Shareholders Urge Disney Pixar To Commercialise Their Films

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By guest | May 10, 2009

Traders in Wall Street have voiced their concerns over the commercial strength of Disney Pixar recently.They have long been a fine film producer and their profits are reasonably healthy but many believe that they are just not commercial enough these days.

The news follows the release of their last two films, WALL-E and Ratatouille, which have been the studio’s two worst performing productions. Making profits is not the problem, it is simply that the competition is very fierce, not least from their biggest competitor, Dreamworks.The latest release ‘UP’ has just hit the screens and contains many of the same floors as highlighted in previous films.The general consensus is that there is a clear lack of characters that transfer as well into merchandise sales as some of their previous productions, e.g. Mickey Mouse or the productions of their competitors. Dreamworks having been hitting the spot recently with such merchandise dreams such as Wallace and Grommit, the Shrek series and their latest release Monsters VS Aliens. These films all have talking animals or creatures that are endearing and have clear heroes and villains that lead to great merchandise sales. Toys, books, DVD’s, clothes even more obscure products such as dolls house, all play their part in making up the films overall profits.The ability to sell these products is what is lacking in the story lines and characters in Pixar’s latest products.

The counter argument to this has been that Pixar are more interested in creating worthwhile and high quality films than selling pointless toys from their productions. They would rather be able to promote the selling of educational toys instead of cheap tacky stuff. Having said this, there is a great deal of pressure on the company from shareholders and linked businesses to up their game in terms of commercialism.Richard Greenfield from Pali Research has reduced the share price of Disney to sell last month, citing predicted poor commercial strength a a reason why.