Spider-Man Has Destroyed the Corporate Spin; Now What?

One month ago, I discussed in detail whey Ghostbusters Afterlife and Encanto meant more at the box office than typical movies. The simple reason was that Sony was doing something that hadn’t been tried since Sonic the Hedgehog came out just before the pandemic. Disney, meanwhile, was up to their normal post-lockdown ways. For Sony, the strategy was simple: keep the budget reasonable and give the fans exactly what they wanted without going so far as fan-fiction or pandering. For Disney, their plan was to target specific demographics not traditionally linked to box office success.

Now you may not have figured out that Disney has been employing that for the past year, but just think about the releases and why. They released Raya to pull in Southeast Asian and Chinese audiences. They released Shang-Chi to draw in Chinese audiences. They put out Black Widow hoping for a high percentage of female fans to come to the MCU. Encanto was aimed directly at Latin American audiences. Of course, Mulan was practically begging Chinese audiences to grant a mea culpa over their disdain for the cartoon. The Eternals, again, the same. While Disney had released Moana and Coco in the past to great success, those films were less directly tied into representation and more about universal truths within a cultural backdrop. The newer films have instead gone into something more tribal; think about how Encanto was marketed versus Moana and you quickly see the difference.

The research and learning process for “Encanto” was ongoing throughout the entire duration of the production. And it was never too late to make adjustments if changes needed to be made. Besides the official consultants, the filmmakers also turned to the studio’s Latinx employees affiliated with the Familia group for feedback.

“It was this group that got together every so often and we would just talk about our experiences and share lots of different cultural touchstones,” said Castro Smith. “This group watched the film and gave us really honest feedback after every time we screened it. I think their feedback was invaluable in making this movie.”

— LA Times

So there you go. Encanto is an example of what happens when you run a movie through multiple screenings and adjustments with a “diversity panel”. It’s not that the intent for authenticity is bad; it isn’t. But what happens is that when you turn movies over to becoming a social message via cultural committees, you lose the universalism of the film and you lose the coherent vision of a close-knit writing team.

Is it any wonder, then that Encanto has been a box office flop, only making about the production budget back in theater sales? It’s $157 million (so far) doens’t cover the cost of advertising, and a large percentage of the revenues have to go to theaters. Disney lost money on Encanto, Black Widow, Raya, Mulan, Cruella (for a different reason), and just barely broke even with Shang-Chi.

Sony’s strategy, however, has worked. And there’s one thing I want readers to understand if you take anything at all away from this article:

The Walt Disney Company will make more profit off of Spider-Man: No Way Home through a very small percentage deal with Sony than from Encanto, Black Widow, Raya, Mulan, Cruella, The Eternals, and Shang-Chi all COMBINED.

Disney’s Spider-Man Deal for Sony to Use MCU

Now, do you wonder why I’ve been reporting that Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Chapek is allegedly demanding studios get back to characters that work?

UPDATE: Top 5 Opening Days of All-Time:

$157.5M #AvengersEndgame
$121.5M #SpiderManNoWayHome
$119.1M #StarWars Force Awakens
$106.3M #Avengers Infinity War
$104.7M Star Wars Last Jedi#boxoffice #SpiderMan #NoWayHome #MCU #Marvel

— Gitesh Pandya (@GiteshPandya) December 18, 2021

So what does this mean for studios?

Let’s imagine you’re a film studio executive, or a CEO, or maybe you’re a board member (which is very appropriate when we’re talking about Disney right now)… and you come back from this weekend for a day or two before the holidays. You look at what Disney has been doing, and they’re losing money for the past year. Then you look at what Sony has done with Ghostbusters Afterlife and Spider-Man: No Way Home. Sony just owned the box office for two months straight. Spider-Man is about to make hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.

So how much longer do you, as an executive in charge of stocks, want to keep playing with The Eternals? Just think about that for a minute. How much money has Disney left on the table this year because they’re choosing to not play their first string? Sony knows what makes money. The narrative of “this is due to the pandemic” is officially over. That is so far gone, it’s shattered in a million pieces. So good luck if you’re a studio exec telling your board that you want to stay with strategies, characters, and social agendas that have you dropping flops while Sony eats your lunch. Sonic the Hedgehog proved that if you play nice with the fans, they make you rich. Spider-Man is driving that point home with a sledge hammer. And you can tell that the execs know this… just look at how Kevin Feige desperately tries to spin his way into credit for a film that he had almost nothing to do with. He doesn’t even work for the company that produced the film!

She [Sony’s Amy Pascal] said, “I really want you to help on this next movie. We have these great ideas for the next one. It’s amazing stuff.” And I said, “I’m not good at that — giving advice and leaving. The only way I know how to help is if we just make the movie for you.”

— Kevin Feige, via New York Times

Now you talk about male savior complex. Just look at that… Kevin Feige had to make the movie for poor Amy Pascal because she just couldn’t do it herself… despite her having already made five highly successful box office darling Spider-Man films. Thank you, Kevin Feige!

Kevin Feige Confirms Marvel, Sony Are “Actively Beginning to Develop” More ‘Spider-Man’ https://t.co/FzE5DNENyX

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 18, 2021

But that’s the spin you’re about to see a lot more of, because Hollywood likes money. Disney likes money. And what they’ve been doing for the past year has been an utter failure. So they’ve gotta fix the perception that they didn’t know what they were doing. But it’s really so simple you can’t believe they bought into their own hubris: stop telling customers they’ll eat whatever you give them when they’re ready to hand you hundreds for steak. They don’t want tofu instead, no matter how much you think its morally superior. They want Spider-Man, not The Eternals. It isn’t about ethnicity, race, or culture. It’s about telling universal stories with characters that EVERYONE can relate to.