Disney Admits That “Streaming is Dead” to Andor’s Tony Gilroy

Television

Is Disney+ on its way out? Probably not for a while, if ever, but it seems Disney is acknowledging that its streaming service is not the monetary boon they thought it would be. During a panel at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas, Tony Gilroy, creator and showrunner of the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor (who has written some great movies, including the initial Bourne trilogy, The Devil’s Advocate, Proof of Life, State of Play, and the highly underrated morality-play-as-thriller Extreme Measures), talked about how permissive Disney was with the show, allowing him and his writers to say and do pretty much whatever they wanted and how money was tight during the second season. However, what’s getting everyone’s attention is what the Disney brass told him about streaming (via IndieWire):

“I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million… For 24 episodes, I never took a note. We said ‘Fuck the Empire’ in the first season, and they said, ‘Can you please not do that?’ … In Season 2, they said, ‘Streaming is dead, we don’t have the money we had before,’ so we fought hard about money, but they never cleaned anything up. That [freedom] comes with responsibilities.”

“Streaming is dead”? That’s interesting, not because whoever told him that is wrong – for Disney, anyway – but because they admitted it. Since its inception, Disney CEO Bob Iger touted Disney+ as one of the key pillars of the company’s future, insisting at every turn that it would eventually become profitable. Since then, we’ve seen series after series fail despite being part of the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, and all sorts of funny business clearly aimed at making the streaming service a better revenue stream, like ad tiers, fluctuating prices, and packages with Hulu and ESPN, which are also majority-owned by Disney. But when you don’t have the numbers, none of those fancy tricks will work, and Disney+ hasn’t had the numbers, be it in subscribers or viewers. Seemingly every show they put out fails to attract an audience, including the recent Daredevil: Born Again, which should have been a surefire hit but bombed so bad it never even made it to the Nielsen’s charts for a single episode. As That Park Place points out, even embarrassments like She-Hulk, Secret Invasion, and The Acolyte – THE ACOLYTE – placed on the charts at some point, usually for their series premieres. This is important not just because it’s funny but because it indicates that nobody trusts Disney (or Marvel) anymore, to the extent that they won’t even watch the first episode of a new show to see if it’s any good. (Andor, on the other hand, got better ratings in its second season; maybe everyone involved should’ve tried to make those other shows… you know… good.) And if Disney executives are being this honest with their creatives, even someone as esteemed as Tony Gilroy, they know full well that they blew it with Disney+.

What does this mean for Disney+’s future? I don’t know. It’s possible that Disney will discontinue the service and stick all their stuff on Hulu, which would be a much better idea. To that end, Deadline exclusively reports that Disney has laid off several hundred people in their entertainment division, “including marketing for both film and television as well as television publicity, casting and development,” plus some people in their “corporate financial operations.” To me, that says they’re paring down their output (in addition to maybe changing how they market their movies and shows to people – I wonder why). These firings don’t necessarily mean they’re ditching Disney+, but it suggests they’re at least tightening their belts and changing course, and if Disney+ is being described as “dead,” I can see them getting rid of that, too. But if it happens, I don’t think it will be all at once, and it won’t be tomorrow or the next day. Disney still has some shows lined up for Disney+, at least through next year, including the Vision series Vision Quest and two animated Star Wars series. Beyond that, I don’t see anything on the horizon. Another possibility is that they keep Disney+ but stop making original content and sell it on their library of movies and TV shows; this would certainly cut costs, but it risks trying to entice people with stuff they either already own a copy of or won’t watch often enough to necessitate subscribing to a streaming service. Whatever happens, it’s satisfying to see the collapse (to whatever degree) of something used to push an agenda, specifically one Disney aimed at kids. What’s that thing about pride coming before the fall?

Let us know what you think of Disney admitting that streaming is dead for them in the comments!

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