I'll give you Quantumania (I was looking at a source that had its budget at only $200 million, but that might have been ignoring marketing), but still two bad releases isn't that serious, especially when you realize how many films Disney releases in general and the fact that Movies/TV aren't Disney's biggest money makers anyway. They made over 30 billion in revenue just off of their theme park/cruise business alone last year. Factoring in things like merchandising, licensing, etc and Disney can absorb two unsuccessful films in a massively successful franchise fairly easily, especially since the franchise makes them money on a lot of non-movie/TV things, too.
Disney isn't WB, they aren't on death's door, hobbled by debt. They're a massively profitable company that had a few dings on one part of their business, and its doubtful that those small dings actually indicate problems with their film stuff overall. Remember that they also had to deal with an idiot CEO for a few years, and apparently Feige even got overruled on MCU stuff (at least some of the streaming stuff) during that time. A lot of factors hurt the MCU for a bit, but it was never in much danger overall, and its looking to have a big upswing.
I 100% agree we're nowhere near the 'death's door' situation some people are inclined to push. And merchandising most certainly is Disney's biggest draw, far beyond any movie.
In the interests of nuance, it should be noted that if you're looking at this as a Disney wide discussion rather than just a Marvel discussion, they have had quite a few more issues lately than just Quantumania and The Marvels. But still nowhere near death's door, regardless.
The theatrical release has always been a minor part of the money that movies bring, back when I was in high school in the early '00s, I took a marketing or some kind of business class and the teacher had called the theatrical release of a movie a two hour commercial for the DVD because at the time that was where the majority of the money came from. I'm pretty sure now you can probably add streaming to that. And I think with TV it was syndication and possibly international sales that bring in a lot of their money, and now streaming too.
I'm not aware of any clear sources on the matter, but I can believe maybe they're making a decent chunk of change from VOD. I doubt it's more (or even as much) as they used to make from DVD sales 20 years ago, though.
And as far as streaming is concerned, in the context of Marvel specifically, people are largely ignoring a rather glaring flaw in the system. Marvel movies stream exclusively on Disney+, an in-house distribution system. I'm sure there are spreadsheets showing how much D+ 'paid' for the right to stream Quantumania somewhere, but that transaction is literally Disney pulling money out of their left pocket to to put in their right pocket. It's adding zero extra ROI in terms of actual money coming into the company.
Now, there is money coming in in the form of subscriptions. But those subscriptions are completely divorced from any given project making it basically impossible to say with any specificity how much money any one project is actually earning through streaming on D+. Even if you can say for sure that a very large number of people watched Quantumania on D+ you really have very little evidence at all about how many of those people would've subscribed regardless of whether Quantumania was available or not. So you're left largely in the dark about whether you earned more money by adding it or actually lost money by making more content than you needed to make to keep people subscribed.
Most likely, it would be reasonable to say that Marvel and Star Wars as brands are largely propping up D+ as a service (Disney kids stuff and Pixar, as well, obviously) and a steady stream of things in those brands is what keeps D+ viable, at least for now. But that largely bulldozes away the entire concept of any one movie actually earning them money through D+. And even that form of income is still a trade-off that results in them forgoing entirely any actual licensing revenue from streaming (except in the handful of streaming markets where D+ doesn't exist). And Disney+ isn't actually making a profit, yet, either, according to the financial news sources.
It all comes down to a simple concept: Let people enjoy these films. Forget everything else.
Not that difficult.
(Spoken as someone who loved Black Widow, The Eternal, and The Marvels)
Having said everything else I've said on the subject, I do still 100% agree none of this has any relevance to whether a movie is good or not and none of it should have any impact on whether you or I or anyone else likes a movie or not.
But also, having said that, just because some people don't care about conversations about the larger success of a project doesn't mean no one else is allowed to care about them, either. There's nothing wrong with people having Box Office and ratings, etc, conversations if they're interested in that. And folks who think it's all nonsense and stuff to even care about that don't have to follow the conversation if they don't want to.
