Shareholders Urge Disney Pixar To Commercialise Their Films

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Friday, April 17th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Traders in Wall Street have shown their concern for the future of Disney Pixar’s position in the share market.Many quality films have come out of this company over the last couple of decades but there are lots of people that think they have lost their commercial edge 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. Although all of their films are making profit, they are just not making as much as their top competitors such as Dreamworks.Their most recent offering is the film ‘UP’ which sadly lacks the same vital ingredients as their previous efforts according to experts.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 have had a great run recently with films such as Shrek, Wallace and Grommit and their newest release Monsters VS aliens. These products feature easily identifiable heroes and villains, and also cute talking creature or animals that covert well the merchandise war. Toys, books, DVD’s, clothes even more obscure products such as dolls house, all go towards making up the films overall profits.The ability to push these products is what pixar have been failing to do as of late and this is arguable down to their choices of story and characters.

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 buying of educational toys instead of cheap tacky stuff. However, they cannot ignore the pressure that is currently being put on them by investment companies and shareholders to constantly increase revenue.Pali Research’s Richard Greenfield has downgraded the shares of Disney to sell this month just gone, stating that a predicted high risk of commercial failure is the reason.

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