The Walt Disney Company, says a former employee, has taken a call not to greenlight any new films in India, as it doesn't see value in the business. "The studio business in India has too many stakeholders and often doesn't allow the studio to own the IP, and Disney's business model globally is driven by IPs. Fox Star will either be written off or reduced to a mere distribution company," he explains. The media giant is known to have asked a large number of Fox Star employees to resign. "They were asked to resign on the same day when Uday Shankar's resignation was announced," confirms yet another former Disney-Star employee.
Disney, according to industry sources, had decided to exit the film business right from the time its merger with Star was announced in 2018 (Star India was part of 21st Century Fox, which Disney bought for $71 billion). This will not be the first time that the media giant would write off a studio business in India. In 2016, it wrote off its investment in Ronnie Screwvala's UTV, which it had bought for Rs 2,000 crore. "Disney has found the studio business unviable in India, hence, it wrote off the UTV investment and the same sentiment continues for Fox Star as well. Most Fox Star projects aren't profitable," says a former Disney India employee. He says that the studio business didn't release its new slate this year. "They may blame COVID for not releasing their new slate, but they had decided not to, last year itself. That's the reason their CEO, Vijay Singh resigned in March this year."
"Fox has always believed in taking big bets whereas Disney has always stayed true to its brand and its profit and loss statements. I am not surprised that it is looking at writing off its studio business in India yet again," says a senior media professional. He says that over 95 per cent of films in India don't make money and this trend is surely not encouraging for Disney to invest in the Indian movie business.
The media network's strategy of releasing films on Hotstar has also not paid off. "It has not added to its premium subscriber base. Hotstar minus IPL is a distant number three," says the former CEO of a media company. He claims that a number of expensive shows that were planned to be released on Hotstar have been put on hold.
Disney-Star in the last few months is known to have laid off around 400 people out of its 2,800-strong workforce. The latest exit is that of Gautam Thakur, CEO, Star Sports
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