How much does Disney own?

Sedona’s show and tell about Disney and working in the Disney College Program got me to thinking about everything that Disney owns and has control over. Sedona talked about how Disney requires a certain image to be upheld with all their employees, or “cast members”. Things like their hair and nails need to look a certain way and they even have to follow certain rules on social media if they are character actors. This made me think about how controlling Disney is of their image and how wide their reign spreads. These two infographics show everything that Disney owns both on television and movies.

This infographic shows all the different studios that Disney owns and produces movies, through its parent company Buena Vista Motion Pictures. This is interesting to me because they don’t all seem to fit the “Disney image”, such as Star Wars, Marvel movies and Indiana Jones. I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that Disney owns so many franchises. This makes me think of our discussion in class about aura and how things copying the original takes away from its aura. Disney is known for princesses and fairy tales and cute movies that end in happy endings, like Toy Story. Once they started branching out and taking over other franchises, it took away from their “aura” of making kids movies, mostly cartoons, that have a predictable plot in the “Disney-style”. Disney is still known for those types of movies, but they also cater to an older crowd with more action-oriented movies such as The Avengers and Star Wars. It also put its name on a completely separate genre of movies including titles such as Pretty Woman and Armageddon. Those movies definitely aren’t the typical Disney-type movie!

This infographic shows how many different TV networks that Disney owns. It has become common knowledge that Disney owns ABC and produces many hits through their channel ABC Family (now known as FreeForm). But they are also the owners of ESPN, a sports network, which doesn’t fit into the Disney-image. Another string of ABC is the ABC News channel. This is the thing that really made me think. A corporation as successful and influential as Disney owns a news channel. This makes me think about The Circle and how the Circle Corporation tries to control everything, from social media to politics. Is Disney becoming a real-life Circle? They already control a news channel, a sports channel and many movie studios. They have multiple theme parks and are responsible for producing many successful child actors by giving them their start on Disney channel. They are in a perfect position to start influencing the masses, which I think is a something very possible. It is interesting to me that something like The Circle can actually become a reality with a corporation like Disney as they slowly take over more and more media outlets.