Following today’s earnings announcement, Bob Iger and Jay Rasulo participated in a conference call with investors.
Here are some of my highlights from today’s conference call:
- Bob reiterated that Disney will be making three types of films: big budget franchise films, animated films, and lower-budget brand building films
- Avengers was used as an example of the benefit of franchise films. The success of Marvel’s The Avengers caused Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World perform better than their previous installments. Bob was very high on Captain America: The Winter Soldier saying that it will lead in to Avengers: Age of Ultron and upcoming episodes of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- It was reconfirmed that Frozen will be headed to Broadway following in the footsteps of Beauty & the Beast and The Lion King
- Frozen is the number one animated film of all-time in South Korea. This bodes well for the recent opening in China and the March opening in Japan.
- Jay Rasulo said that the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train should be opening in the next few months, completing the Fantasyland expansion project. No specific opening date was given.
- The parts of MyMagic+ that have been rolled out are considered successful.
- The adoption of FastPass+ is much higher than legacy FastPass
- Walt Disney World credits MyMagic+ to allowing 3,000 additional guests per day into the MagicKingdom during the Christmas holiday season.
- Bob said there is active development in bringing more Star Wars into the parks, both domestically and internationally.
- We also should expect to see more of Frozen in the Disney Parks.
- Disney Interactive is expected to experience a loss in the second quarter due to the timing of game releases. This is part of the reason Disney Interactive is going through layoffs.
- We should expect many future iterations of Disney Infinity. It was strongly hinted that Marvel and Star Wars characters will be introduced in future versions.
- Iger believes there is a strong possibility that they will be developing digital destinations for their brands.