Research into a big institution

 Walt Disney 

Walt Disney studios, named after its creator Walt Disney, was started up by Walt Disney and his brother Roy in the rear of a small office based in Los Angeles. Here, the brothers created multiple short films, both animated and live-action. After four months, the company relocated next door in order to gain access to a larger workspace as the number of staff employed had grown significantly. At this point, the studio was known as “Disney Bros. Studio”. In 1925, the studio relocated again to the Silver Lake District, Los Angeles. In this new studio, over the next fourteen year many of the world’s beloved characters. Mickey Mouse, after which Pluto, Donald Duck and Goofy were also created. Today, the Walt Disney Studios are located in Burbank, California and has been formally named “The Walt Disney Company” since 1986. 

On 25th February 2020, it was announced that Bob Chapek would take on the role of Chief Executive Officer. The Walt Disney Company is not owned by one person, but multiple corporations and individuals. The largest current shareholder is the Vanguard Group Inc. Individuals with significant ownership include Bob Iger, the previous Chief Executive Officer of the company, as well as the CFO, Christine M. McCarthy and the general counsel, Alan Braverman. However, The Walt Disney Company owns other companies as well as their own. One of these companies is  21st Century Fox, which they have owned since 2019. Other companies include National Geographic, Marvel, Muppets Studio, ABC and GoPro. Moreover, they own significant shares in networks such as ESPN.

Walt Disney has enjoyed a number of successes in the box office since 1937 when “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was released. Their top five biggest box office successes include “The Avengers”, “The Lion King”, “Avengers: Infinity War”, “Star Wars: Episode VII - The force Awakens” and the highest grossing of all: “Avengers: Endgame” which generated a total of $2,797,501,328. In 2020, the highest grossing films produced by Disney included “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”, “Onward” and “Frozen II”. The budget for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”. The budget for these films ranged between $150 million and $275 million. 

Disney has employed a number of directors to work on their films, however there are some directors that have worked on a number of their most successful films. For example, Jennifer Lee, who directed “Frozen”, “Wreck it Ralph” and “Zootropolis”. Many of the same actors appear in a number of Marvel films such as in the “Avengers” franchise where many actors play the same character in multiple films. These actors include Robert Downey Jr who plays Iron Man and is also the producer of these films. Currently, Disney has thirteen movies in pre-production, eight in production and six in post-production. 

Being such a large institution comes with a number of advantages for The Walt Disney Company. The most significant of these is that the company is allowed greater creative freedom as they have bigger budgets and a great deal of financial security to rely upon if one of their movies were to be less successful than expected. It also means that they can use this budget to work in synergy with other companies and generate more revenue.