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      in Television

      Studios Are Loosening Their Reluctance to Send Old Shows Back to Netflix

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      When building their own streaming companies, many entertainment studios ended lucrative licensing deals with Netflix. But they missed the money too much.For years, entertainment company executives happily licensed classic movies and television shows to Netflix. Both sides enjoyed the spoils: Netflix received popular content like “Friends” and Disney’s “Moana,” which satisfied its ever-growing subscriber base, and it sent bags of cash back to the companies.But around five years ago, executives realized they were “selling nuclear weapons technology” to a powerful rival, as Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, put it. Studios needed those same beloved movies and shows for the streaming services they were building from scratch, and fueling Netflix’s rise was only hurting them. The content spigots were, in large part, turned off.Then the harsh realities of streaming began to emerge.Confronting sizable debt burdens and the fact that most streaming services still don’t make money, studios like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have begun to soften their do-not-sell-to-Netflix stances. The companies are still holding back their most popular content — movies from the Disney-owned Star Wars and Marvel universes and blockbuster original series like HBO’s “Game of Thrones” aren’t going anywhere — but dozens of other films like “Dune” and “Prometheus” and series like “Young Sheldon” are being sent to the streaming behemoth in return for much-needed cash. And Netflix is once again benefiting.Ted Sarandos, one of Netflix’s co-chief executives, said at an investor conference last week that the “availability to license has opened up a lot more than it was in the past,” arguing that the studios’ earlier decision to hold back content was “unnatural.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Movies

      Disney Rejected Her a Few Times. The ‘Wish’ Director Just Kept Trying.

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      After she was finally hired by the studio, Fawn Veerasunthorn worked her way up the ranks, and has applied that lesson of perseverance to her new film.At the turn of the century, a young medical student in Thailand mailed a handwritten letter to a Disney animator in Florida.The student, Fawn Veerasunthorn, had attended a guest lecture by this visual effects animator, Paitoon Ratanasirintrawoot, years earlier at her Bangkok high school (his alma mater). She’d since graduated and was miserable in her first year of med school. But, she wondered, might he have advice on how she could switch careers, move to the United States and follow in his footsteps at Disney?He wrote back with his email address and they struck up a correspondence, as he answered her questions, which ranged from “What is a portfolio?” and “Where did you go to college?” to “Do girls really work in animation?” and “Is this safe?”At the time, the animation industry in their home country was small. “Not many people from Thailand even have a dream of working in animation, let alone at Disney,” said Ratanasirintrawoot, who counts “The Lion King,” “Mulan” and “Lilo & Stitch” among his credits. “But she was really determined.”Spurred by that determination, Veerasunthorn dropped out of med school, moved across the Pacific for art school and pushed past multiple Disney rejections until she eventually got her foot in the door in 2011.She’s spent the past 12 years climbing the ranks of Walt Disney Animation Studios: serving as a story artist — visualizing and sketching out how a script will translate onscreen — on “Frozen,” “Moana” and “Zootopia,” and leading a team as the head of story on “Raya and the Last Dragon.”Now, Veerasunthorn is making her directorial debut alongside Chris Buck on “Wish” (in theaters), a tribute to the company’s legacy on it 100th anniversary.The musical fairy tale follows 17-year-old Asha (voiced by Ariana DeBose), who makes a wish to improve the plight of her people in Rosas, a fictional kingdom ruled by the tyrannical King Magnifico (Chris Pine).A scene from “Wish,” with Ariana DeBose voicing the 17-year-old Asha.Disney“Everyone keeps talking about, ‘Aren’t you stressed? It’s 100! How do you uphold that legacy?’” Veerasunthorn said. “But at some point, I felt like, ‘Oh, we can turn this energy into excitement.’”During an interview last month at the studio’s headquarters in Burbank, Calif., the 41-year-old director — wearing oversize magenta glasses and baby pink-accented sneakers — laughed frequently and verged on tears more than once. Not unlike the characters she brings to life, her energy was infectious.That capacity for emotion, said Disney Animation’s chief creative officer, Jennifer Lee, became a hallmark of Veerasunthorn’s storytelling early on.Lee first took note of Veerasunthorn when they worked together on “Frozen.” Both women had only recently arrived at Disney, but Veerasunthorn carried herself with confidence in chaotic production meetings, where team members jockey to have their ideas heard.“She would always cut through with something that was so clear and to the point,” Lee said. “If I could see her nodding, I’d be like, I’m in a good place because I can see that Fawn’s on board. She’s a great barometer.”On “Zootopia,” Veerasunthorn oversaw the poignant goodbye scene between Judy Hopps and her bunny family at the train station. For “Moana,” she worked on the opening village song, when Moana dances with her grandmother. And on “Frozen 2,” she helped actualize the climactic scene when Elsa realizes she’s been hearing her mother’s call.“Wish” employs a different style of animation for Disney, combining the look of traditional watercolors with modern computer animation. The blend is meant to invoke the art of hand-drawn films like “Sleeping Beauty,” and there are numerous references to Disney classics throughout.“We’re celebrating the legacy, but I think if Walt were to be alive today, he wouldn’t want to do the things that he had done,” Veerasunthorn said. “He would want to do something new. That was important to us.”Development on “Wish” began in 2018, and Veerasunthorn joined the project as head of story two years later. But after the first internal work-in-progress screening, the film was at an impasse.Star, a character that, as its name suggests, is a celestial body, originally could speak. But a wishing star that provided direct guidance didn’t allow Asha the space to figure out her own journey. Veerasunthorn offered solutions.Lee recalled of that period: “She was the one who said, ‘This is never going to come together if you can’t feel that what we’re ultimately saying is that this is not just about celebrating wishes. This is about really showing the importance of you working hard to make your dreams come true.’”Veerasunthorn applied repeatedly for jobs at Disney but kept getting turned down: “I’m like, that’s OK, it’s becoming a hobby.” Alex Welsh for The New York TimesIt was a proactive path Veerasunthorn knew well.She grew up in a small seaside town in Thailand’s Chonburi Province, where she said her only exposure to animation as a career came in the form of the local artists who hand-painted posters to announce new movie releases in the town square.At home, she and her younger siblings would watch the 1941 Disney animated film “Dumbo” on repeat. The movie’s fantastical nature and its message of persevering against the odds resonated with her as a young girl.Also, she said wryly, “Maybe that was the only VHS we had.”Her parents ran an auto parts shop in front of the family home, and Veerasunthorn used their industrial cardboard boxes and a wall in the kitchen as her canvases. But she had no formal training, and art was just a hobby.When she was 15, she left home for high school in Bangkok, where she chose a computer science track, hoping to learn to write emails. And after graduating in 2000 with the expectation that she would pursue a practical, lucrative career in her home country, she enrolled in medical school.But Veerasunthorn “did not love” the idea of becoming a doctor, and during her semester break, she began taking art classes and writing to Ratanasirintrawoot, who recommended her to the president at his alma mater, Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio.Her parents were supportive but nervous. No one in Veerasunthorn’s family had pursued a career in the arts. “I was leaving behind something that, to a lot of people, family and friends, is a very solid career to do something that is unknown,” she said.Before moving to the United States, she asked her parents if she could take English lessons to improve her conversational skills. That was too expensive. Instead, her father bought her a subscription to HBO, where she watched “Forrest Gump” and Todd McFarlane’s “Spawn” on repeat.“Initially, I was like, even if I don’t communicate very well, my work speaks for itself,” she said.But Disney wasn’t listening at first. While she was in college, the company shuttered its Florida animation studio, where Ratanasirintrawoot had worked. So Veerasunthorn pivoted, applying at Pixar instead. Rejected. She applied for other jobs at Disney in California. Multiple rejections followed.“I’m like, that’s OK, it’s becoming a hobby,” she said with a laugh. “‘Oh, it’s a new year. Is Disney Animation hiring again?’”Scenes from a career: Veerasunthorn worked at Illumination on “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” and “Despicable Me 2,” top, before joining Disney and taking on scenes in “Zootopia” and “Moana.”Universal Pictures (“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” and “Despicable Me 2″); Disney (“Zootopia” and “Moana”)After stints in educational Flash animation and as a contributing story artist on Illumination films, including “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” and “Despicable Me 2,” she tried Disney again in 2011. This time, she got in.And a decade later, after that “Wish” screening, Lee — who also served as the film’s co-writer and executive producer — offered Veerasunthorn a directing role alongside Buck in early 2022. It was similar to the transition Lee herself had made on “Frozen,” when she joined Buck as a director midway through that production.“Talent is universal, I always say, but access hasn’t always been,” Lee said. “If you give people a chance, they’ll rise to the occasion. That happened to me.”Historically, Disney animated films have been the domain of male directors. Lee became the first woman at the studio to direct an animated feature with “Frozen” in 2013 and “Frozen II” in 2019. Since then, only Charise Castro Smith, a co-director on “Encanto,” and now Veerasunthorn, have joined the ranks. (At the Disney-owned Pixar, Brenda Chapman was replaced by a male director before the completion of “Brave,” in 2011. Domee Shi became that studio’s first solo female director on a feature, with “Turning Red” in 2022.)For Buck, who made his directorial debut on the 1999 Disney film “Tarzan,” forgoing solo duties again was a welcome reprieve.“These movies are such monsters that, hats off to someone who can do it by themselves. I can’t,” he said, adding that he needs the support. “I love the collaboration.”Away from the studio, Veerasunthorn and her husband, Ryan Green, whom she met in college and who also works in animation at Disney, share a daughter, Kina, who is 7. She’s one of the “production babies” listed in the end credits of “Moana,” and she provided valuable input on “Wish.” When Kina first watched the film’s ending, she was left bawling. Further test screenings would lead the directors to alter the finale to be less traumatic.Lee remained tight-lipped when asked if Veerasunthorn would be working on Disney’s announced third and fourth “Frozen” films or “Zootopia” sequel, but the studio executive said she was eager to see her lead an original project from the start. And for now, Veerasunthorn is reveling in her work on “Wish.”“The journey that a person takes toward a goal, that is what this movie is about,” Veerasunthorn said. “It took me a few tries to get here. If I were to be discouraged the very first time, this would never have happened.”She added, as tears brimmed in her eyes, “This film is saying that the choice is always yours, no matter what the situation.” More

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      in Movies

      Book Review: ‘MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios,’ by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Edwards

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      “The Reign of Marvel Studios” captures how movies based on comic-book properties came to dominate pop culture. At least until now.MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin EdwardsHollywood doesn’t believe in immortals. From Mary Pickford to the MGM musical, Golden Age cowboys to teenage wizards, the city worships its gods only until their box-office power dims. So it feels audacious — if not foolhardy — to open “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” and find its authors, Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Edwards, declaring that it’s difficult to imagine a future where the Disney-owned superhero industrial complex “didn’t run forever.” Even Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man, has yet to engineer a perpetual motion machine.Yet the three veteran pop culture journalists behind this detailed accounting of the company’s ascendancy have the numbers to support it. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, a constellation of solo superhero tales mixed with all-star team-ups, including four installments of “The Avengers,” is Hollywood’s most successful movie franchise of all time — 32 films that have grossed a combined $29.5 billion. By comparison, the book points out that the “Star Wars” series, Marvel’s nearest rival, has notched only 12 films and $10.3 billion.Turning the pages — which are devoid of the usual, and unnecessary, glossy photo spreads — one realizes that superheroes are an X-ray lens into the last decade and a half of Hollywood disruption. Every upheaval gets a mention: corporate mergers; profit-losing streaming services; Chinese censorship; digitally scanned actors; social media cancellations; #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite; the resurgence of a production-to-distribution vertical pipeline that hadn’t been legal since the 1948 Paramount Decree. Pity there’s no room to examine each in depth.First, the origin story. In the ’90s, the former overseer of Marvel Enterprises, Ike Perlmutter (let’s give him the comic book nickname “The Pennypincher”), empowered his entertainment division to license its biggest stars for cheap, scattering Spider-Man, Hulk and the X-Men across other studios in service of selling more toys. (“MCU” familiarizes us with the marketing term “toyetic.”)The saga of who and what changed the company’s direction involves chancy gambles, pivotal lunches at Mar-a-Lago, rivalrous committees and the waning of Perlmutter’s influence, amid the waxing of Kevin Feige, the book’s hero, a five-time U.S.C. Film School reject who started his production career teaching Meg Ryan to log in to AOL for the romantic comedy “You’ve Got Mail.” To establish their independence, the writers mention at the top that Disney, now Marvel’s parent company, asked people not to give them an interview. Many already had, or chose to anyway, although most shy away from on-the-record quotes about the really salacious stuff. No one will say that the rumored $400-million-plus Robert Downey Jr. earned across nine films factored into the decision to kill off Tony Stark, but the innuendo is thicker than Iron Man’s armored exoskeleton.Signs that the Marvel era is nearing the end of its cultural dominance are everywhere, including in this book. Despite the authors’ rah-rah intro (there are no bad Marvel films, they claim, only “a mix of entertaining diversions and inarguable masterpieces”), they wisely sense that the library’s cinema history section will eventually file Feige next to John Ford as filmmakers who defined the spirit of a moment.“MCU” concedes that three of Marvel’s worst-reviewed films were all made in the last three years, just as one of the studio’s cornerstone creatives, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn, decamped to run DC Studios, the home of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.Meanwhile, the churn of faster, cheaper superhero content for Disney+ has led the studio’s weary visual-effects workers (whose exhaustion is well documented here) to vote to unionize. Fandom has become a Sisyphean labor as never-ending spinoff series force a once-rapt audience to pick and choose which story lines they’ll bother to follow.To those seismic grumbles, I’ll add another: Today’s teenagers were toddlers when Marvel first seized the zeitgeist. What generation wants to dig the same stuff as their parents?Marvel’s inescapable obsolescence is the best argument for “MCU”; the genre should be studied with the same rigor as film noir. The book’s admiration for Marvel movies works in its favor, freeing the writers to skip straight to the gossip, like the relative who pulls you aside at Thanksgiving to whisper about your cousin’s divorce. If you didn’t understand the plot of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” before, they’re not wasting space explaining it here.Instead, the book will satisfy your appetite for Marvel’s endless contract negotiations with Sony over the character rights for Spider-Man, which is easy when one encounter climaxes with the former Sony Pictures chairwoman Amy Pascal hurling a sandwich — and an expletive — at Feige. Battles over screenplay credits are even juicier. That’s where you’ll find the most inventive insults.Elsewhere, one has to read several paragraphs past a doctor willing to estimate that “50 to 75 percent” of Marvel’s stars are Hulked-out on performance-enhancing drugs to learn that he has not, in fact, treated any of the studio’s actors. While the hustle to wrap things up before the tome turns into “Captain America: Civil War and Peace” means racing through the most recent projects in a blur, earlier chapters are able to dish the dirt, like whose script notes triggered the collapse of Edgar Wright’s “Ant-Man” and why Feige refused to continue collaborating with the original Bruce Banner, Edward Norton.After all, the authors know a saga is only as exciting as its villain.MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios | By Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Edwards | 528 pp. | Liveright | $35 More

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      in Movies

      Actress Julia Ormond Accuses Harvey Weinstein of Battery in Lawsuit

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      Ms. Ormond also sued Creative Artists Agency, which represented her at the time, and Disney, which owned Mr. Weinstein’s Miramax.The actress Julia Ormond, known for “Legends of the Fall” and “Sabrina,” accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual battery in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in a New York court, claiming that the former film producer forced her to give him oral sex during a business meeting in 1995.Ms. Ormond also sued Creative Artists Agency, which represented her at the time, saying in the complaint that two of its senior agents cautioned her from speaking out — and informed her of the “going rate” for settlements paid to women who accused Mr. Weinstein of sex crimes. She said the sum was $100,000.Mr. Weinstein, now 71, was convicted in 2020 by a New York jury on charges of rape and criminal sexual assault and sentenced to 23 years in prison. He was later convicted of similar crimes in Los Angeles and sentenced to 16 years, to be served after his New York term. Mr. Weinstein has denied the claims against him, saying all encounters were consensual, and is appealing both convictions.“Harvey Weinstein categorically denies the allegations made against him by Julia Ormond, and he is prepared to vehemently defend himself,” Imran H. Ansari, a lawyer for Mr. Weinstein, said in a statement. Mr. Ansari added that her lawsuit was “yet another example of a complaint filed against Mr. Weinstein after the passing of decades.”CAA did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Ms. Ormond said her complaint was the first to sue the powerful agency for what the suit claims was its role in covering up and enabling Mr. Weinstein’s behavior.Ms. Ormond’s complaint, filed in New York Supreme Court, also named the Walt Disney Company and Miramax, which Disney owned from 1993 to 2010. Ms. Ormond claimed the companies also knew about Mr. Weinstein’s predation and failed to protect her from him.Disney declined to comment. Miramax, now owned in part by Paramount Global, did not respond to requests for comment.According to the complaint, CAA secured a two-year production deal between Ms. Ormond and Miramax. She claims that Mr. Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 1995 after a business dinner. According to the suit, Mr. Weinstein said he would discuss a project she was interested in only at the apartment that Miramax had provided for Ms. Ormond as part of her deal.At the apartment, the suit said, Mr. Weinstein stripped naked and forced Ms. Ormond to give him oral sex.Afterward, Ms. Ormond told her agents, Bryan Lourd, now the chief executive of CAA, and Kevin Huvane, now a co-chairman of the agency, about what had occurred, according to the complaint.“Rather than take Ormond’s side and advocate for her interest, they suggested that if she reported Weinstein to the authorities, she would not be believed, and he would seriously damage her career,” the complaint said.Ms. Ormond did not pursue further action, the complaint said, but Mr. Weinstein terminated her contract at Miramax. CAA also transferred her to a younger, less experienced agent, diminishing her career potential, the lawsuit said.In a statement, Ms. Ormond said her lawsuit was a “way to shed light on how powerful people and institutions like my talent agents at CAA, Miramax and Disney enabled and provided cover for Weinstein to assault me and countless others.” More

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      in Theater

      Disney’s Thomas Schumacher Takes on New Broadway Role

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      The longtime head of the company’s theater operations is becoming the division’s chief creative officer, relinquishing his role overseeing its business operations.Thomas Schumacher, the longtime head of Disney’s theatrical arm, a key force behind “The Lion King,” and one of the most powerful people on Broadway, is relinquishing his role overseeing the division’s business operations and stepping into a purely creative role.Schumacher, who is 65 and currently holds the titles of president and producer of Disney Theatrical Group, told his staff on Thursday morning that he will take on a new role as the division’s chief creative officer. His two closest deputies, Andrew Flatt and Anne Quart, will now jointly run the unit as executive vice presidents.Disney has for three decades been the biggest corporate player on Broadway, and it remains an enormously significant factor in the industry. “The Lion King,” which has been running on Broadway for 25 years, regularly outsells its competitors — last week it was, as it often has been, the top-grossing show.Schumacher’s portfolio has included not only Disney’s Broadway shows — “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” at the moment — but also its many touring productions as well as Disney on Ice. His first Broadway credit was in 1997 (as a producer of Disney’s “King David”) and he has since become an important figure in the Broadway community, at one point serving as chairman of the Broadway League, which is the trade organization of producers and theater owners.The move comes at a time when many of Disney’s divisions have been struggling. The theatrical group is small by Disney standards, and although it has had its share of disappointments, its current shows are selling strongly even while most other Broadway shows are not.According to a memo Schumacher sent to his staff, Flatt will have the additional title of managing director, and will oversee strategy and business operations. Quart’s portfolio will include producing and development; she will serve as executive producer of all shows.Disney has not brought a new show to Broadway since 2018, when “Frozen” arrived to chilly reviews. Since that time, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox assets, which gave the company access to a vast new trove of titles.One possible next Disney musical appears to be a stage adaptation of “The Greatest Showman” — the company held a workshop for the show earlier this year, but that production is still relatively early in its development process. Disney has also been continuing to work on its stage adaptation of “Hercules” — after productions directed by Lear deBessonet in Central Park, as part of the Public Theater’s Public Works program, and at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the company is planning a new version in Germany directed by Casey Nicholaw next spring. More

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      in Television

      For Disney, Streaming Losses and TV’s Decline Are a One-Two Punch

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      The company experienced a sharp decline in its traditional TV business for the second straight quarter and will raise subscription prices for its streaming services.Robert A. Iger’s urgent need to overhaul Disney — to turn its streaming division into a profitable enterprise and pull back on its troubled traditional television business — came into sharp relief on Wednesday.Disney’s streaming operation lost $512 million in the most-recent quarter, the company said, bringing total streaming losses since 2019, when Disney+ was introduced, to more than $11 billion. Disney+ lost roughly 11.7 million subscribers worldwide in the three months that ended July 1, for a new total of 146.1 million.All the decline came from a low-priced version of Disney+ in India. Last year, Disney lost a bid to renew the expensive rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches. Excluding India, Disney+ gained 800,000 subscribers, primarily overseas.To make streaming profitable, Mr. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, has shifted the focus at Disney+ away from brisk subscriber growth, which requires expensive marketing campaigns. Instead, Disney has been trying to make more money from the Disney+ subscribers it already has. The monthly price for access to an ad-free version of Disney+ rose to $11 in December, from $8.Another hefty price increase is on the way. Starting on Oct. 12, the ad-free version will cost $14, Disney said. Hulu, which is also controlled by Disney, will begin charging $18 for ad-free access, up from $15. As an incentive, Disney will begin selling a new streaming package — ad-free access to both Disney+ and Hulu — for $20 a month starting on Sept. 6.The ad-supported options for both Disney+ and Hulu will remain the same, at $8. “We’re obviously trying with our pricing strategy to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier,” Mr. Iger told analysts on a conference call. The pricing news, along with a vow by Mr. Iger to follow Netflix by cracking down on password sharing, sent Disney shares up roughly 2 percent in after-hours trading.Disney still relies on old-line channels like ESPN and ABC for roughly a third of its operating profits — and those outlets are being maimed by cord cutting, sports programming costs and advertiser pullback. Disney’s traditional channels had $1.9 billion in quarterly operating income, down 23 percent from a year earlier. Disney cited lower ad sales at ABC, partly because of viewership declines, and lower payments from ESPN subscribers, along with higher sports programming costs. (On a positive note, ESPN ad sales increased 10 percent.)It was the second consecutive quarter in which Disney’s traditional TV business recorded a sharp decline in operating income.Disney is exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Bob Levey/Getty ImagesDisney is now exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Not all of it, Mr. Iger has made clear. But he wants “strategic partners that could either help us with distribution or content,” he said during an interview with CNBC last month. Disney has held talks with the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball about taking a minority stake.Earlier this summer, Mr. Iger brought in two former senior Disney executives, Kevin Mayer and Thomas O. Staggs, to consult on ESPN strategy with James Pitaro, the channel’s president, and help put together any deal. Mr. Mayer and Mr. Staggs were both viewed as possible successors to Mr. Iger when they were at Disney, ultimately leaving when they were passed over to start their own media company, Candle Media, with the private equity firm Blackstone as the backer.Their return has sent the Hollywood and Wall Street gossip mills into overdrive. Are Mr. Mayer and Mr. Staggs now back in the running for Disney’s top job? Is Blackstone a potential investor in ESPN? Maybe the whole company is being prepped for a sale — with Apple as the buyer?The first two questions did not come up on Disney’s conference call, and Mr. Iger batted away the third. “I just am not going to speculate about the potential for Disney to be acquired by any company, whether it’s a technology company or not,” he said. “Obviously, anyone who wants to speculate about these things would have to immediately consider the global regulatory environment. I’ll say no more than that.”ESPN on Tuesday announced a 10-year deal with a casino company to create an online sports betting brand and push more aggressively into the lucrative world of online gambling. Notably, the $2 billion deal allows ESPN to rake in gambling money without — in keeping with Disney’s family-friendly brand — becoming a sports book itself.Mr. Iger is also contending with dual strikes in Hollywood. Unionized screenwriters have now been on strike for 100 days and actors for 27. They want higher pay from streaming services and guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence by studios.On the conference call, Mr. Iger addressed the strikes for the first time since mid-July, when he told CNBC — from an elite gathering of chief executives in Idaho — that union leaders were not being “realistic,” prompting an eruption of vitriol on picket lines. On Thursday, reading from a script, Mr. Iger said it was his “fervent hope that we quickly find solutions to the issues that have kept us apart these past few months.”“I am personally committed to working to achieve this result,” he added, saying that he had “deep respect and appreciation” for actors and writers.Disney’s quarter included some encouraging signs. The $512 million streaming loss was 32 percent less than analysts had predicted, for instance. In the fall, quarterly streaming losses reached $1.5 billion. In other words, Mr. Iger’s effort to drastically reduce losses is working. “In spite of a challenging environment in the near term, I’m overwhelmingly bullish about Disney’s future,” Mr. Iger said, noting that the company was on track to exceed a goal, announced in February, to cut $5.5 billion in costs.An 11 percent increase in profitability at Disney’s theme park division — despite weakness at Walt Disney World in Florida — allowed the company to salvage the quarter, to a degree. Companywide revenue totaled $22.3 billion, a 4 percent increase from a year earlier; analysts had expected slightly more. About $2.7 billion in one-time restructuring charges resulted in net loss of $460 million, compared with $1.4 billion in profit a year earlier.Excluding the charges, which were related to the removal of more than 30 underperforming shows and movies from Disney+ and Hulu, Disney reported earnings per share of $1.03. Analysts had expected 95 cents.Growth at Disney’s theme park division came largely from overseas. A year ago, the Shanghai Disney Resort was closed because of the Chinese government’s Covid-19 restrictions. The Shanghai property was open for all of the most-recent quarter. Hong Kong Disneyland also reported improved results. Disney’s five-ship cruise line has also been running at near capacity.Economists have long watched Disney’s domestic theme parks as informal barometers of consumer confidence. Historically, when budgets get tight, families cut back on expensive trips to Disney World. Whether for that reason or another, attendance at the Florida mega-resort declined. Attendance rose at Disneyland, in California.Other theme park operators in Florida have seen similar attendance declines. Some analysts have blamed ticket price increases. Others have said that tourist demand has shifted away from locations that reopened earlier in the pandemic — like Florida — and toward destinations that remained closed for a longer period. More

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      in Movies

      Hollywood Strike Leaves Influencers Sidelined and Confused

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      Despite not being in the actors’ union, many content creators are passing up deals to promote films or TV shows because they don’t want to be barred from the guild or face online vitriol.Deanna Giulietti is not in the actors’ union, but she turned down $28,000 last week because of its strike.Ms. Giulietti, a 29-year-old content creator with 1.8 million TikTok followers, had received an offer to promote the new season of Hulu’s hit show “Only Murders in the Building.”But SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, recently issued rules stating that any influencer who engages in promotion for one of the Hollywood studios the actors are striking against will be ineligible for membership. (Disney is the majority owner of Hulu.) That gave Ms. Giulietti, who also acts and aspires to one day join the union, reason enough to decline the offer from Influential, a marketing agency working with Hulu.The union’s rule is part of a variety of aggressive tactics that hit at a pivotal moment for Hollywood labor and shows its desire to assert itself in a new era and with a different, mostly younger wave of creative talent. “I want to be in these Netflix shows, I want to be in the Hulu shows, but we’re standing by the writers, we’re standing by SAG,” Ms. Giulietti said. “People write me off whenever I say I’m an influencer, and I’m like, ‘No, I really feel I could be making the difference here.’”That difference comes at a cost. In addition to the Hulu deal, Ms. Giulietti recently declined a $5,000 offer from the app TodayTix to promote the Searchlight Pictures movie “Theater Camp.” (Disney also owns Searchlight.) She said she was living at home with her parents in Cheshire, Conn., and putting off renting an apartment in New York City while she saw how the strike — which, along with a writers’ strike, could go on for months — would affect her income.Representatives for Searchlight and TodayTix did not respond to requests for comment. Hulu and Influential declined to comment.The last time Hollywood’s screen actors and writers went on strike, social media platforms and the $5 billion influencer industry didn’t exist. The actors’ union began admitting content creators in 2021 and still has only a small number of them, but questions have quickly emerged around how the union’s dispute with the major Hollywood studios will affect popular internet personalities.The union’s message that content creators will be blocked from membership if they provide work or services for struck companies has sent many scrambling. A number of creators have pledged support for writers and actors and circulated “scab” lists of influencers who promote new releases or appear at related events. Others have been frustrated or confused by instructions from a union that doesn’t protect them, and that some had never heard of.SAG-AFTRA, which represents some 160,000 movie and television actors, approved a strike on July 13. The division with the studios is driven largely by concerns about compensation in the streaming era and artificial intelligence. They joined screenwriters, who walked off the job in May, the first dual shutdown since 1960. During the strike, actors are not able to engage in publicity efforts for their projects or appear at film festivals or events like Comic-Con.Influencers have become crucial to the entertainment industry in recent years, especially during the pandemic, building buzz and promoting products. They post videos to hype new TV shows and movies, appear on red carpets and at events like the MTV Video Music Awards, and unbox products tied to film and television characters. Typically, as in the case with Ms. Giulietti, outside agencies hire creators on behalf of the studios.“If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future,” said Mario Mirante, a comedian with 3.6 million followers on TikTok.Marshall Scheuttle for The New York TimesNow those activities, besides limiting their career ambitions, could lead to internet backlash, with one nonunion influencer already posting an apology video for appearing at a recent Disney movie premiere. Others have posted promotional videos anyway, without backtracking or pulling the content. At least one creator posting from a recent premiere opted to turn off their TikTok comments, possibly to avoid potential criticism. On the flip side, videos from creators about jobs and events that they rejected in solidarity with actors have racked up praise and views on TikTok.“We don’t have power to make decisions for the talent, but we will in this moment recommend not engaging with struck work or struck companies on paid or organic projects,” said Victoria Bachan, president of Whalar Talent, a unit of a creator commerce company that works with more than 200 content creators. She added that young creators were also more apt to be supportive of unions and organized labor.Still, Whitney Singleton, a 27-year-old with 1.2 million TikTok followers, has been frustrated by what is being asked of her. She had never heard of SAG-AFTRA until the past couple of weeks. Ms. Singleton, using the moniker @KeepUpRadio, has attracted fans by singing and rapping about her favorite video games like Fortnite and streaming herself playing video games. It has been her full-time job for three years. She has collaborated with struck companies like Amazon in the past.“I really do value creators, and I want them to get what they deserve,” Ms. Singleton said. “But it’s really hard for me to just be finding out about an organization and being expected to fall in line with their initiative when I feel like it’s new to me and the influencer space.”She said some influencers were being asked to turn down five-figure deals, and that “the majority of creators I’ve talked to about it feel it’s unfair that as nonunion members, they’re being included in this conversation.”Ms. Singleton was invited to an early screening of the “Barbie” movie and said that while it wasn’t a paid promotion, the union’s guidelines for promoting the movie were “what I would deem murky.” Ultimately, she decided to post about the event, for which she dyed her hair pink.“I actually got no negative feedback, it was all positive,” she said. “For a moment, I felt a bit scared and put in a corner with these requirements because I respect creators in all industries, but I wouldn’t be being true to my heart if I had let those things stop me from living my life and sharing the content.”The union did not respond to questions about the criticism or about how many influencers are included in its membership. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the biggest studios, has said its offers to the writers and the actors were “historic” improvements on their previous contracts.The reality for many creators is that they dream of someday achieving a level of fame beyond the smartphone screen, making the threat of blacklisting by Hollywood’s most powerful union an ominous one.Mario Mirante, a 28-year-old comedian on TikTok with 3.6 million followers, recently posted a popular video about turning down a deal to promote a show based on his support for actors and writers and his long-term ambitions. Mr. Mirante has hoped to work in Hollywood since childhood, and even has a tattoo of Jim Carrey as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” on his arm.“That’s a lot of influencers’ goal and aspiration and why they do it,” said Mr. Mirante, who lives in Las Vegas. “We love to entertain and express ourselves, and that’s the Super Bowl, that’s the ultimate, being in a movie or a TV show.”Mr. Mirante has previously been paid to promote the movie “Champions” starring Woody Harrelson and a product tied to the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. “If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future, if that makes any sense,” he said. “Of course I’m not a part of it right now, but they’re fighting for basic rights, livable wages, not to have their A.I. likeness taken.”Krishna Subramanian, a founder of the influencer marketing firm Captiv8, said studios might need to pivot away from creators during the strike and get agencies to make more traditional display ads to place on Facebook and other sites.Simone Umba is a TikTok creator with more than 300,000 followers who primarily posts about TV shows and movies but has paused making such videos. She said that many influencers felt that they were “stuck in the middle,” but that most were opting to side with the union even as invitations and deals piled up.“We knew we were going to get approached, and it’s like we’re in a really messy family feud,” Ms. Umba, 26, said.She added, “Regardless of if you want to join the union or not, you don’t want to be one of those people that was willing to take a check instead of standing in support of people fighting for actual livable wages.”Ms. Umba said that it had been painful to miss out on posting about the star-studded “Barbie” movie after this summer’s marketing bonanza and that she had declined to attend an early screening of the film in Atlanta. She and a friend were messaging recently after trailers for “The Marvels” dropped, agonizing over their inability to post.“We were texting each other back and forth, like, this is so hard,” she said. She said she was prepared to hold out for months but was already thinking of holiday releases. She crossed her fingers, held them up and said, “Please, please, don’t let it get to Christmas.” More

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      Ghibli Park Celebrates “Totoro” And Other Miyazaki Movies

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      One of our first infractions at Ghibli Park was hoisting our 1-year-old onto the polyester tummy of a woodland spirit creature. Another was letting him slip under a barricade and shelter inside a furry bus with cat eyes for headlights.“He’s not following the protocol,” I told my wife, as the staff overseeing the cat-bus play zone looked on anxiously.“He’s making a mockery of it,” she said. But we didn’t stop him.Ghibli Park, which opened in November outside Nagoya, Japan, pays homage to the eccentric, enchanting films of Studio Ghibli, a company co-founded in the 1980s by the director Hayao Miyazaki. We took our two toddlers there because their favorite movie is “My Neighbor Totoro,” a beloved 1988 Miyazaki film starring the spirit creature and its cat-bus sidekick.As parents, we thought it would be fun for our boys, 3 and 1, to experience a “Totoro” immersion. And as longtime Ghibli fans, we were keen to see what the place looked like.Ghibli Park has said that a clock tower on the premises was influenced by the “late 19th century sci-fi architecture” that features in some Ghibli movies.Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesThe park includes a recreation of an antiques shop that features in the 1995 Ghibli film “Whisper of the Heart.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesAmerican visitors may wonder how Ghibli Park compares with Disney World. It doesn’t really. It feels much lower-key and has no rides, exotic animals, jumbo turkey legs or animatronic American presidents, among other things. The main point is to wander around soaking up Miyazaki vibes.Also, the park is not finished. Grafted onto an existing municipal park, it opened late last year, but as of early July only three of five planned ticketed sites were open. When I booked for a June visit, tickets to only one of those sites — a building called “Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse” — were available to international visitors reserving through the park’s website. (It was possible to book the other two sites through Japanese travel agencies, but I only learned that much later, from a Japanese speaker.)Susan Napier, a biographer of Mr. Miyazaki at Tufts University who visited Ghibli Park in April, told me that it had struck her as a “work in progress.” She also described the ticketing process, which has included lotteries and long online queues, as “byzantine and not fun.”Maybe this is why Studio Ghibli itself seems ambivalent about promoting Ghibli Park. In Japan, it has run advertisements advising fans to “take your time” visiting.A hypothetical theme park celebrating Nintendo or Pokemon, two other iconic Japanese creative brands, would almost certainly feel more Disney World-like, said Matt Alt, the author of the 2021 book “Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World.” But he added that the park’s diffuse layout and low-key marketing were in character for a studio co-founded by Mr. Miyazaki, a director who has never hidden his anticapitalist politics.Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse is the size of a modest mall or sports arena, with replicas of structures from the films, and long lines to get close to them. Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesGhibli Park is not a place to “turn your brain off,” Mr. Alt told me. “It demands a level of intellectual engagement that most parks do not.” When I booked our visit, in March, a bit of mental stimulation sounded nice. I imagined wandering the grounds in dappled sunlight, musing on Mr. Miyazaki’s cinematic oeuvre as our boys paused to collect acorns — just as the two sisters who star in “Totoro” do. (The boys, who are Anglo-American, love the acorn scenes so much that they learned the Japanese word for the nut, donguri, before the English one.)In reality, we arrived just before our three-hour afternoon visiting slot at Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, and our intellectual capacity was limited. Our parental nerves were fraying from the hourlong journey from Nagoya and the general struggle of moving tiny, diapered humans around an unfamiliar place.Our morning in Nagoya had already been tarnished by a 4 a.m. wake up and some public displays of unchecked toddler emotion. On the grounds of the 17th century Nagoya Castle, for example, our 3-year-old, nicknamed T, burst into tears when he learned that the castle was closed for renovation.To break his mood, we took the emergency measure of buying him and his brother, nicknamed B, ice cream cones as a second breakfast. That stopped the crying, but our mounting fatigue had raised the stakes for our visit to Ghibli Park. Would the trip to meet our favorite magical creatures make all the time, money and energy that it entailed worthwhile?The park lets visitors interact with their favorite characters, including Marnie from “When Marnie Was There.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesA visitor catches Sheeta from “Castle in the Sky.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesGhibli Park may see a bump in domestic tourism this summer because Mr. Miyazaki released a new film in Japan this month. But, for my family, making a pilgrimage there was all about seeing Totoro and the cat bus.“Totoro” follows the two sisters, Mei, 4, and Satsuki, 10, as they settle into a spooky house in the Japanese countryside with their father, an archaeologist. Their mother is stuck in a nearby sanitarium, suffering from an undisclosed illness.After Mei meets Totoro by stumbling into its lair inside a giant camphor tree (and falls asleep on its tummy), she and her sister encounter the creature a few more times and learn more about its magical powers. Eventually, as their mother’s condition appears to worsen, they call in some very important favors from Totoro and the wild-eyed cat bus.Professor Napier told me that “Totoro” illustrates an aesthetic that runs through the Ghibli catalog, and which tends to be more ambiguous and subtle than Disney’s. She described it as “the immersive, low-key magic of being a human being connected with other things.”“It’s a world that you like,” Professor Napier, who is writing a book comparing Ghibli with Disney, said of Mr. Miyazaki’s animated universe. “But it’s also full of the unexpected and complex, and sometimes scary.”Totoro and the cat bus can indeed be a little frightening, especially when they flash their teeth. But the movie is much sweeter than it is scary. It’s set in “a time before television,” as Mr. Miyazaki once told an interviewer, and infused with sublime, hand-drawn pastoral imagery — pastel sunsets, a snail crawling up a plant stalk — that makes you want to be a kid growing up in rural idyll.The face of the cat bus, a magical creature that figures in the 1988 Ghibli film “My Neighbor Totoro.”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesNo Face, a character from the Oscar-winning 2001 Ghibli film “Spirited Away,” sits in a recreation of a train car.Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesThe film also celebrates a child’s sense of wonder. Mr. Miyazaki created “Totoro” with kids in mind — he said he hoped it would make them want to pick acorns — and many critics have seen it as an ode to childhood innocence. It’s no accident that Totoro and the cat bus are visible only to the sisters, not adults.Maybe this is why I still cry every time I watch the final credits roll: “Totoro” reminds me that my boys will never be this young or innocent again.In our Seoul apartment, they play with Totoro and cat-bus dolls, sleep in Totoro pajamas and sit on a Totoro potty. Their fandom is so intense that my mother-in-law bought us tickets to a “Totoro” stage adaptation at the Barbican Theater during our last trip to London.In Nagoya, before we left for Ghibli Park, B demonstrated his enthusiasm by bringing a plastic cat bus to the hotel buffet — and feeding it a breakfast of whipped cream. He also showed the toy to a man in a ninja costume who posed for a selfie with us outside the castle.The ninja cracked a knowing smile, indicating that he, too, was a “Totoro” fan. “Cat bus,” he said in Japanese, as if the phrase were a code word.In Children’s Town, a fuzzy Totoro lies sleeping in its carpeted lair.Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesA robot from the Studio Ghibli movie “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”Andrew Faulk for The New York TimesGhibli Park lies in Nagakute, a small city in the hills outside Nagoya, a few stops down a highway from an Ikea. There’s no Ghibli entrance gate, exactly; you just wander into an unremarkable municipal park and look around for the Ghibli sites for which you have reserved tickets months in advance.The Grand Warehouse is a sleek, multistory building the size of a modest mall or sports arena, with plenty of sunshine streaming in through skylights. It sits near a grassy lawn, an ice rink and some future Ghibli sites that are under construction.Inside, there are replicas of structures from the films, including the towering bathhouse from the Oscar-winning 2001 film “Spirited Away,” and dozens of made-for-Instagram tableaux of Ghibli scenes and props.The attention to detail is striking. In an area devoted to the Ghibli film “Arietty,” I saw a giant drop of plastic dew affixed to a giant fake flower, for example. Nearby was an intricately detailed replica of the castle from “Howl’s Moving Castle,” my older son’s favorite Miyazaki film after “Totoro.”“The castle, daddy!” Three-year-old T said with delight. At last, a Japanese castle that didn’t make him cry.The problem was that most of the tableaux were mobbed with Ghibli fans — and lines that we didn’t have time to stand in with restless toddlers. The building’s only restaurant was similarly oversubscribed. We eventually found a kiosk advertising cake, but the staff said that the cake had run out.Yubaba, a character from “Spirited Away,” sits at a wooden desk.Andrew Faulk for The New York Times After about an hour of canvassing the warehouse, we headed for “Children’s Town,” a play area devoted to scenes from “Totoro” and other Ghibli films.Children’s Town has three rooms. The first is a labyrinth combining scenes from more Ghibli films than I could count: The orange train from “Laputa: Castle in the Sky,” the bakery from “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and so on. The boys loved it, even if daddy thwacked his head following them through a crawl space.The other rooms were devoted to “Totoro” and had mercifully higher ceilings. There was the house where Mei and Satsuki live with their dad. Over there was the camphor tree, where a giant Totoro lay regally beside some oversize donguri. And in the far corner sat the majestic, furry cat bus.It all looked fun, kid-friendly and immersive — almost, in fact, like something you’d find at Disney World. The boys were in heaven.“Toe-toe-row! Toe-toe-row!” B said, standing inside the tree, with the same intonation as the movie’s rousing, marching-band-style theme song.“Hey, Totoro!” said T, who had been carefully inspecting the giant acorns. “Wake up!”But even though Children’s Town seemed designed to nurture the child’s sense of wonder that Mr. Miyazaki celebrates in his movies, the warehouse staff informed us of several rules that dampened the vibe. Notably, it was forbidden to put children on Totoro’s plush tummy, or to allow them to play inside the cat bus zone for longer than three minutes — even if the zone was not crowded, which it wasn’t.The staff members were friendly, but their rules made little sense for kids as small as ours. I wondered if that was another sign that Ghibli Park was still a bit rough around the edges. Take your time visiting, as the studio says.We grudgingly agreed to the no-tummy policy, but B wished to play nowhere else but inside the cat bus. We were with him. We had spent several months — a good chunk of his life! — waiting for this moment.The staff, sensing our resolve, suggested a compromise. A special time extension could be granted under the circumstances, they said. Rather than the usual three minutes, our B could have six.Make that nine. Then 12. Et cetera. At 5 p.m., he was among last, and smallest, Ghibli fans to leave the building.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More