Disney

Walt Disney Studios has become one of the largest media companies to ever exist. The company has a value of $81 billion and have managed to build a vast amount of success in areas such as film, T.V, theme parks, video games, toys and more. Disney has been built over a large period of time, establishing an extremely large audience that spans over all age groups.

On October 16 1923, Walt Disney signed a contract with M. J. Winkler to produce a series of Alice Comedies. This marked the beginning of what was first known as The Disney Brothers Studio. As the Alice Comedies began to lose popularity, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was released in 1927. In November 1928, Steamboat Willie was released, marking the first appearance of iconic Disney characters such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The Disney company began to grow year after year, establishing characters such as Donald Duck, and more. The company branched out into film in 1937 with the release of it's first full feature film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". This was a major success and ultimately paved the way for more Disney films to be released.

Disneys growing success led to the development of their own theme park in California on July 17 1955. This allowed Disney characters and merchandise to be promoted on a large scale. The theme park was so successful that others were made around the world. This allowed for the already large audience to expand further in places such as Tokyo, Florida and Paris. Since the parks opening, it has received a total of over 650 million guests. In 2013 the park hosted around 16.2 million guests, making it the third most visited park in that calendar year.

Another area that Disney began to focus more on is television. Disney had already made shows for television in the past but the year1983 marked the airing of 'The Disney Channel'. This essentially allowed Disney to create and show content on a regular basis on their own channel. From this spawned multiple franchises such as Thats So Raven, Recess and The Suit Life of Zack and Cody. Each franchise offered an enormous amount of profit and merchandise to sell. Over the years, the Disney Channel has led to the fabrication of other Disney-owned channels such as Disney XD and Disney Junior. This variation in programming allowed Disney owned properties to be shown to specific audiences on their own channels.

Disney has also found new ways to innovate the film industry to achieve critical and commercial success. Films such as Toy story showed how Disney were able to adapt from hand drawn films to computer animated films and even acquired Pixar in 2006 in order to bring forward the next generation of Disney films. Disney has also in recent years acquired Marvel and Lucasfilms in order to gain profit from franchises such as The Avengers which generated over $1 billion in ticket sales and a new wave of Star Wars films. Through the release of films, Disney are also able to profit from video games such as "Disney Infinity" that can tie directly into films or be completely independent. These games are extremely popular and offer a new audience of Disney fans to appeal to.

Frozen is an example of a recent Disney film that has been able to generate an astounding amount of popularity and profit globally. The film had a total budget of $150 million and achieved a box office gross of $1.219 bn, making it the fifth highest grossing film of all time. The film was able to help revitalise the classic Disney musical genre and draw in fans of all ages. The film was able to further increase it's profit with the help of marketing for merchandise for the film. The sales were so successful that most shops tended to run out of stocked frozen items; an estimated total of $1 billion in retail revenue was brought in a year. The decision was made to turn the hit song 'Let It Go' into a single in the year of release. The song was able to reach number 10 in the top 100 charts with over 3.5 million copies being sold in the US. The song and film were awarded with best animated feature film of the year, best original song and even a grammy.