Jungle Book Essay - Distribution

Essay on Distribution

Disney is well known for making a range of different films with a wide range in audience. Disney is a conglomerate as it consists of different groups of things for example Star Wars, who has a more male dominate audience, or Sleeping Beauty who appeals to the younger female audience. Disney is a dominate company in the film industry, having many of their films in the top 10 grossing list. Most people’s favourite films have either been created by Disney or owned by Disney.

Distribution is increasingly important as technology continually advances so media companies must keep up and distribute and market their media products in a way that will appeal to the audience and new generations. Disney has effectively done this by selling licenses to increasingly popular services such as Netflix or sky which is a household service and therefore an easy way for Disney to distribute and target a mass audience that is also diverse. Distribution is changing the modern world as Disney have adapted to taking advantage of promoting and distributing through new services such as Netflix and sky showing how media is always changing and evolving.

McDonalds have sponsored The Walt Disney. McDonalds tried to help Disney to attract more the younger audience and families. One thing which McDonalds have been doing for over 30 years now is giving out toys to everyone who bought a happy meal. This use of synergy allows McDonalds and the film to go further in their business because those who eat at McDonalds and get one of these toys will want to watch the movie and those who have seen the movie will want the toy so they go to by McDonalds and get this with a happy meal. Walmart had separate stands for all the Disney movies and had all the merchandise surrounding them. This allowed Disney to widen their demographic as older generations were seeing it and buying it for their grandchildren etc.

The same service that is the exclusive home for new Star Wars television shows. And then that same company will offer fans the opportunity to actually visit the lands they’re watching through Disney’s theme parks, and then read about them in books and comics put out by Disney publishers. It’s a holistic ecosystem of entertainment, all under one corporate umbrella, with each division pushing audiences to engage with every other division. Without outside deals or restrictions, it is all just Disney.

The Disney vault is the way Disney contain their film releases and distribute their films. Disney keep all of their animated films in their ‘vault’ , stopping the release of any of the films in production. In big holidays, Disney re release films from the vault to get their demographic interested to buy all of their films again. This tactic is useful as it interests all the demographics, and re interests the old audiences. Furthermore, the Vault system will enhance Disney’s secondary profit streams on films which might become twenty to thirty years old or even older, as once these films are released out of their vault for a while, they are presented as enhanced ‘special’ editions.

Disney has been re-releasing classic films such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Bambi in the form of DVDs. These DVDs have been labelled ‘Platinum’ or ‘Diamond’ editions and has been done on a seven-year cycle. This creates a constant and consistent income for the brand and allows their brand to be distributed further.

The 2016 remake opened to the Box Office on April 15, 2016, and took in around $300 million.

3D versions are very good because people might have already seen the normal version but the 3D version might make people want to go and see it again and then they will get more profit.

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.