Barry Diller: "The Movie Business Is Finished and Will Never Come Back

[Edmund Kattak]

One of the differences, though is, for the most part, studios were mainly interested in the film and its commercialization of only that IP. I still don't know how interested studios were interested on solely centralizing and controlling the merchandizing lifecycle. In 2008, my brother-in-law was able to easily license images, artwork, and obtain approvals from Lucasfilm directly for a line of children's starter fishing gear. They didn't have to deal with Fox or anyone from the Studio. They even licensed from Disney at that time with few (if any) issues. However once Disney leadership changed and they started to grow into this huge conglomerate (namely Marvel was the end of their ability to work with Disney), then it seemed that Disney didn't want to do direct licensing with mom & pop companies. Granted, my brother-in-law's company has things manufactured in China, but Disney seems to want to either deal directly or leverage larger companies (on the scale of Amazon) to manage/negotiate the merchandising aspect of the IP. Hence, Disney wants to control the whole process and its lifecycle (look at the Soundtrack product alone - Intrada is fortunate to have a good and long relationship with Disney to do the few that they do!).

Anyway, the Studios of the 70's and 80's had no interest, desire, or infrastructure to do this. Whereas the beginning of heavy globalization in the 90's paved the way for the situation now.

[AndyDursin]

Globalization is really the key. When you're making movies where dialogue is no longer the dominating factor because the less, the better when dealing with foreign markets, then it's all about the level of action and spectacle. And very little else.