Disney’s Success: Quality over Quantity

Patrick Goldstein’s The Big Picture appears weekly in the L.A. Times and is one of the most informative Hollywood insider columns out there. Yesterday’s entry, Mouse House Tops Studio Report Card was no exception. In it, Goldstein hands out year-end report cards to the studios. The overall score consists of three grades: first for box office and profitability, second for film quality, and third for overall success. At the top of the list — Disney with an A-.

But what surprised me most about the ’07 tallies was not that Disney was, again, near the top of the pack, but the reason given for their success.

Blessed with the most respected brand in the business, Disney is now less of a film division and more of a family entertainment company. Of the 11 movies it released in 2007, eight were Disney label movies, allowing the company to remain relentlessly focused on its brand. By releasing so few films, Disney was able to make more high-quality films by putting extra time into solving script, production and marketing issues than competitors like Sony and Warner Bros., who roll out more than 20 a year.

“We’re probably in a different business than our brother and sister companies,” says Disney studio chief Dick Cook. “We’ve learned that it’s not how many you do but how good they are. If you only make 11 movies a year, you’re not putting your movies through a meat grinder; you can be very specific about quality. That way, if we do stumble, and I’m sure we will, it will be because we were pushing the envelope instead of not keeping our eye on the ball.” (italics mine)

After watching Ratatouille, a film that made many critics’ Top Ten lists, who could argue about the meticulous detail that goes into Disney’s animated films. These are far more than cartoons; they’re slick, polished, and dare I say, thoughtful, movies. But as with any quality product, perfection takes time. And this is exactly what differentiates Disney from its competitors.

“We’re probably in a different business than our brother and sister companies,” said Disney studio chief Dick Cook. “We’ve learned that it’s not how many you do but how good they are.” Unlike other studios, most of whom are cranking out twice as many films a year, Disney has valued quality over quantity.

And it is precisely this value that goes against industry norms.

I couldn’t help but relate this to the arts in general, and the industries that handle them. The film industry, like the book industry, like the music industry, is admittedly more about making money than producing quality craft. It’s what Mr. Cook calls “the meat grinder.” No sooner does a publisher contract an author than they are requesting a second book. (In fact, how many authors are left unsigned because they don’t have a second book?) And so what if it took ten years to write the script for an indie hit — you’ve got 16 months for the follow-up. Art is being jammed through a “meat grinder.” Nowadays, profitability is linked to productivity. Heck, by today’s standards Harper Lee was a one-hit wonder.

Perhaps more publishers and producers should reconsider Disney’s approach. “[I]t’s not how many you do but how good they are.” Less movies, books and bands may, in the overall scheme of things, be a good thing.