Disney Has An Acquisition Problem

Bob Iger's tenure at the head of Disney can largely be defined by the massive deals he has made. He spearheaded the acquisition of Pixar, the Muppets, Marvel Studios, Star Wars, and 20th Century Fox which has increased the company's IP library by an unprecedented amount.

The thing is, each acquisition eventually turns badly for the studio. Either they buy something that was historically successful and don't know what to do with it, or they buy something currently successful and eventually run it into the ground through studio interference and mandates.

This week's release of The Muppet Show kind of perfectly encapsulated this issue. Disney acquired the Muppets in 2004. Between the acquisition and now, they managed to completely stall out production of things involving these characters while they figure out what to do with them. They had The Muppets' Wizard of Oz in 2005, the two late 2000s-early 2010s theatrical movies, the adult workplace comedy on ABC, the Disney+ webseries Muppets Now, the Electric Mayhem mockumentary, and the return to The Muppet Show that debuted this week.

The problem is, at the time of the acquisition, there was not a ton of Muppet content being made. The last movie was Muppets From Space, and since the 80s, there hadn't been a major television or direct-to-video presence for them. Disney took control of something that was not actively in development and let it languish because they didn't know what to do with it.

Similarly, Disney had an issue with Star Wars when it acquired Lucasfilm back in 2014. There was no active development on a new trilogy beyond Lucas' notes so they found themselves forced to prove value in an acquisition by quickly moving into development on new projects and throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

On the other side, you have Marvel and Pixar, both of whom were running on their own with minimal issues before Disney stepped in. In the beginning, the infusion of cash was great and helped them get new and interesting projects off the ground, however this has since devolved as both studios are seen as machines to print money, and they need to constantly attempt to replicate past success.

As we move into a new era of mergers and acquisitions across the industry, it's important to note that companies should, I'd say at minimum, have a plan for what they want to do or who they want to work with when acquiring an IP. Sure you're playing keep-away by saying Paramount or Universal or Warner Bros. can't have it, but is that really worth all the money being spent, only to see things basically vaulted for almost two decades?