Disney, one of the future Hollywood supercompanies.

The company was founded in 1923, and in 1928 Disney drew cartoons Crazy Airplanes and started the road to animated films. Soon after, Disney released the first sound cartoon, the steamboat Willy, and in 1937, the first color animated feature film, Snow White, which was a milestone in the history of animation. Since then, Disney has continuously released excellent animated feature films such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Banby.

In the 40s of the 20th century, due to the impact of World War II, the Disney Company suspended the production of cartoons. After the end of the war, Disney entered a period of rapid development, releasing a classic cartoon almost every year, such as Cinderella, Liz in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Miss and the Rogues, Sleeping Beauty and many more. Disney became the "hegemon" of the animated film industry. In 1955, Disneyland California opened, Disney's first amusement park. It marks that Disney's industry not only stays in the production of animated films, but also begins to realize IP monetization through the opening of offline parks.

On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died, and the Disney Company was in trouble, and Disney lacked works that could be used during this period. On the one hand, Disney's animated film production is in a period of scarcity, with the older generation of producers closing the curtain and the new generation of producers not yet mature; on the other hand, the gradual development of television animation, such as cat and mouse, has had a certain impact on animated films. In 1971, the second Disney in the United States, Orlando Disney, opened in Florida, and in 1983, the first overseas Disney, Tokyo Disney, opened in 1983.

In fact, since 1989, the animated films of the United States have entered a golden age. And, in the mid-to-late 90s, with the gradual maturity of CG technology, a large number of computer 3D animations began to enter the market, and gradually replaced hand-drawn animations as the protagonists. Disney's resurgence began with the animated film The Little Mermaid, which it had honed for several years, which was beautifully produced and a huge success. Subsequently, Disney launched several animations that also continued the production level of The Little Mermaid, and the hand-drawn animation Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahonta, Mulan, The Lion King, etc. were all the box office champions of the year. In 1995, Pixar Animation Studios partnered with Disney to launch the feature-length animated Toy Story, which went down in history as the first animated film to be fully animated with 3D computer animation.

If the launch of these animations means that Disney, which is full of imagination and creativity, is back, then what really makes Disney take off is a series of acquisitions by Disney after entering the new century.

From 2006 to 2012, Disney acquired Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Comics, and Lucasfilm, which produced the Star Wars series. Through the acquisition, Disney was able to quickly enrich its IP matrix and expand its business footprint. At the same time, Disney spent $19 billion to buy ABC, and in 2001, Disney acquired the Fox Family Channel, which covers 81 million households. Disney has taken control of its media distribution channels through acquisitions, making it one of the leading media outlets. After more than 90 years of development, Disney has completed the transformation from a little mouse to an elephant, and has grown into the world's largest entertainment and media empire, covering multiple industries such as media networks, resorts and amusement parks, film and television entertainment, and consumer derivatives.

However, although Disney is so powerful, in the eyes of traditional directors, Disney is still out of the flow.

Why is it because Disney can only make animated films, and those acquisitions in later generations have not been completed, and now Disney has only completed the acquisition of Fox Low Family Channel, which can be regarded as a good position in the media industry, but those classic series of movies in later generations have not yet been put on the screen, and even Disney has not really begun to set foot in the traditional film industry now.

So when Cameron talks about Disney, there is a slight disdain on his face, of course, in another ten years, this disdain may have to change. When it came time for Disney to really exert its strength, even Cameron could not continue to ignore each other, but Disney at this time was strong, but it was not strong enough to make Cameron look at it.

And Disney in this period, to be honest, although it has money, its prospects are really not optimistic.

In terms of implementation, Disney's turnover has begun to decline continuously, if it weren't for the fact that animated films have always had a good market, and Disney's marketing of IP is doing quite well, it may have begun to go into debt.

The real rise of Disney is actually on Pixar animation.

Originally, Pixar mainly dealt in computer hardware, and in order to promote the hardware, it occasionally made some 3D short films, which could not make ends meet. It wasn't until 1991 that Pixar received $26 million from Disney and began working on their first animated feature film, Toy Story. The rest is clear to everyone, Toy Story was an instant hit, earning $3.6 billion at the box office. Pixar also jumped out of the brink of bankruptcy and successfully went public.

But after that, Pixar continued to have a very delicate relationship with Disney.

Pixar was in charge of production, and Disney was in charge of marketing and distribution, and then each split the production fee and box office equally. But the powerful Disney has the final right to decide the copyright of the movie and the sequel. This made Pixar's boss Jobs very dissatisfied at the time, and his relationship with Disney's chairman at the time Michael Eisner was very strained, and Pixar and Disney were also on the verge of breaking up. That's right, this Jobs is the same Joe gang leader who made Apples.

At the same time, because of the company's dilemma and the criticism brought by personal dictatorship, Eisner was voted down by the Disney board of directors, and he was replaced by the young Robert Iger, which became the easing of the relationship between Disney and Pixar, and the turning point of Disney as a company. Egger has a very different style from Eisner, placing a high value on personal relationships with partners, and thanks to his efforts, Disney and Pixar are back on track. In 2006, Disney successfully acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion, and Jobs stepped down as chairman of Pixar and became Disney's largest shareholder, focusing on Apple's business.

John Lasseter came full circle and returned to Disney as the creative director of Disney Animation.

Although Pixar still retains a large degree of autonomy, its influence on Disney can be seen by anyone. Disney has gone from being a conservative company that still insists on 2D animation to a leading company with the best 3D animation technology and the most outstanding 3D animation production talent. John Lasseter, Bradbird, Pitt Docter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Ann Creech, all of whom have the best animated featurette in their hands, have all been hired.

Thus, Disney's counterattack began.

Not to mention the animated films of Pixar Studios, the animation produced by Disney has also quietly taken on a new look, which really brought Disney back to the attention of Chinese audiences, subverting the previous impression of Disney limited to the work of The Lion King, which was the Frozen in the winter of 2013. Frozen subverts Disney's long-standing theme of "the prince saves the princess", the prince becomes the villain, and the princess becomes the protagonist who takes the initiative to control her own destiny and even save others. The setting of Elsa and Anna's "two princesses" actively embraces the trend of feminism, but also makes the movie have a fuller drama and more subtle tension. After the release of Frozen, the most received comments is that Disney is less and less like Disney, but like Pixar, which has complaints about past Disney popular dramas, and of course, more praise for its courage to innovate.

And Disney's changes are not only that, on the last day of 2009, Disney bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, although the price of 4 billion is not a difficult price for Disney, but considering that Marvel's forecast revenue for the second year is only $100 million, it does not seem to be a good deal. However, Robert Iger is not interested in Marvel's meagre annual income, but its full 00 comic book characters. For Disney, which is extremely good at IP operation, such a large number of comic book characters are undoubtedly nuclear-bomb-level weapons. Under the leadership of Disney, Marvel Productions released the Super Cash Cow Avengers series.

The Avengers grossed $1.5 billion, the fifth-highest-grossing film in world cinema history, and the revenue of this film alone was much higher than Marvel's 2010 revenue forecast. Its sequel, Avengers 2 Ultron, also won $1.4 billion at the box office, which shows Disney's ability to operate.

In addition, there are also the third highest grossing films in film history other than James Cameron's two classic Titanic and Avatar. The seventh installment in the Star Wars series, the most classic work of space opera, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And this is also the first film of Disney's rebooted Star Wars sequel after acquiring Lucasfilm. In the future, at the end of October 2012, Disney will announce the acquisition of Lucasfilm for $40.5 billion, with cash and stock as payment. Lucasfilm has worked with Disney on several occasions to establish Star Wars and Disney theme parks in Indiana Jones.

Lucasfilm is best known for the Star Wars series, but it also has other big productions, such as the Indiana Jones series and the American style paintings. The company is an industry leader in visual effects, sound effects, and computer animation for the film industry, and their subsidiaries often assist other film production companies due to their outstanding expertise. Due to the increase in the cost of film production, Lucasfilm has also shifted some of its business to the television industry. The movies they produce also don't have group discounts, probably for that reason as well.

Industrial Light & Magic, which is famous all over the world, is a company owned by Lucas.

Seeing this, I am not satisfied to see it, Disney's hand is really big, a Pixar, let them have 3D animation talents, the acquisition of Marvel, they have a massive IP library, and the acquisition of Lucas, so that they have the world's top film special effects team.

It took a decade for Disney to go from a declining giant that was almost bought by Comcast to a veritable giant spanning film, television, theme parks, and streaming, and people who aren't in the business of economics can't help but marvel. Therefore, the future of Disney is quite terrifying, in the future they will become one of the most successful companies in Hollywood, once Hollywood eight, the future will become Hollywood six, and among the six, Disney can even be called the strongest one. At least in terms of box office and potential, Disney has no objection to being the boss.

But now, they are still just a veteran company that only knows how to make 2D animations, and technology is progressing in the world, and it can even be said that it is developing rapidly, but today, Disney is a little conservative, and it is basically a sitting and eating nothing. In this case, let's ask, what qualifications do they have to make the great director Cameron look down on him, if it weren't for helping Zhou Fangyuan, Cameron wouldn't even be willing to call Disney. Even when he called, he was ready to hang up after saying a word in passing.

But Cameron must have called on the other side, and he was immediately moved. Although Cameron also said that this movie was not made by him, but by a friend of his, and he was just helping to promote it, Disney immediately agreed, and said that as long as the quality of the film is good enough, they can even reduce the commission.

It can be seen that Disney still wants to seek a way out, after all, anyone with a discerning eye can see that Disney has begun to decline at this time. Investors have no confidence in them, the stock price is basically falling again and again, and the company's total assets have shrunk a lot, which is quite bad for a large company that has been listed for more than 40 years.

So Disney has actually begun to plan for transformation, and as a film company, of course, they still want to develop in the field they are familiar with. It's just that the previous few attempts were not perfect. In fact, Disney has also tried to make some movies in recent years, of course, not in the name of Disney, but in the form of outsourcing and investment, with the names of other companies, but the result is undoubtedly sinking, and none of them are really successful. In this situation, what Disney wants most is a movie by a famous director.

But as mentioned above, although the big directors of Hollywood will not get along with capital, who wants to cooperate with such an animation film company when there is no shortage of funds

So the top brass of the Disney company is now very much of a headache.