Television | Movies
Netflix Deals Fatal Blow To Disney With Latest Trailer For 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'
Disney Lost Over $10 Billion in Four Years
Netflix's gamble to produce a live-action remake of the global phenomenon Avatar: The Last Airbender has paid off in a move that could prove fatal for arch-rival Disney.
In 2018, Netflix announced that a "reimagined" live-action remake of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender was set to begin production in 2019. But early scandals rocked the TV show during the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020 as Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko resigned from their roles as executive producers and showrunners due to creative differences with Netflix.
In an open letter published on his Instagram, Konietzko cited a "negative and unsupportive environment" during his time at Netflix's studio, but despite their creative differences both producers received writing credits for the show.
The decision to reignite the animated series was welcomed by fans with much fanfare and cautious optimism, but it was a gamble by Netflix and skepticism grew from critics.
Paramount Pictures had all but humiliated themselves after producing a SHOCKINGLY HORRIBLE 2010 adaptation, The Last Airbender, so Netflix wasn't getting a free pass.
Like Paramount Pictures, Disney - Netflix's arch-rivals - had also previously struggled with adaptations and live-action remakes. And the latest trailer and eventual release of Avatar: The Last Airbender might just see off Disney as Netflix's biggest rival.
Disney Has A Major Safe To Crack, And It's Not Netflix
Disney is a modern-day streaming crisis struggling to sell its story and has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the past year alone. While Disney no doubt remains one of the world's most powerful media corporations, its financial struggles since the COVID-19 pandemic have been an open secret.
In 2022, Disney lost over $4 billion. In 2023, CNN reported that the struggling streaming giant Disney had slashed production costs up to $7.5 billion resulting in the loss of about 8,000 jobs.
“In total, Disney has lost more than $10 billion on its streaming service venture since it was introduced in 2019.” — CNN
Reportedly, Disney blame their losses on the supposed production of "woke" content with the MCU's box office flops leading the chart. Marvel's Thor: Love And Thunder was doomed to fail immediately after its first trailer was released. The Marvels flopped so bad it broke all kinds of box office records.
However, Disney have no one to blame but themselves for spending $1 billion on four of the highest-profile box office flops of 2023, including a weird and wasteful live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid starring Halle Bailey.
In contrast, Netflix raked in record-breaking revenues in 2023, equalling their best-ever year with Q4 earnings of $8.83 billion, exceeding initially projected forecasts. The streaming giant did not just release some of the best movies and TV shows of 2023, but The Night Agent was Netflix's biggest show of the year and was the Most-Watched TV Series of 2023.
While Disney mope over the idea of discontinuing their production of the "woke" Secret Invasion amongst others, Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender could well become the big hit of 2024 in what would be a harsh schooling lesson to underachieving Disney.
How Did Disney's Price Hikes Affect Streaming Subscribers?
In the fantasy world of crime, one could easily assume that Netflix baited its biggest rival into making a mistake, and they fell for it.
Netflix announced price hikes and a robust plan to clamp down on password sharing in May 2023, having initially tweeted on X (formerly known as Twitter), "Love is sharing a password." The move paid off almost immediately as Netflix experienced a huge surge of up to 100,000 new subscribers between May 26 and May 27.
For Q4 of 2023, Netflix announced gains of more than 13 million new subscribers with a significant number coming from Europe and Asia. Netflix also reported a record number of subscribers at over 260 million people worldwide, the most of any streaming platform.
Disney followed in Netflix's footsteps in October 2023 and announced plans of their own "to transition its business to a new age of streaming", hiking the price of its ad-free Disney+ subscription to $13.99 monthly. Unlike Netflix's plan, Disney's "transition" backfired.
Disney+ lost paying subscribers of over 12.5 million people worldwide in Q4 of 2023, with the U.S. and Canada firmly leading. Before the price hikes were introduced, Disney had lost about 11.7 million subscribers in Q3 of the year, amounting to operating losses of $512 million.
Perhaps the only positive for Disney was that international subscribers grew by 2% following the price hikes.
Conspiracy theorists suspect that Netflix might've misled Disney with its crackdown on password sharing as Disney's loss of subscribers in the same period coincided with the surge of new subscribers on Netflix.
Besides, was Netflix just lucky or strategic as the writers and SAG-AFTRA strikes clashed at about the same time Disney recorded heavy losses in the second and third quarters of 2023? The strikes compelled Hollywood to shut down for several months, leaving Disney unable to produce new movies or shows.
Netflix was unaffected by the strikes and remained the leading streamer, churning out international content worldwide.
Netflix's High Stakes Gamble On Avatar Pays Off
Avatar: The Last Airbender's live-action remake by Paramount Pictures failed miserably in 2010, tanking any hopes of further remakes. Certain fans and parts of the media rejoiced when DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko left the upcoming Netflix show in 2020.
Netflix faced fierce criticism with comparisons drawn to Disney's laughable adaptation of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books in 2010 and 2013. To top it off, Netflix was reminded of Disney's 20th Century Studios insipid adaptation of Christopher Paolini's Eragon (2006), one of the worst adaptations of all time.
Following Netflix's announcement of the Avatar: The Last Airbender remake in 2018, the original animation was moved to the streaming platform on May 15, 2020.
In its debut week on Netflix between May 15 through May 22, 2020, Avatar: The Last Airbender was the most-watched show on the streaming platform, debuting as #1 on the Top 10 streaming chart. In the U.S. alone, the show was Netflix’s Most Popular Kids’ Animated Show of 2020.
By appearing on Netflix's Top 10 streaming chart for 60 consecutive days, Avatar: The Last Airbender shattered records on Netflix, having the longest consecutive run on Top 10 Netflix shows of the week.
The show courted its devoted fanbase in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Belgium, enticing tens of millions of people worldwide to Netflix. As news of filming of the live-action show filtered through in early summer of 2021, its viewership numbers blasted through the roof.
Coincidentally — or strategically — the show's unique viewers peaked at over three million in May 2022 and Avatar: The Last Airbender became the most in-demand show of that period, spanning from January 2022 through October of the same year, according to Parrot Analytics - a research database that tracks popularity of shows across social media and fan ratings.
With less than a month until its release on Netflix, the live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender is tracking to become one of 2024's most successful shows. On a reported budget of about $120 million, it is slightly cheaper than the failed Paramount Pictures adaptation that cost about $150 million over a decade ago.
Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender has already been tipped by Cosmopolitan as one of 2024's most anticipated shows. The release of its latest trailer proves just that with more than 3.4 million views in less than 30 hours. Its initial trailer, released two months ago, stands at over 19 million views, ranking in the Top Five of all-time Netflix trailers for TV shows.
The show is currently the 16th most popular show in the world as of January 23, steamrolling over 280 other shows as it leapfrogged from #302 on December 30, 2023. At its current position as the 8th most popular show on Netflix by online engagement, Avatar: The Last Airbender could eclipse numbers posted by Neil Gaiman's global fantasy thriller The Sandman from 2022, and even that would be an understatement.
The Avatar is destined to save the world, and might just save Netflix with a fatal blow on its biggest rival, Disney.
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