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Just about everyone in America has some sort of relationship to Disney. Whether through the movies and shows in its ever-growing library; experiences inside its theme parks or on its cruises; or simple social absorption of its many generations of iconic characters — Disney has achieved cultural ubiquity. The challenge facing the company now, as both a business and a creative operation, is sustaining that all-ages appeal as it charts a course toward an uncertain future.
In Land of the Giants: The Disney Dilemma, from Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network (you can subscribe here), we revisit the past 40 years of the sprawling entertainment giant to understand how it arrived at this point and where it may be heading next. Hosted by Vulture writers Joe Adalian, Rebecca Alter, Bilge Ebiri, and Chris Lee, the six-episode series will examine Disney’s theme parks (what happens when imagination is replaced with IP?), scuffling animation operation (what were they thinking with Wish?), studio acquisition successes and stumbles (how did Marvel and Star Wars lose their mojo?), and more. Please keep your arms and legs inside at all times, we hope you enjoy the ride.
Land of the Giants
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Episode 1
Disney is a TV Company
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How Magic (and a Major Television Deal) Fixed Disney
“When I joined Disney, I took over as CFO. And it was a broken company. And I’d never really seen a broken company before.†That’s how Gary Wilson characterizes his first impression of the ailing organization after becoming part of Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s C-suite in 1985. The company — the brand, really — had lost its way, creatively and financially, and Eisner & Co. had been brought in to change course. How exactly Disney re-created that magic, reversed its fortunes, and became a TV juggernaut (owning ESPN helped) is the subject of episode one, hosted by our own TV reporter and Buffering columnist Joe Adalian.
Further Reading
âž¼ Inside the 1995 Media Merger That Changed Disney Forever
➼ From the Archives: Mickey Mouse Time at Disney
Episode 2
Disney is a Theme Parks Company
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How Disneyland Became America’s Great National Park
Without a doubt the buzziest piece of criticism of the year so far is a four-hour video in which YouTuber Jenny Nicholson thoroughly analyzes every inch of the now-defunct Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser immersive hotel at Walt Disney World. The screed, which is 33 percent longer than Oppenheimer, has had over 9.2 million views since it dropped mid-May, and its popularity proves that adult Disney tourism is far from niche. Disney adults, that much-maligned subgenre of person, have truly become the mainstream. And Disney’s parks division knows it; it earns 70 percent of the company’s operating income, compared to the entertainment-and-streaming division’s 11 percent. How did Disney World’s Cinderella Castle become an American landmark on the level of Mount Rushmore? And how did the development of a Tomorrowland ride possibly influence the Space Race? We get into all that with the help of some experts on this week’s episode of Land of the Giants: The Disney Dilemma, hosted by Rebecca Alter.
Further Reading
âž¼ Disney vs. Universal: The Ultimate Theme-Park Showdown
âž¼ Phil Simms on the Disney Ad That Overshadowed the Super Bowl
âž¼ Muppet*Vision 3D Should Be a National Heritage Site
➼ From the Archives: A Guide to Defunctland: YouTube’s Favorite Theme-Park Enthusiast
Episode 3
Disney Is an Animation Company
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Does ‘Disney Animation’ Still Mean Anything?
No one’s in the mood to revisit Wish, the 2023 Walt Disney Animation Studios release that attempted to honor Disney’s 100th anniversary by packing in fun historical winks and instead ended up feeling like a cry for help. But in the aftermath of that flop, and with the two films on the upcoming Disney Animation slate being sequels (Moana 2 later this year and Zootopia 2 in 2025), the current moment prompted host Bilge Ebiri to ask, early in the third episode of Land of the Giants: The Disney Dilemma, “What even is a Disney movie today?â€
Further Reading
âž¼ Cinematrix No. 120: The Disney Edition
âž¼ How to Watch Every Stitch Thing After Lilo & Stitch
âž¼ From the Archives: Bring Back the Animation
âž¼ From the Archives: A Crash Course in a Century of Walt Disney Animation Studios
➼ From the Archives: A Rare Trip Inside Disney’s Secret Animation Vault
âž¼ From the Archives: An Oral History of Lilo & Stitch
➼ From the Archives: An Oral History of The Emperor’s New Groove
âž¼ From the Archives: The 100 Sequences That Shaped Animation
Episode 4
Disney is a Cinematic Universe Company
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Where Disney’s Hollywood Empire Went Wrong
These have been dark times for two of the brightest corners of the Magic Kingdom. Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm — respectively, the biggest blockbuster factory in the history of moviedom, and the powerhouse IP star chamber behind Star Wars — loom large as the twin Disney studio divisions behind so much of cinema’s most eye-popping sci-fi action but also as cinematic-universe builders. On this week’s episode, we delve down into the corporate missteps that compelled the House of Mouse to prioritize business decisions over creative ones, damaging its “crown jewels of Hollywood IP†in the process. We talk to Shawn Levy, director of Deadpool & Wolverine who just might end up pulling double duty as both Marvel messiah and Jedi Jesus, now in active development on a new Star Wars movie. And we examine what it will take for Marvel and Lucasfilm to get out of their slumps.
➼ From the Archives: I’m a VFX Artist, and I’m Tired of Getting ‘Pixel-F–ked’ by Marvel
âž¼ From the Archives: Inside the VFX Union Brewing in Hollywood
âž¼ From the Archives: Marvel VFX Workers on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
➼ From the Archives: 3 Takeaways From Marvel’s Phase Six Comic-Con Panel
âž¼ From the Archives: Is Shawn Levy the Future of Populist Cinema?
Episode 5
Disney Is Bob Iger’s Company
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Heavy Lies the Mickey Ears
While eight men have taken turns guiding The Walt Disney Company over the course of its roughly 100 years of existence, arguably only three have managed to make a real and lasting impact: current CEO Bob Iger, Michael Eisner, and of course, the icon for whom the company is named, Walt Disney himself. All three ruled the Magic Kingdom for at least two decades, oversaw creative and commercial renaissances at the company, and to varying degrees became celebrities in their own right. And yet for all their positive attributes, Disney, Eisner, and Iger had one other thing in common: They were really bad at figuring out who would succeed them as CEO. In the fifth episode of The Disney Dilemma, hosted by Joe Adalian, we explore why it is that Disney’s most successful leaders have done such a bad job making sure the company would be able to survive — and thrive — without them.
➼ From the Archives: Three Big Questions About Disney’s Streaming Future
âž¼ From the Archives: Maybe Bob Chapek Was Right
âž¼ From the Archives: Nelson Peltz Lost the Battle for Disney
Episode 6
Disney Is a Tech Company?
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Why Disney Plussed Itself
How the Mouse House decided to evolve from a content creator to a content creator that is also a tech company is the focus of the sixth and final episode of Land of the Giants: The Disney Dilemma. Hosted by Joe Adalian, the episode dives into the economic pressures that forced Disney to abandon a long-successful business model for something substantially more risky, and how that strategy has evolved in the five years since Disney+ debuted in November 2019.
âž¼ From the Archives: The 2024 Streaming Power Rankings