will have to hold their breath a lot longer. Disney actually beat expectations by Wall Street Analysts. Disney reported net earnings attributable to the company of $1.91 billion, which is $630 million more than in Q4/2022 (their Q1/2023). Overall revenue was flat compared to the year prior, $23.55 billion.
On the streaming front Disney is actually on target on reaching profitability soon, they have drastically reduced their streaming losses, they still lost $138 million with Disney+/Hulu, but a year before it was an astounding $984 million. They attribute this to higher fees and cost cutting measures. Click through for more.
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ShopDisney has the Ahsoka 4-pack available to order for $49.99. This set features C1-10P, C4-R4C, Professor Huyang, and RD-3. Click here for the order page.
I hope all the American readers of JTA have digested their turkeys by now and you are all having a great weekend, no matter where you are from. Since nothing all that much is going on in Star Wars land (and that won’t really change until the next Disney+ show is released, which will probably be Skeleton Crew), I would like to talk about something that is at least tangentially related to Star Wars: everyone’s most favorite movie studio in the entire multiverse, Walt Disney. Because Disney’s fate will of course ultimately have an impact on Star Wars.
So what exactly do I want to talk about? Well… as it seems Disney may have set a new world record this November, and for the full year even. They have lost the most money with their entertainment division ever, as in “the entire history of Hollywood”, this November alone sets a new record and all time high for how much money a studio can lose in just a couple of weeks. How? Why? Click through for more!
Earlier today Disney released their numbers for Q3/2023, which is Disney’s fiscal Q4/2023, and for the full fiscal year. If you are one of those who hope the Walt Disney Company will crumble and die, I have bad news for you: total revenue for the full year is $88.9 billion, a plus of 7% compared to 2022, and total operating income (before taxes) is $12.86 billion, a plus of 6% compared to 2022.
With that Disney did not quite meet expectations by analysts but still had a pretty solid year, all in all. However if you look at the details there are a few things which are somewhat worrying or at least not as great. And yes, that includes Disney+. Click through for more!
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The 2023 Droid Factory Holiday droid is now available. Click through to order R8-H23.
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shopDisney has added a new reissued 5-pack of droids in a Droid Depot set, featuring R1-J1, B-R72, L4-R6, C2-B9 and EG-01. These are in-stock and available to order for $59.99.
Update: As mentioned in the comments, this is a reissue to a previously released set.
It’s that time of the year again when companies release their numbers for the 2nd quarter of the calendar year. Hasbro released their numbers a few days ago last week. Disney released their numbers just now. And the 2nd quarter of 2023 wasn’t exactly a great one for either of these two companies. Click through for the details!
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The latest Droid Factory is now available at shopDisney. Click here to order C1-MNST4.
Your most favorite CEO – Bob Iger – of your most favorite company – Disney – had his contract extended all the way through 2026, which, according to reports, was a unanimous decision by the board. Click through for the full story!
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Jabba’s bartender R2-S4M is now available at shopDisney through their Droid Factory line.
And yet another colossal failure for the house of mouse… earlier today Disney announced that they will close the Star Wars hotel. Permanently. The last “voyage” will be in September. Click through for the full story!
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Click through to check out shopDisney’s latest round of Pride droids. Thanks to JTA reader Glenn for the alert.
It’s that time of the year when publicly traded companies release their financial results. Yesterday Mattel and everyone’s most favorite entertainment provider Disney both released their numbers for the fourth quarter of 2022, which is Disney’s first quarter of their fiscal year. Everyone’s favorite toy company (Hasbro, in case you wonder) will release their final results for Q4/2022 next week, but we already know their disastrous preliminary numbers (Mattel fared much better in 2022 btw). So how did Disney do? Well, kind of ok-ish, but not everything is roses, unicorns and butterflies in the Magic Kingdom. Click through for more!
ShopDisney is giving special access to ShopDisney merchandise for Disney+ subscribers as a limited test experience in the U.S. Click through for the full press release and links to available products.
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ShopDisney has added several new droids and a new Halloween set. The Halloween set features past Halloween releases R2-BOO, R3B0017, R40018, and R5-B0019. Also up is this year’s Halloween release, R7-NNG and B2EMO from Andor. Click below for product pages.
Earlier today Disney released their latest earnings report. The company beat expectations across the board, revenue is better than expected, theme parks also performed better and Disney+ subscriber growth beat what analysts projected.
Disney+ added a total of 14.4 million new subscribers, analysts had expected 10 million new subscribers. All Disney owned streaming services combined, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN, now have more subscribers than Netflix, 221 million vs 220 million. Disney+ alone now has 44.5 million subscribers in the US and 152.1 million worldwide. 58.4 million of those are subscribers of Hotstar in India.
Disney also announced new subscription fees for Disney+. Beginning on December 8th Disney will offer an ad-supported tier for Disney+ in the US for $7.99. The ad-free tier will then be $10.99, an increase of $3.
Disney’s earnings call follows Hasbro’s earnings report from July, Hasbro is also doing well, revenue is up and partner brands revenue growth was once more driven by Marvel and Star Wars, but as usual Hasbro would not provide any specifics here.
The official Disney earnings report
CNBC article
We stopped by the Disney Parks booth to check out their latest offerings. Click through for a gallery from our visit to their booth!
Subscriber growth for Disney’s streaming platform has stalled considerably in recent months. Disney+ has about 130 million subscribers worldwide, but Disney would like to increase that number to 240-260 million in the next two years. To achieve this more than ambitious goal Disney is now changing its strategy. An ad-supported subscription model will be added to Disney+ in late 2022 in the US, other territories will most likely follow in 2023. No further details are known at this moment, i.e. how much this ad-supported subscription will cost and if there will be any limitations. If you are not a subscriber yet… would an ad-supported subscription at a lower price convince you otherwise? Or would Disney need to add a lot more original and new content first for you to reconsider? As things are now Disney has a few tentpole series or movies every few months, but little else to keep fans of Star Wars and Marvel (one major target demographic of the service) entertained with new content. Maybe Disney needs to invest even more in new programming (and a broader variety of programming) to reach the lofty subscriber goals.
Our friends at Jedi News have posted details about the new Droid Factory exclusive SK-620, available in 3 sizes and exclusive to Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. Click through for their full report.
The Galactic Starcruiser officially opens its gates for visitors on March 1st. But in the week before that Disney invited various news outlets, YouTubers and other influencers to a stay at the Star Wars hotel, so the shill access quality media can post their (glowing?) reviews in time. One of those outlets invited was local Floridian news site Click Orlando and they posted videos and images from the Starcruiser ahead of the Disney Embargo which ends this Friday. Of course Disney had the videos / article taken down within a few hours, but you know the saying, once something is out on the internet, it’s here to stay and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. So you can find one of the videos leaked by Click Orlando on Reddit now. Click through for more!
UPDATE: video tour of the Starcruiser cabin and restroom added!
An image from an unknown source is surfing around the internet this morning. It’s the next Disney Droid Factory four-pack based on characters from The Mandalorian. If this is your image, please let us know so we can attribute credit!
Website AllEars.net has uploaded the welcome message Disney sends out to people who booked a stay at the Galactic Starcruiser on Twitter. The video is two minutes long and features a female employee of the fictional cruise line telling customers what to expect onboard the space ship. Click here or on the screenshot below to watch the video on Twitter! Then click through for a short discussion!
Entertainment Weekly posted an ad article about Disney’s upcoming Star Wars Hotel on their website yesterday and for the first time you get to see the captain of the Galactic Starcruiser! Meet Captain Keevan, the one who will command the imaginary space ship in the Star Wars galaxy and keep you safe from the First Order! Click through for more.
One could say the Star Wars ship is not exactly sailing in smooth waters at the moment. While many fans are certainly eagerly anticipating the Book of Boba Fett show by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, other things either seriously annoy fans or get ridiculed. The current Star Wars HasLab is not exactly going as planned, it may or may not limp over the finish line, maybe barely getting funded. This project seriously angered collectors and Hasbro / Lucasfilm were basically forced to make a late addition to the campaign to somehow salvage it. The Star Wars Haslab got some really negative PR. And then there’s the fact that Star Wars lost yet another director – and basically canceled yet another movie – not too long ago. But that is nothing compared to what is concurrently happening elsewhere in the Disney Star Wars galaxy. As you may remember the brand new Star Wars Hotel, the “Galactic Starcruiser” will open in March 2022. For a mere $6,000 (for a family of four) you can spend 2 nights and 2 days (only count to 2, not 1, not 3) at the hotel. Since the world we live in is what it is, it’s already booked out in advance for a few months (there are more than 20 million millionaires in the US after all, Disney’s new target demographic apparently). So what is going wrong here? Well, Disney released a “first look” video for the Star Wars Hotel on YouTube earlier this week and the reaction was less than favorable. Actually, the reaction was savage. Apart from the usual access media (think IGN & co) virtually ALL major and even minor Star Wars YouTube channels roasted Disney for the video which was the textbook definition of “cringe”. So what did Disney do as a reaction? Well, what do you think? Click through for more!
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ShopDisney has the latest Galaxy’s Edge The Black Series set up for pre-order. Click below for each pre-order page. Thanks to JTA reader Matt for the alert! Use SHIPMAGIC for free shipping on orders over $75.
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