Monopoly?

To hear Seeking Alpha (a financial website) tell it, Diz Co. is actually entertainment's Godzilla:

... The Walt Disney Company is the King and Queen of entertainment. It dominates the movie, TV, toys and theme parks business by owning 6 of the top 10 franchises in the world. Favorites such as Disney Princess, Star Wars, Winnie the Pooh, Cars, Mickey and Toy Story. Disney owns the licensing entertainment category with 80% market share. Disney also entertains sports fans around the world with its ownership of ESPN. [The Mouse] is a monopoly in entertainment helping to keep both adults and kids glued to its screens and products. ...



Disney has successfully integrated its acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel and they appear to be doing the same with Lucasfilm. Like the Marvel acquisition, Lucasfilm and Star Wars provides a literally rich universe that Disney can develop and monetize. Disney has announced that they will launch a new Star Wars film every year starting in 2015. Alternating between three new episode films with standalones based on characters rumoured to be Yoda, Boba Fett and Han Solo. Marvel's relatively unknown Guardians of the Galaxy movie has already grossed nearly $600 million. ...

Just goes to show you. When I was a tot, I would go to the Disney lot because that's where my dad worked. The place was a small, sleepy movie studio then, a very minor player in Hollywood. Profit-wise, it was hanging on by a thread.



When I went to work there a quarter-century later, Walt Disney Productions was still a sleepy movie studio connected to highly lucrative amusement parks. But it still wasn't big enough, or powerful enough to prevent attempts at hostile takeovers. Sol Steinberg came very close to breaking the company into pieces.



Enter Eisner and Katzenberg, and the place was transformed. Diz Co. went mainstream Hollywood, and began acquiring outside businesses. Today it's the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates, rampaging through (and dominating) its business sector.



What a difference sixty years makes.