Film Theory: Disney is FINALLY Dead, Here's Why

Summary

视频脚本讨论了迪士尼公司当前面临的挑战，包括连续的电影票房失败、高昂的流媒体内容成本以及品牌稀释问题。作者提出，迪士尼的问题可以归结为三个主要方面：流媒体、预算和故事，并认为通过像管理YouTube频道一样规划电影发行，可以解决这些问题。这包括确保内容质量、合理安排发行时间表以及控制预算。视频还提到了迪士尼如何通过直接在Disney Plus或Hulu上发布电影而损失了大量票房收入，并批评了迪士尼对经典IP的过度开发和故事叙述的失误。最后，作者以幽默的语气提出了对迪士尼电影发行策略的建议，并鼓励观众查看他们的新系列商品。

Takeaways

• 📉 迪士尼公司目前面临困境，多部影片票房未达预期，导致股价下跌，考虑出售电视业务和裁员。
• 🎬 迪士尼的问题主要归结为三个核心议题：流媒体服务、预算控制和故事叙述。
• 📺 迪士尼+流媒体服务需要持续的内容供应，但制作内容成本高昂，导致品牌稀释。
• 💰 迪士尼电影的预算不断膨胀，与其他电影相比，成本失控，部分原因是重拍和过度依赖CGI。
• 📈 迪士尼需要像运营YouTube频道一样规划电影阵容，通过高质量内容和合理的发布顺序来吸引观众。
• 👕 该频道推出了新的理论服装系列，强调了服装的质量和设计，旨在提供持久和舒适的穿着体验。
• 🧵 迪士尼应该避免不必要的续集制作，专注于讲述值得讲述的故事，而不是仅仅为了票房收入。
• 📉 迪士尼的股价自COVID以来一直处于低点，公司正在考虑各种措施来扭转局面。
• 🎥 迪士尼应该减少重拍，确保在制作开始前所有利益相关者对电影的愿景达成一致。
• 📚 迪士尼需要平衡风险，通过在成功的项目之间安排新IP或较少知名的角色来分散风险。
• 📊 迪士尼应该根据预期的票房收入来预算电影，而不是无休止地制作高成本电影。
• 🔄 迪士尼需要修复重拍问题，确保在制作开始前有清晰的愿景，并避免在后期进行昂贵的更改。

Q & A

为什么说迪士尼目前面临困境？

迪士尼目前面临困境主要是因为连续推出的电影票房不佳，比如《奇异博士2》、《雷神3》和《黑豹2》等均未达到预期。此外，像《小美人鱼》和《蚁人3》以及新印第安纳·琼斯电影等也造成了经济损失。加之《奇异世界》和《光年》等动画电影的票房表现不佳，导致迪士尼的股价下跌，考虑出售电视业务和裁员等措施来扭转局面。

YouTube如何帮助迪士尼解决问题？

YouTube作为一个内容丰富的平台，可以为迪士尼提供内容发布的灵活性和广泛的观众接触。迪士尼可以借鉴YouTube频道的内容策划和发布策略，比如通过高质量的内容维持观众兴趣，合理规划内容发布时间表，以及通过社区反馈来调整内容策略，从而提高内容的吸引力和观众的忠诚度。

迪士尼的内容策略存在哪些问题？

迪士尼的内容策略问题主要包括：内容过剩导致品牌稀释，如过多的《星球大战》和《漫威》系列内容让观众感到疲劳；预算控制不当，多部影片的制作成本过高，难以通过票房收回成本；故事叙述问题，如不必要的续集制作和对故事的不当处理，导致观众对迪士尼电影的兴趣下降。

迪士尼的电影预算为何如此之高？

迪士尼电影预算高的原因包括对CGI的过度依赖、开发新技术的推动、不考虑预算的剧本编写，以及频繁且大规模的重拍。重拍大幅增加了电影的成本，如《游侠索罗：星球大战外传》的重拍导致预算翻倍。

迪士尼应如何改进其故事叙述？

迪士尼需要创造既有价值又受观众欢迎的故事。应避免制作不必要的续集，理解故事与观众的契合点，避免过度扩展不需要的电视剧集，同时，应该提供给观众希望和启发，而不是仅仅反映现实生活的苦难。

为什么说迪士尼应该像经营YouTube频道一样经营电影项目？

迪士尼可以将电影项目视为YouTube频道上的内容，进行精心策划和发布。通过确保内容质量、合理安排发布时间表、平衡风险和确定内容的适当长度，可以提高观众的参与度和满意度，同时减少内容的过度饱和和品牌稀释。

迪士尼的重拍问题如何影响其电影预算？

迪士尼的重拍问题导致电影成本大幅上升，因为重拍意味着需要重新召集演员和工作人员，重新拍摄场景，这不仅增加了制作成本，还可能因为缺乏明确的视觉和故事方向而导致资源浪费。

迪士尼应该如何调整其电影发布顺序以改善品牌形象？

迪士尼应该通过战略性地安排电影的发布顺序来改善品牌形象。例如，将高期待值的电影与风险较高的新IP或实验性项目交替发布，可以平衡观众的期待，减少连续失望的可能性，并为观众创造更积极的品牌叙事。

为什么说迪士尼需要更好地控制其电影的预算？

迪士尼需要更好地控制电影预算，以确保每部电影的投资能够获得合理的回报。持续制作高成本电影而不考虑票房收入将导致财务风险增加。迪士尼应该根据预期的票房收入来预算电影成本，并把额外的收入视为盈利的加分项。

迪士尼的内容发布策略应该如何改进？

迪士尼的内容发布策略应该更加注重内容的质量和观众反馈。应该避免过度饱和市场，而是通过发布高质量、有吸引力的内容来维持观众的兴趣。此外，迪士尼应该更好地利用社区反馈来调整内容策略，确保其内容能够引起观众的共鸣。

为什么说迪士尼需要更好地管理其重拍和后期制作？

迪士尼需要更好地管理其重拍和后期制作，因为频繁的重拍和后期修改会导致成本大幅上升，并且可能损害电影的最终质量。迪士尼应该在项目开始前就确保所有关键创意团队成员对电影的愿景达成一致，并在拍摄开始前锁定剧本，以减少不必要的后期更改。

Outlines

00:00

📉 迪士尼的困境与YouTube的解决方案

该段落讨论了迪士尼目前面临的困境，包括连续推出的电影失败、在Disney+上的投资亏损以及电影未达到预期效果。提到了《速度与激情》系列、《闪电侠》、《奇异博士2》、《雷神3》、《黑豹2》、《小美人鱼》、《蚁人3》、《新印第安纳琼斯》和《奇异世界》等影片的不佳表现。强调了迪士尼股价的下跌，以及公司考虑出售电视业务和裁员的措施。最后，提出了YouTube可能是解决迪士尼问题的关键，并以幽默的语气邀请观众支持频道的周边商品销售。

05:01

🎬 迪士尼问题的核心：流媒体、预算和故事

本段深入探讨了迪士尼问题的三大核心：流媒体、预算和故事。首先，讨论了流媒体服务需要持续的内容供应以吸引和保持观众，但高质量内容的制作成本高昂。提到了迪士尼为了填充Disney+平台而大量制作内容，包括漫威、星战、皮克斯的新作和经典IP的重制。然而，这导致了品牌稀释问题，因为过多的内容供应使得原本珍贵的品牌变得不再特别。此外，还讨论了迪士尼电影的高预算问题，包括《夺宝奇兵》、《小美人鱼》和《蚁人3》等电影的高昂成本，并与其他电影的预算进行了比较。

10:01

📚 故事讲述的失败与YouTube模式的启示

这一段落指出，迪士尼电影在故事讲述上的失败是观众不再感兴趣的原因之一。提到了迪士尼依赖品牌而非故事质量的问题，以及观众对不必要续集的不满。还提到了迪士尼对故事的处理不当，如《永恒族》引入过多角色和背景故事，而《欧比旺》则因为副线剧情的累赘而削弱了核心叙事。作者认为，迪士尼需要像经营YouTube频道一样规划电影阵容，通过高质量和低质量作品的合理搭配来避免连续失败，并保持观众的兴趣和品牌的价值。

15:03

🔄 重新安排发布顺序以改善品牌叙事

在这一段中，提出了通过调整电影的发布顺序来改善观众对品牌的感知。举例说明了《银河护卫队3》如果在一系列失望的电影中上映，可以打破连续失败的叙事，给观众带来喘息的机会。进一步讨论了如何通过在成功的电影之间安排风险较高的新IP或实验性项目来平衡风险，并且通过这种方式可能发现下一个爆炸性的IP。作者还提到了YouTube频道运营的经验，如何通过在热门主题之间安排不确定的内容来平衡风险和保持观众的兴趣。

20:04

🛍️ 推广Film Theory品牌服饰并结束讨论

最后一段再次强调了观众去查看Film Theory品牌服饰的呼吁，强调了这些服饰的高质量和设计细节，并鼓励观众通过描述中的链接访问网站。之后，以标志性的结束语'这只是个理论，一个电影理论！'结束了视频。

Keywords

💡品牌稀释

品牌稀释指的是当一个品牌过度扩展其产品线，导致原有品牌形象和独特性减弱的现象。在视频中，提到迪士尼通过大量推出新内容，使得原本珍贵的电影系列变得不再特别，观众对品牌的信赖和兴趣也随之下降。

💡内容生产成本

内容生产成本是指创造电影、电视节目或其他媒体内容所需的总成本。视频中提到迪士尼为了维持其流媒体服务的吸引力，不得不投入大量资金来生产内容，这导致了财务上的压力和成本回收的挑战。

💡流媒体服务

流媒体服务是一种在线视频和音频内容的即时传输服务，用户可以通过互联网观看或收听。视频讨论了迪士尼如何通过迪士尼+等流媒体平台来发布内容，以及这种策略如何影响其财务状况和品牌价值。

💡预算管理

预算管理是控制和规划项目或企业财务资源的过程。在视频中，提到迪士尼在电影制作上的高预算问题，以及如何通过有效的预算管理来避免不必要的成本超支。

💡重拍

重拍是指电影或电视剧在拍摄过程中，因为各种原因需要重新拍摄某些场景。视频中讨论了迪士尼和其他电影公司在项目进行中进行大规模重拍的情况，这通常会导致成本大幅增加。

💡故事叙述

故事叙述是指构建和传达故事情节的艺术。视频指出迪士尼近期的电影和系列在故事叙述上存在问题，未能吸引观众或满足他们的期望，这是迪士尼需要解决的关键问题之一。

💡票房

票房通常指一部电影上映期间从观众购票中获得的总收入。视频中提到迪士尼的一些电影在票房上的表现不佳，这直接影响了公司的财务状况和投资者的信心。

💡知识产权(IP)

知识产权是指创造者对其创作的作品所拥有的法律权利。在视频中，迪士尼利用其丰富的IP资源，如漫威和星球大战系列，来吸引观众和增加收入，但同时也面临如何有效利用这些IP的挑战。

💡YouTube频道管理

YouTube频道管理涉及规划和发布视频内容，以吸引和保持观众的兴趣。视频通过比喻YouTube频道的内容策划，提出了迪士尼应该如何更好地管理其电影发行和内容生产。

💡理论服装(Theory Wear)

理论服装是视频中提到的一个产品线，它代表了频道品牌的商品化。视频中提到了这些服装的设计和制作，强调它们不仅仅是商品，而是专为观众设计，具有高质量和时尚感的衣物。

💡内容质量

内容质量是指媒体内容的制作水平和观众的满意度。视频中强调，无论发布频率如何，保持内容的高质量是至关重要的，这与迪士尼需要关注其电影和流媒体内容质量的观点相呼应。

Highlights

迪士尼面临困境，连续推出的电影未能达到预期，导致财务压力和品牌稀释。

迪士尼的股价已跌至自2020年3月COVID以来的最低点。

YouTube上的内容创作策略可能是迪士尼解决问题的关键。

Film Theory节目提供不需要高昂成本即可解决问题的方案。

迪士尼需要在流媒体、预算和故事叙述上做出改变。

迪士尼的流媒体服务需要持续的内容供应，但这导致了品牌稀释。

迪士尼的高预算电影与市场上其他电影相比显得过于昂贵。

重拍是导致迪士尼电影预算膨胀的一个主要因素。

迪士尼电影的故事叙述未能吸引观众，缺乏值得讲述的故事。

迪士尼需要像管理YouTube频道一样规划其电影阵容。

Film Theory通过精心规划内容发布顺序来维持频道的吸引力。

迪士尼应该根据预期的票房收入来预算电影制作成本。

迪士尼需要减少重拍次数，确保项目从一开始就有清晰的愿景。

Film Theory推出新的理论服装系列，注重质量和设计。

Film Theory的成功依赖于社区反馈和内容质量，而不仅仅是收入。

迪士尼应该在电影项目之间平衡风险，避免连续推出令人失望的作品。

Disney应该根据内容的最佳表现形式来决定其发行形式，而不是仅仅为了增加流媒体观看时间。

Film Theory强调了在制作过程中保持预算和避免不必要的重拍的重要性。

如果迪士尼不能解决当前问题，它的衰落可能对整个电影行业都是有益的。

Transcripts

Disney is dying and it's easy to see why.

Between the back to back flops, burning money to supply Disney

plus, and films that just missed the mark, Disney is in trouble.

But today I've got the solution.

And the answer that the House of Mouse is looking for is right here

on YouTube.

Hello, Internet.

Welcome to Film Theory, the show that won't charge you $27

million a year to fix your problems.

How's that for cost savings there, Bob Iger.

Have you noticed that a lot of movies have bombed recently?

Fast X underperformed.

The Flash is looking like it will lose $200

million to Warner Brothers, making it the biggest comic book movie bomb ever.

Even objectively, great films like Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning

One fell short of expectations this summer.

But the biggest victim of the box office bloodbath for the last two years

has got to be our mouse-eared overlords at Walt Disney Corp.

Doctor Strange two, Thor three, and Black Panther

two all came in under expectations.

The Little Mermaid vastly underperformed.

Both Ant-Man three, and New Indiana Jones were also costly losers.

No one even remembers Disney's last animated feature film Strange World

and Elemental had the lowest opening of any modern Pixar film ever,

including Lightyear, the massive bomb that was released right before it.

The long and short of all of this: things are bad at the House of Mouse right now.

Disney shares are at the lowest

that they've been since COVID hit back in March of 2020,

and to turn it all around, they're considering selling off their

TV businesses, spinning off ESPN, laying off thousands of employees.

We are truly

witnessing the death of the Disney Empire happening in real time right now.

But I think that there is a way to fix things.

And the key to it all is YouTube. So grab your popcorn

as I prepare to tell you a story far more compelling than anything

put out over the last few years, it's time to fix Disney in three easy steps.

But before I help a large, soulless corporation earn its millions

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below or by checking out the merch shelf just below this video.

Even if you don't want to buy anything, just go check out the site.

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all to ourselves at the local mall here.

There's quite a few vacant Disney locations.

They could use some new tenants speaking up.

Let's talk more about that Disney dilemma, shall we?

Basically, when you break it all down, Disney's problems largely boil

down to three major topics: streaming, budget and story.

So let's go through them point by point. Starting with streaming.

One thing that everyone tends to overlook when they first start a streaming service is that

you need a steady flow of content to make it work, to keep people hooked on the platform.

And making content tends to be expensive, hence the elongated merch push that

you just went through.

But even if you thread the needle and managed to solve both of those issues,

making lots of content for a relatively cheap price,

it just opens a well of new issues that are more difficult to solve.

Let me explain.

To prevent people from bouncing off the platform, most of Disney's Star Studios

have been relegated to content factories to feed the Disney Plus machine.

In 2020, Disney held an Investor Day presentation

where they had Marvel and Lucasfilm announce ten projects each.

Pixar announced another six.

It wasn't all streaming focus, but a whole lot of it was.

In addition, the service has been flooded with Disney

dipping into all its other major IPs: live action remakes of Peter Pan,

serialized versions of High School Musical, the return of nostalgic classics

like Willow and the launch of anticipated new IP like Artemis Fowl.

Disney owns

some of the most beloved IP on the planet,

and they've been pulling it all off the shelves to try and keep

their content offering on Disney plus robust and most importantly, sticky,

to keep all those finicky streaming audiences that are quick to cancel a subscription.

Despite it being difficult and expensive to stay on that online content treadmill,

at least on the surface,

it looks like Disney managed to thread the needle. But in achieving

that, they've actually expose themselves to a problem that's far worse:

brand dilution.

There's no arguing that pretty much

every single one of these cherished franchises has become significantly

less special over the last

five years, simply because there's just so much of them around at this point.

Toy Story four,

Lightyear, Toy Story five,

you can only go to the pump so many times before the audience can smell a shameless

cash grab.

Going back to those Investor Day

announcements, most of the Star Wars ones, they were quietly canceled.

A completely different episode nine, a Boba Fett

solo movie, a trilogy from Rian Johnson, another trilogy from the Game of Thrones

guys. When something new from Star Wars gets announced, at this point,

there's little trust

that it's ever going to see the light of day

and even less trust that it's going to be good.

Andor, for instance, it was legitimately great.

Seriously, it was the single best thing that Star Wars has produced in years.

But you know why no one and watched it? Because it was buried

under a slew of underwhelming projects like the Book of Boba Fett,

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Late Season Mandalorian,

and episode nine. People lost trust with the brand

and as a result, deprioritized watching all the new stuff

that was rolling out. And the MCU? It's having the exact same issue right now.

Look at this: phase one had 746 minutes of content spread over five years,

phase two 757 minutes spread over three years,

and then you had phase three at 1500 minutes spread over another three years.

That was a pretty significant jump, but it was nothing compared to phase four.

Thanks in part

to the introduction of Disney Plus and the requirement for streaming content,

Phase four had a staggering 3500 minutes spread across only two years.

There's been more MCU content in the last two years than the preceding 12 combined.

A Marvel release used to feel like an event like you had to see it.

Nowadays, though, it's quite literally a weekly occurrence.

So of course people are going to be less excited

for new installments like Secret Invasion, regardless of their quality.

Don't worry, we're going to address the quality here in a second.

What's worse,

in their drive to Disney plus, the mouse has lost out on a lot of money.

They probably didn't

need to. Looking at the list of original films created and released by Disney,

so many of them are going straight to Disney plus without making any money

in a theater. This year alone across all their studios, six of the 14 Disney films

so far have premiered directly on Disney Plus or Hulu, with no additional cost.

In 2022, a whopping 27 premiered on streaming and only 16 were in theaters.

Now compare all that to 2018, the year before Disney Plus launched,

where Disney released only ten films total, all of which

obviously went to the theaters.

Not only do these streaming premieres mean that they're losing a lot of money

from the theatrical window, but it becomes an even bigger issue

when you combine it with our next major problem: budgeting. The budgets

for so many modern blockbusters and especially those made by Disney,

are just out of control.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny cost $300 million to make. Guardians three

and the little Mermaid, $250 million each.

Quantumania, a cool 200 mil. They even spent $150 million on Haunted Mansion.

Why would you spend $150 million on a Haunted Mansion movie?

And the true number

is probably more like $300 million if you include the marketing for it.

Even Disney's animation wing isn't safe. Both Encanto

and Strange World cost somewhere between $135 and $180 million to make.

While almost all of Pixar's

latest releases put their budgets between $150 and $200 and range.

Now, you might be looking at all those numbers and thinking, Wow, that's a lot.

But aren't all movies super expensive?

And the answer is yes, but also no.

Yeah, they cost hundreds of millions of dollars,

but not that many hundreds of millions of dollars.

When you look at other massive

blockbusters currently in theaters, most are not looking like this.

Oppenheimer had a massive cast and incredible experimental

filmmaking techniques, and it cost just $100 million to make. John Wick four

elaborate action sequences with top tier stunt work and incredible set designs

at multiple real world locations also cost just $100 million.

Barbie is the biggest movie of the summer.

It has iconic art direction,

detailed fictional worlds with real sets and A-list actors who enjoyed being there.

And it was made for less than $150 million. Over on the animation side,

the newly released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie cost $70 million

while Puss in Boots, The Last Wish, and Across the Spider-Verse,

and the Super Mario Brothers movie were all at about $100 mil each.

All of these are half to a third of what Disney is paying to make their movies.

And it doesn't take a rocket scientist

to understand that it's a lot easier to get back what you put in

when you're only $70 million in the hole as opposed to $200 million.

All of this begs the question of why, though?

Why are these movies so expensive?

Well, it's complicated.

And it ultimately comes down

to a lot of different factors: an overreliance on CGI, a push to develop

new technologies, writing that just doesn't keep budgets in mind.

But one of the biggest contributors to the inflation

of a movie's budget over at Disney that a lot of people

don't talk about are reshoots.

A reshoot is where a film brings back the cast and crew to refilm scenes

that didn't work

or to film new scenes that become needed as they get into the editing process.

Don't get me wrong,

reshoots are a perfectly normal part of production

and they can really help bring a movie together.

A lot of very successful films have had reshoots:

Back to the Future,

ET, Rocky that's not the sort of stuff I'm talking about here.

What I'm talking about is when a movie studio sees the rough cut of a movie,

gets cold feet and then suddenly decides they basically need to start over

from scratch.

Probably the most famous example of this was with Zack Snyder's Justice League.

But Disney, they too have been guilty of this

a lot lately. Most publicly with Solo a Star Wars story.

Originally, that movie was directed by Phil

Lord and Chris Miller, the two guys behind Spider-Verse and The Lego Movie.

But Disney didn't like what they saw, and so they hired Ron Howard to reshoot

an estimated 80% of the movie, thereby doubling its budget

to somewhere around $300 million.

Now, as we all know, Solo did not do super well.

It only grossed about $400 million worldwide, a number that suddenly becomes

a lot less painful to look at if your original budget was just $125 million.

But all the streaming and budgeting changes in

the world are going to be useless if they continue to fail.

At our third main

point: story. So many Disney films lately have been failing at making a story

that's both worth telling and that audiences want to hear.

Disney keeps hoping that you can still slap a brand name

on to something, and it'll sell, but that just doesn't work anymore.

Audiences aren't stupid.

They can tell when a story is being told just because the bean counters

think it's going to make money. Like, who asked for Zootopia

two, Frozen three, Inside Out two, Toy Story five?

All of those are real movies that are happening in the near future,

even though it feels like that list should be a parody.

But making unnecessary sequels is just the tip of the iceberg.

Disney also doesn't understand where their stories fit anymore.

Look no further than the Eternals, which introduced a dozen new characters

and 10,000 years of back story into a two hour film.

Why wasn't this a Disney plus series that could have given the concept time to breathe?

Meanwhile, they're clearly stretching out stories that don't need to be TV shows.

The Obi-Wan series is a great example of this.

There was a really strong core narrative there about Obi-Wan's

relationship to Vader

that ultimately got buried under the bloatware of side quests and subplots.

And hey, wouldn't you know it?

Obi Wan was originally written

to be a two hour film that they decided to turn into a six hour series.

If you want a super recent example: Secret Invasion in which, man,

I have no idea what Marvel was thinking on this one.

Let's take this iconic storyline from the comics with an Avengers level

threat and adapted into a spy thriller with basically no spying, no thrills,

and no Avengers. What should have been this amazing

tentpole moment of the Avengers line of films...

I mean, who doesn't love themselves

a good impostor storyline... became yet another piece of wasted

potential content to further dilute the MCU brand on Disney

Plus. And again, here's the problem

when you start dumping out a lot of content all at once

just to keep us on the digital treadmill: people start to see patterns.

They see the trends, the formulas that you're using.

For example, with so many Big Temple Disney releases lately

had a main character becoming jaded just because they lost a loved one.

It happened with Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Heck, even Haunted Mansion in Secret Invasion,

which you probably shouldn't know, because why would you ever bother

to see those things?

This generation of stories has seen our fictional heroes become miserable,

and let's be real,

that is not something that fans want to see.

We fell in love with these characters for a reason.

They inspired us for a reason.

Seeing them crushed under the same depression of reality

that we real people face every day is not fun.

Sure, it might be more realistic to see a disillusioned Indiana Jones,

but audiences go to the movies to escape from reality,

to believe in something better, something greater,

to have something to hope for and aspire to.

And Disney is no longer providing those hopeful messages.

So that's a lot of doom and gloom, right?

Is there any way that Disney

and really the entire film industry can fix all these issues?

Well, yeah, actually. All you've got to do: treat it like a YouTube channel.

What I mean to say is that they need to program

their slate of movies just like you do a YouTube channel.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret here, loyal theorist,

we spend a lot of time thinking about what theories we put up across

all the different channels. With multiple weekly meetings

trying to figure out what would work best where, planning out

when things should go up, and what videos complement each other,

all for the overall health of the business.

You can't just throw up a video willy

nilly and hope everything goes well these days.

No, you need to make sure that you have solid videos here

and there to keep the system and your viewers happy.

And everything we talked about today with Disney are things that regularly

come up in our day to day conversations about how to run things here at THEORIST.

First of all, we have a quality bar

that episodes just have to hit, otherwise they're not going to get made.

Our primary metric in the success or failure of a video isn't revenue,

it's actually you, the community.

Could we make more money by pumping out more episodes every week? Probably.

But in the process we would burn you out and by necessity, dilute the show

as we greenlight worse and worse episodes. See in YouTube analytics,

they give you a handy little chart ranking

your most recent releases from 1 to 10 in terms of how well it's performing.

Well, ideally, every upload you do is going to be a one out of ten.

It's just not realistic to have that sort of expectation.

In the end, something is inevitably going to be a ten out of ten.

And if you're good at what you do,

you know when those nines and tens are going to hit,

and so you have to surround that low performer

with stuff that you know is going to do well.

Otherwise, your risk taking L after L after L and you start making a narrative

about how bad your stuff is now, how much it's fallen off.

Or worse, the algorithm decides that people no longer care about your channel.

Apply this concept to Disney

and you immediately see what they have to do with their IP.

When you have back to back to back to back

disappointments line up

like in Marvel's recent roster, it creates a downward spiral

that's pretty hard to break in the public consciousness.

But if you mix in one or two goods with the bad strategically,

suddenly it's much harder to craft a doom and gloom narrative.

Here's an example

programing lineup: Multiverse of Madness, Wakanda Forever, Guardians three, Love

and Thunder, Quantumania.

That looks a lot different from what really happened where Guardians

three appeared at the end.

The real release order gave you four disappointments in a row before

you got a small pick me up with the generally well-received Guardians.

But if Guardians had been in the middle, the disappointments

are suddenly broken up. There's a gap there.

The lackluster movies on either

side of it, it's just a franchise cost and long waiting for the next big event.

In fact, I can make this programing lineup

even better if Wakanda Forever had actually been first in the list.

The mediocre performance of Wakanda actually was made significantly worse

by the disappointment of Multiverse of Madness that came directly before.

Had it come before Doctor Strange,

that movie wouldn't have been saddled with all the extra scrutiny of "Is Marvel

losing its way?", "if Wakanda Forever isn't good

it means it's the end of Marvel," thereby leading

to a different cultural conversation around it.

Release order matters

when it comes to shaping the narrative around your brand, and it matters a lot.

The same thing holds true for any experimental episodes.

Disney needs to be making films about new IP like Pixar's Elio or lesser

known characters like Marvel's Moon Knight.

But obviously those projects are going to be risky, so you balance that risk out by

putting them between other projects you expect to do well.

Your Toy Story five's, your Avengers, your Guardians.

This accomplishes three things all at once:

you mitigate your risk, you spread out the quote

unquote cash grabs, and you potentially find your next explosive IP.

Again, let's look at Film Theory for an example.

On this channel,

we have a few relatively sure things our tentpole programing: analog horror,

Spider-Man, nostalgic kid shows, and knowing

that we're able to put the stuff that we're not sure about between them.

And then if something surprises you and it does manage to explode... BAM!

You have yourself a new strong subject to slot other unknowns

in between. That is literally what happened to us with the Backrooms.

We weren't sure that one was going to do and it ended up doing gangbusters

with people wanting more and more of our analysis videos

while they wear their new absurdly comfortable theorywear

hazmat puffer jacket. The gamble paid off and it paid off in a big way.

But we also know that we can't release

too many of those things in too quick of succession.

We can't release a Backrooms theory

every single week because even though they'll do well,

people will eventually stop caring if we do too much

and they'll stop coming back because we're no longer adding

anything to the conversation.

Does that sound familiar, Star Wars? How about you, Marvel?

Can you relate?

And just in general, when running a YouTube channel,

you got to know what episode ideas

are going to work best as shorts and which ones merit a full video.

We don't try to take something that's clearly a short

and then bloated into a full 15 minute video or vice versa.

Just like Disney shouldn't be looking at something

that's clearly an hour and a half movie and trying to turn it into a ten episode

miniseries just so they get more watch minutes on their streaming app.

Content needs to fit where it tells the best story.

Lastly, in terms of our budgeting, we have to make sure that an episode

can make back the money that we're spending on making it pay

and the writers and editors that are working on it and we budget it

just based on the ad sense we expect to make from that video.

Anything extra that we get from brand deals

or merch sales or whatever is a nice plus.

It allows us to expand the team to do more ambitious projects,

but we can't budget every single video that way because eventually

we're going to lose that bet and we can't run the business anymore.

Think of our AdSense like your box office,

Disney. Sure,

every now and then we could do a more expensive video,

something that takes a bit more time, or just invest in a passion project.

That's going to be maybe a once or twice a year thing, not an every release thing.

Disney, you can't keep releasing $300 million movie after $300 million movie

without knowing that you're going to earn that back at the box office. Budget

according to what you know you're going to earn in the theaters

that way, all the ancillary stuff, that's all gravy.

Anything you earn on top of that, boom, it's a bonus.

You became that much more profitable.

You know, it's going to help with that? Fixing your reshoot issue.

Let me tell you, as I was researching this episode,

just as someone running a media company, my jaw hit the floor

when I saw how often companies like Disney are doing reshoots that majorly overhaul

the movie.

How are you rolling on day one without having a clear vision

that the writers, directors, producers and studio have all agreed to?

At theorist

we don't do an episode unless all of our senior creative

team are on the same page about what that episode is going to be.

And more importantly, when we work with brands,

we require that every single stakeholder review and lock the script

before shooting begins.

That way, no one can ask for a last minute change.

We learned early that those reshoots and re-edits cost a fortune,

killing our process.

But by forcing everyone to get on the same page early,

even if it's painful and slows the process down

a bit at the beginning, it saves so much time, money and a ton of headaches

on the other, much more expensive end of the production process.

All in all, in their desperate bid to try to catch up

to Netflix with their streaming service, throwing money at their problems in hopes

that they'll go away, Disney lost sight of what made entertainment work

since the very beginning: making what you can,

making what you're good at, keeping it on budget and telling a story

that's worth telling. And if we here on YouTube can do it, they have no excuse.

Or if they can't get their act together, even the death of Disney

was ultimately for the best.

But hey,

remember, go check out that new line of theory

wear. Again,

I cannot stress enough just how much work went

into all these items because we wanted this to be more

than just your typical YouTuber merch, like, well, just slap the logo on it.

No, these are actual clothing items that have high quality fabric expert

details and stuff that's going to make you feel incredible when you wear it.

So please do me a favor:

go check out all the cool stuff that we made

by heading on over to our theory wear website links in the description below.

Or maybe it's on screen right now. I don't know.

Maybe through the magic of editing we can make that happen.

And as always, my friends, until next time, remember, it's all just a theory,

a Film Theory! And cut.