Everything You Need to Know About The Disney Gen Z Crisis
Warner Bros. Discovery just did something stunning and amusing.
Mere days after rumors surfaced that WBD may fire its top film executives, the studio caught fire.
Photo: Warner Bros. Discovery
WBD is currently riding an unprecedented streak of six straight movies with $40+ million openings.
That’s something that had never happened in the history of the industry. And David Zaslav wanted to fire those people.
Photo: Variety.com
He’s…really not good at his job. Still, his confusion speaks to a larger problem with the movie industry.
Nobody ever quite knows what will happen, even the people who possess the most information.
Photo: Warner Bros
At The Walt Disney Company, something similar has happened, and the movie studio must fix it.
Let’s discuss Disney’s Gen Z crisis and why the company desperately needs to reach a new demographic.
What’s the Problem?
Photo: Pexel.com
I’ve discussed this issue on several occasions, but Variety highlighted it this week.
Long story short, Disney missed a generation with its marketing. It happened for understandable reasons.
Disney had committed too heavily to cable and network television to pivot quickly to streaming.
What nobody could have anticipated were the cord-nevers, not the cord-cutters.
Photo: Getty Images/Ringer illustration
Sure, the trends indicated that people would end their cable subscriptions.
Media companies like Disney failed to guess the byproduct of this behavior.
Disney
Kids born from 2007 on spent their formative years as second-screeners.
So, they definitely never developed a reliance on linear television, which hurt Disney dearly.
Families Streaming Disney+
You’re probably wondering why, but the answer is straightforward and obvious when you think about it.
Kids without cable never watched the Disney Channel, which Disney used to indoctrinate fans.
Photo: Disney
So, those kids don’t love Disney the way that most living, breathing humans do. They missed Mickey Mouse.
Disney also underestimated how problematic this blind spot would be, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Photo: English Jargon
The Gen Z problem manifested itself in a different way when Disney failed to market to the male demographic.
Disney still had hits like High School Musical, Teen Beach Movie, Descendants, and Zombies during the 2000s and 2010s.
They created enough of a buzz that female members of Gen Z mostly became Disney fans anyway.
There’s a lot of fascinating data about this, but I won’t bore you with details.
Boys born in the 2000s don’t love Disney as much, and that’s partially because of a failed plan.
The Failed Plan
Photo: Disney
Disney expected Star Wars and Marvel movies to do all the heavy lifting in luring Gen Z guys into the fold.
That seems reasonable, right? Everyone remembers Captain America wielding Mjolnir for the first time.
Well, here’s the thing. The last Star Wars movie came out in 2019, an eternity ago to Gen Z.
Disney stopped making Star Wars films for a while because it couldn’t quite get them right.
Photo: Playbuzz.com
So, a Gen Z boy born from 2007-2012 would have been seven to 12 the last time there was a Star Wars movie.
How much do you remember about being seven to 12 years old? Exactly.
Marvel: Avengers: Endgame
Marvel’s in the same boat because Avengers: Endgame came out in – you guessed it – 2019.
Since then, plenty of online critics have spent the past five years assailing all things MCU.
Fair or not, it has happened, and from the perspective of Gen Z, it occurred during their formative years.
As such, Disney’s expected targeting of Gen Z males missed again. It just hasn’t worked.
Photo:Rappler
Variety correctly points out another key contributing factor here. It’s the pandemic.
The younger members of Gen Z spent a lot of time inside during their formative years.
Photo:seoclerk.com
So, they participated in much of that online discussion about how Disney has lost its way.
Disney not only lost this generation but somehow alienated them, which is a huge problem.
Photo: DVC
A decade from now, a lot of these guys will become fathers, ones who don’t care about Disney experiences.
That means no theme parks, no cruises, no Disney+, and so forth. The Disney+ part especially matters, too.
Photo: Disney
If Disney doesn’t fix that, it’ll experience another generation of kids who grew up not watching Mickey Mouse.
The “New” Idea
Image: The Healthy Mouse
This fear, which borders on an existential threat, is driving some of Disney’s recent decision-making.
Disney has watched in frustration as WBD has released films like The Minecraft Movie became hits.
(Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Hamleys)
Who is the target audience for Minecraft? It’s the people who grew up playing the game, many of whom are Gen Z boys.
Even worse, WBD has succeeded in having three different original stories become box office blockbusters.
(Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP) (Photo credit should read TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Those titles – Weapons, Sinners, and F1 – aren’t based on any existing IP.
When Bob Iger returned as CEO of Disney, he stacked the deck by leaning hard into IP.
In fact, he’s still doing it, as new episodes of Alien: Earth are airing each week.
Zootopia 2 and Avatar 3 will debut in theaters later this year. Meanwhile, Disney’s original story was…Elio.
Elio
Before that, Disney tried but failed with Strange Planet. Yeah, it’s a problem.
So, Disney’s track record has supported years of remakes, reboots, and sequels.
The data speaks clearly that no matter how much the internet complains about a lack of new ideas, people prefer established brands.
These past few months apparently changed Disney’s opinion on total reliance on established brands.
Photo: Pixar
The failures of Snow White, Elio, and Captain America: Brave New World were probably the tipping point.
Now, Disney wants to try telling new stories again. It’s currently meeting with plenty of Hollywood writers.
Photo: Marvel
The stated goal here involves matching WBD’s recent feat: enticing Gen Z teens and men to go to the movie theater.
Films like Sinners, Minecraft, and F1 exemplify what Disney wants that WBD has accomplished.
Disney’s Future Projects
There’s a seemingly obvious solution here, but Disney doesn’t own the rights to it (yet?).
Fortnite the movie would absolutely wreck the box office and needs to happen.
Getty
Alas, when Disney bought a stake in Epic Games, it didn’t acquire the film rights to Fortnite.
We’re talking about a game that as many as 110 million people play each month.
(Photo by VALERIE MACON / AFP) (Photo by VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)
Do you know which age demographic plays Fortnite the most? Yup. It’s Gen Z. The game skews primarily male, too.
These are the sorts of solutions Disney should find as it once again careens back to original stories.
Every few years, the choice flips to branded content and then reverses to new IP.
That’s the cycle, yet Disney seems to be choosing wrong more frequently than usual in the 2020s, 2024 notwithstanding.
Photo: Comicbook.com
Part of the problem stems from the top. Iger doesn’t really know video games.
So, he wouldn’t have thought to snag the movie license for Fortnite, whereas any gamer would lead with that.
Just look at what’s happening with Fallout and The Last of Us on streaming, along with Minecraft and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Disney should be able to target Gen Z men easily with projects like these, but Iger doesn’t get that.
So, this problem may not be solved after he retires at the end of 2026. I fear the generation gap is too large to bridge here.
Iger doesn’t seem to understand how to target Gen Z teens and men at all.
Photo: MickeyBlog
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