Distribution Essay

Essay on Distribution

Disney is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. Disney has created and brought many films during its time as a film company. Disney is very popular among a ranges of ages, especially when they recreated old, traditional films for example The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast. They are the world’s second largest media conglomerate after Comcast.

Disney have a cross promotional happy meal with McDonalds which brings attention to their films and gives McDonalds a toy to put into their meals, this allows films such as the jungle book to gain exposure from kids having the toys of the film before they even see the film. Disney’s relationship with Walmart allows Disney to make toys that are sold in Walmart which brings revenue to both companies and allows Disney more money to make their film.

Over the next few years, Disney have a plan to form their very own in-house streaming service to carry its own intellectual property. For example, Disney have been removing their films from services such as Netflix so that essentially, they are exclusive to their own media streaming service. 

In 1967 Disney relied on services such as radio and TV to promote their film as well as film posters compared to the 2016 film which used a teaser trailers as well as partnership and cross promotion with big brands such as Walmart and McDonalds, allowing them to focus on appealing to their target market as well as a new audience as Disney first promoted the 2016 jungle book on the super bowl in an attempt to appeal to a wider male audience and adults instead of just families and young children. Other ways Disney promoted the 1967 Jungle book film was through re- releases of the film in special editions to make it seem limited edition.

A term used by Walt Disney Studios for its policy of putting many of its most popular home video release of Walt Disney on moratorium. Each Disney film is available for purchase for a limited time, after which it is put "in the vault" and not made available in stores for several years until it is once again released. This also mean digital copies are not available on Disney Movies Anywhere when those movies are currently in the Disney Vault.

The distribution of JB16 was all about making the jungle look realistic while still having that movie feel. So due to the trailers that came out which was about 2 minutes long and the teaser trailer which was about 1.30 minutes long. And the several posters which interpreted lots of things such as who the characters are played by and what they will look like on the big screen. 

The jungle book spent $175  million of the film and The film became a huge financial success and a surprise hit. Earning $364 million in the United States and Canada and $602.5 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $966.6 million, against a budget of $175 million. The IMAX and 3D showings of the Jungle book attracted audiences through the gimmick of 3D and IMAX, The advantages of these help attract more audiences. Some of the audience possibly aren’t as interested in the story as much as the 3D IMAX. Similarly, the use of the technologies alongside the CGI meant that a darker version of the film could captivate a larger demographic, while also still appealing to children. The 3D IMAX versions also show how large Disney has become has a company, with the ability to create large blockbusters in these technologies.

Conclusion

To conclude it is important to stress the importance of distribution to a conglomerate like Disney. Without effective distribution patterns films could easily underachieve profit wise for example but it must be remembered that distribution cannot be seen in isolation because it can quite easily be linked to the principle of synergy, as one business theorist states ‘industries rely on repetition through use of stars, genres, franchises, repeatable narratives and so on to sell formats to audiences, then industries try to impose scarcity to keep demand high.’ This is very true of Disney who with the original Jungle Book 1967 found himself with limited avenues of distribution – namely TV  and film, thus to keep The Jungle Book characters fresh in the minds of audiences the company created other programmes and ancillary products from 1967  to the early 2000’s to keep alive the idea of the characters so that in the future there could be a potential remake or reboot of the original film, these other programmes included Talespin, a cartoon starring many of the characters from the original film and Jungle Cubs – another cartoon which explored Baloo, Shere Khan and other characters’ lives as children, the aim of these products were to not only to keep audiences entertained but to keep the Jungle Book franchise fresh and active although more importantly , a means by which one media product can promote another media product by the same company, a term called synergy `and one which will only improve with the creation of Disney’s new streaming service in 2019.