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Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

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Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#211

Post by Zenst »

I would of thought more people on this planet know more about star wars than they do facebook. Yet Facebook valued at 100bn (initialy) and Lucasfilm valued at 4bn and like many people the response was thats low.

Lets look at it another way - do a google search for star wars and then facebook and notice the number of results:

star wars: About 420,000,000 results (0.21 seconds)

facebook: About 20,570,000,000 results (0.17 seconds)

Now if you get (100/fb results)* star wars results you get a value of around 2

So with that you could say if facebook was overvalued at twice its value then you can say that lucasfilm is worth 4bn, or at least argue that as a price.

Personaly I would of thought that had Lucasfilm ran a share sale, then the value would of been alot more, just from fans collecting a share certificate for there star wars collection alone. Now they can own a Disney share and feel all dirty I suppose somehow.

Either way when you sell a company directly, I tend to see low ball prices in consumer valuations of the company. Now if you sell it as shares or are flavour of the month and can get silly offers, the prices seems to be over consumer valuations. Though even after this news, the share price has not changed much and still values Disney at around 90bn.

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#213

Post by msprague »

Zenst wrote: post #211

I would of thought more people on this planet know more about star wars than they do facebook. Yet Facebook valued at 100bn (initialy) and Lucasfilm valued at 4bn and like many people the response was thats low. Lets look at it another way - do a google search for star wars and then facebook and notice the number of results: star wars: About 420,000,000 results (0.21 seconds) facebook: About 20,570,000,000 results (0…

Since when does popularity substantially determine share valuation?

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#214

Post by cpher »

tptacek wrote: post #58
Firehed wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it would seem that Disney has a lot more to lose if IP laws are not kept in their favor, as evidenced by the Life+70 copyright extension they were able to successfully lobby into existence. Google and Disney clearly have two very different set of influences, but to imply that Disney has little control is simply wrong. Ultimately the buck stops with our various representatives, but Disney has some serious skin in…

I think this is orthogonal to the argument that I responded to upthread. The idea I responded to is that by rolling up so much of our popular culture, Disney has reached a point where it bears some kind of responsibility for vouchsafing our culture. Strong disagree: just like buying OMGPOP didn't reward Zynga with a mortal lock on the market for iPhone games, buying up the most popular media properties won't reward D…

I think I agree with this. In my experience with my 4- and 5-year-olds, the concepts/images they retain are completely character/personality driven. E.g. they love individual characters, but the larger messages are completely lost. I don't think pop cultural references started appearing until the Shrek series, which included a bunch of funny, adult pop culture references. I think they did this for a really simple reason: to make it easier for parents to take kids to the movies, and still get some laughs. Throwing in pop culture references makes the parents laugh, but kids pay no attention--they love the animation, expressions, sounds, etc. And parents are more likely to sit through repeated viewings because of this.

My kids get their "bearings" from their Judeo/Christian upbringing, both at home and at school. That is their "culture", not the characters they see in Disney movies. Looking over the list of recent Disney movies, the themes I pick out are "individuality, loyalty, determination, perseverance." All of which are reflective of our culture, and all of which fly completely over the heads of small kids.

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#215

Post by philwelch »

enraged_camel wrote: post #155
philwelch wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News Corp owns Fox News, which is stridently right-wing, but also the Fox network, which broadcasts more left-leaning shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad. In fact, Fox's prime time cartoons regularly mock Fox News. Koch isn't a media company. Try again.

>>News Corp owns Fox News, which is stridently right-wing, but also the Fox network, which broadcasts more left-leaning shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad. In fact, Fox's prime time cartoons regularly mock Fox News. Except for the fact that Fox News is (unfortunately) taken seriously by millions of Americans and therefore has much more power over political discourse, whereas shows like Simpsons and…

I wasn't talking about "affecting cultural and political discourse". Read more carefully.

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#216

Post by colomon »

MartinCron wrote: post #145
leeskye wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope they chose an awesome director for episode 7: http://www.businessinsider.com/five-directors-disney-should-...

That's a great list. Although I think that Brad Bird would be a natural choice as well.

Yeah, Bird was the second name that came to my mind. (After Whedon, who is presumably already busy.)

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#217

Post by Steko »

001sky wrote: post #166
Steko wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. Sony is not a distribution platform, ok. Apple is, ok. ESPN is mission critical for all cable platforms, ok. Dis by proxy, ok. None of these statements are false but none of them lead me to think Apple wants to own any of these content businesses. If Apple was going to buy any content company it's pretty obvious that they would have bought Pixar. Instead Steve sold Pixar to Disney. Now you're telling…

I don't follow You're too focused on Apple, and not focused on the companies defending their positions against Apple. The big threats to Hollywood are: (1) Hulu; (2) Netflix; (3) Apple. Valuation: (1) $1-2B (2) $10B (3) $6-700B > Notice the orders of magnitude. Strategy: (1) Hulu - kill by benign neglect (this is done) (2) Netflix - starve of tier 1 content (this is done) (3) Apple - keep them out of the game (this i…

"strategies to kill (1) and (2) ..."

Hollywood doesn't want to kill Hulu (which it owns) or Netflix any more than it wants to kill Wal-Mart or theater chains. The current threats to Hollywood profits are The Pirate Bay and YouTube and to a lesser extent RedBox. Netflix was briefly in a very favorable contract regime but that didn't last very long at all.

"The best way to 'win' is to never let them into the game."

This entire argument rests on the idea that Apple wants to "be in the game" -- i.e. become a big content company -- but that's what I'm contesting. And the whole thing falls apart because if it's bad for Apple that Disney acquires more content then why did Jobs sell Pixar to Disney?

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#218

Post by Apocryphon »

FrankBooth wrote: post #194
noonespecial wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Point made. But if this ends with JJ Abrams doing a "reboot" of ANH where Han is a genuinely nice guy and Greedo was just 'misunderstood', I shall be very put out.

A reboot is more likely to be gritty given the fashion of the times. Expect to see Han Solo made into a heroin addicted jazz critic who's not a smuggler.

I wonder if pop culture will ever reboot the concept of reboots to make future reboots all pleasant and optimistic. This already happened with comic books- after the grittiness of deconstruction in the '80s with Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, etc., there was a trend of reconstruction comics that hearkened a return to the heroic Golden Age.

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#219

Post by swlevy »

tptacek wrote: post #179
nitrogen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the obsession many young girls have with Disney princesses, sometimes carrying it into adulthood (that makes for some very interesting conversations), has no influence on the narrative structure those girls are using to evaluate their lives?

No. The Disney Princess "narrative" simply fits into preexisting gender norms. There was no "Disney Princess" culture in the 1950s. If you created a chart showing the trendlines of female mobilization into the workforce (and particularly the "professions") and the revenue extracted from Disney Princess offerings, you'd have a concrete reason to question the assumption you're making here.

FYI Disney's princess culture arguably dates all the way back to 1937, with Snow White.

Re: Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

#220

Post by Dylan16807 »

chc wrote: post #188
eric_h wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevertheless, you could flip the switch and turn Google off, and people would be able to find things on the internet just fine.

"People" as in "some number of people somewhere"? Sure. But people in general? I strongly doubt it. Hang out with some "non-technical people" (they will often helpfully describe themselves this way for you) while they use the computer sometime. If they didn't have Google, they might be able to get to Facebook, but that would be pretty much the boundary of the Internet for them.

You don't think one of the top news stories is going to be 'omigod google is down, type yahoo.com at the top'?
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