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Credit: Inside the MagicThings are looking quite bright for The Walt Disney Company, with stock prices bouncing exceptionally high after an impressive earnings report.
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The Walt Disney Company is soaring high today, Thursday, February 8, after sharing its Q1 2024 earnings report on Wednesday. After a steady decline on Wall Street for the last year, Walt Disney Company stock shot up to $111, marking a 12% increase over yesterday, a 21% increase over the last month, and a whopping 26% increase over the last six months. This rapid spike can mostly likely be attributed to the earnings report, in which Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed a multitude of exciting projects during the call, announcing that The Walt Disney Company would be partnering with Fortnite thanks to a $1.5 billion investment with Epic Games. This is just one of many announcements made during the call, but it signals to fans that Disney is looking to branch out into the interactive space as much as possible.
Disney’s stock closed at $110, a number the company has not seen in an entire year.
The specific details regarding this upcoming collaboration between Fortnite and Disney were kept vague, but Disney is telling players to get ready to experience all of their favorite Disney characters in all new worlds. Disney has already partnered up with Epic Games’ Fortnite in the past, allowing users to purchase cosmetic items based on various properties like Marvel Studios, Star Wars, and Lucasfilm. With this collaboration underway, it’s obvious that Disney is seeking to expand even further into the world of video games, and there’s no better place to start than the worldwide phenomenon that is Fortnite.
This impressive rise in Disney’s stock price also coincided with multiple project announcements made by Iger, like Moana 2, which is slated to release in November of 2024. This announcement came out of nowhere, with the CEO revealing that Disney decided to turn the previously announced Moana Disney+ series into a feature-length film. Moana 2 joins the ranks of other upcoming sequels, like Frozen 3 (2025), Zootopia 2 (2025), and Inside Out 2 (2024).
Each one of these films has its own massive fan base, with Zootopia and Frozen being two of Disney’s most valuable and bankable properties. In 2023, Disney opened entire theme park lands dedicated to these franchises, with Zootopia land opening in Shanghai Disneyland and World of Frozen in Hong Kong Disneyland.
The Walt Disney Company also recently pledged to spend a whopping $60 billion within its theme parks, with a large chunk of that money going toward “increasing capacity” across all theme parks. Both Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resorts are in the midst of multiple new and exciting projects, like Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, but this money extends well into the international theme parks as well, such as Tokyo Disney Resort, which is getting ready to completely transform its version of the iconic Space Mountain roller coaster.
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Tiana’s Bayou Adventure acts as the replacement for Disney’s iconic yet problematic log flume water ride known as Splash Mountain. This legendary attraction closed permanently in Disneyland and Walt Disney World in 2023, with Walt Disney Imagineering quickly stepping in and starting work. Guests visiting Disneyland Park or Magic Kingdom will barely recognize the former Splash Mountain location, with grass and immense amounts of foliage covering the mountain. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure does not have a specific opening date but is slated to officially open to guests sometime in 2024.
To say that the last few years have been rough for Disney would be an understatement, with the massive corporation facing challenges on all sides of the financial and political isles, including threats from the world’s most prominent public figures. Throughout 2022 and 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to take legal action against The Walt Disney Company and its Reedy Creek Improvement District in Florida due to Disney’s stance on the state’s controversial Parental Rights in Education Act.
DeSantis, alongside other notable republican figures, did not like what Disney had to say about the bill, turning on the company and blasting them for going “woke,” among other things. In 2023, some Republican lawmakers even introduced legislation that would strip both Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts of their “No-Fly” zone restrictions, putting the safety of the resort and its guests at risk. This new legislation did not get a lot of momentum but was sponsored by high-profile conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Biggs, and Scott Perry.
In the last five or so years, it seems like The Walt Disney Company has become one of the largest targets of attack for conservatives, becoming a punching bag of sorts for far-right or alt-right individuals and groups. Over the course of the last year, Walt Disney World saw multiple demonstrations from “anti-grooming” protestors. These groups set up shop at the entrance of Walt Disney World, holding inflammatory signs as well as pro-DeSantis flags. One of these is called Disney World “Pedo World.”
Eventually, full-on Nazi protests began breaking out, with small groups holding up literal swastikas and other Nazi paraphernalia in front of thousands of drivers. On the other side of the coin, Cast Member unions demonstrated outside of both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, demanding better pay and working conditions for the thousands of workers employed by the Disney theme parks.
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Following in the footsteps of conservatives, Elon Musk has also been attacking The Walt Disney Company on a consistent basis, following Disney’s decision to boycott posts on X (Twitter) for a short amount of time. Musk, the founder and owner of multiple world-renowned brands like SpaceX, Tesla, and X (formerly Twitter), publicly called out Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger for engaging in the boycott, telling him to “go f***” himself. Musk was obviously furious by Disney’s actions, with the two parties seemingly cutting ties then and there.
Fans will still find Disney accounts operating on X, but its relationship with the tech industry leader is certainly strained. Couple these battles with a new lawsuit that is directly being funded by Musk, and it’s obvious that the two will remain enemies for the foreseeable future. This new lawsuit, filed by former The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano, claims she was treated unfairly by Disney and wrongfully terminated for her political views. Carano went viral for her wild and often problematic posts on social media, ranging from COVID-19 misinformation to comparisons to the Holocaust.
Carano is seeking payment of at least $75,000 as well as to be recast. The last time fans saw Carano’s portrayal of Cara Dune was in season two of The Mandalorian, with her character’s absence being explained in a one-off scene in season three.
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The spike in Disney stock also comes after several infamous tumbles at the 2023 box office, with films like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) and Haunted Mansion (2023) failing to gain momentum with audiences during the summer. Both films received positive reviews and managed to generate millions in ticket sales, but with inflated budgets (Dial helmed a staggering $300 million production cost), any attempt at generating real “Avatar-level” returns seemed futile.
Interestingly enough, Avatar remains Disney’s most promising foray into motion pictures yet, with the third, fourth, and fifth films currently in production. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) managed to do the unthinkable, bringing in billions at the box office once again despite a large portion of people assuming interest in James Cameron’s series was at an all-time low. Because of the continued success of the series, The Walt Disney Company is planning to go all in on Avatar, with rumored expansions set to be announced in Florida’s Pandora – The World of Avatar in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, as well as a mysterious Avatar expansion at the original Disneyland Resort in California.
Not everything can be magical, even for Disney, with the company still finding itself in trouble with its streaming platform component. Disney is currently facing challenges with its in-house streaming service, Disney+, which has been operating at a loss since it was originally launched back in 2019. Despite being rather limited on release, Disney+ managed to stand tall above the competition, bringing in numbers comparable to industry giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, and Hulu. Disney would eventually go on to bundle Hulu and Disney+ together, featuring hundreds of titles in the packed streaming service. Over the last few years, Disney+ has grown into a massive destination for fans of Marvel and Star Wars but still fails to turn a profit, with this being a key focus point for admittedly “bullish” Bob Iger. In the new earnings report, Disney also reportedly lost over a million subscribers between October and December of 2023.
While Disney certainly has a lot it can improve upon in 2024, the new year looks to be an incredibly promising one, not just financially but creatively. Fans of the Disney theme parks have a lot to look forward to in the coming months, with both Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resorts set to expand in unimaginable ways.
What are your thoughts on the Walt Disney Company today? Are you excited about the future?