In one of the strongest signs yet for the recovery of the battered entertainment economy, Disney has announced it will soon bring back movies exclusively to theaters and is preparing to accommodate theme-park customers at pre-pandemic levels.
"As capacity limits increase we don't think we'll have any problem at all increasing attendance to match that capacity," the company's chief executive, Bob Chapek, said of its theme parks in a conference call with financial analysts. "That's not something that keeps any of us up at night."
Chapek says a metric Disney uses to gauge future consumer interest known as "intent to visit" at Florida's Walt Disney World is already consistent with fiscal 2019 levels, when the company's theme-park division took in more than $26 billion. Last year it drummed up less than $16 billion.
Chapek was speaking on a call to discuss the company's second-quarter earnings. Those earnings were bleak: Disney's theme-park revenue sunk 44% and overall revenue was down 13%. Its operating income was roughly flat, up just 2% to $2.47 billion, as the company's theatrical revenue has also remained small.
But he was also optimistic about the near-future of that segment, saying Disney will begin putting movies back in theaters exclusively as early as August. That reverses a pandemic-era policy that had seen it initially release films partly or wholly on digital platforms, as theaters were closed and questions about consumer willingness to brave crowded spaces abided.
There is a downside for Disney to Americans beginning to resume travel and public events, however: Disney Plus, which saw subscriptions soar during the pandemic, added only 8.7 million new customers in the first three months of the year. Analysts had expected about 15 million.