Acquired Podcast

Every company has a story. Acquired tells the definitive history and strategy of the world's greatest companies. Hosted by @gilbert and @djrosent.

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

Acquired is the #1 show on @ApplePodcasts across all categories.

Holy.

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Tomorrow.

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

Fascinating to look at the number of outstanding shares for $DIS over the years.

You can barely see the dilution from buying Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm since they were concurrently doing buybacks at such a furious pace. (Funded by ESPN profits!)

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

https://t.co/yGbg4g6LEC

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

Our PDF companion for Disney Part II is now complete.

We... went a little overboard this time :)

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

One of the big takeaways from our Disney Part II episode is that ESPN's profits funded the entire rest of the company. For decades.

Here it is illustrated. Cable networks (most of which was ESPN) reached 59% of total profits in 2011!!

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And here's the Direct-to-Customer segment profits (i.e. Disney+ and Hulu) compared to other parts of the company.

Credit to @TSOH_Investing for the charts.

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

Say what you will about the early losses from building Disney+, but it is now a very real business.

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

It is amazing that ESPN has managed to keep profits more or less flat ($3 billion-ish) the last several years given this chart.

Cable-cutting is... quite the headwind.

@TSOH_Investing

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

How much does it cost to go to Disney World?

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At the time, the background took 4 to 6 hours per frame to render. (!)

"At one point the filmmakers were concerned that the CG ballroom might not be completed in time; their backup plan was to simply have Belle and the Beast dancing in a spotlight, surrounded by darkness… The ballroom was constructed over the course of two years, with the majority of the work done in the final nine months."

https://t.co/TMoTRk5RX0

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

The way this scene happened in 1991 is fascinating.

The characters are of course drawn in 2D by hand, like the rest of the film.

But the background is rendered in 3D with computers (using Pixar’s RenderMan software… long before they made their own feature films!).

Then, the 2D layer is composited over the 3D layer using CAPS, the software Pixar developed for Disney to replace the decades-old multiplane camera.

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

It's shocking how much love there is for Brother Bear, Chicken Little, Treasure Planet, and Atlantis.

Just a generation gap apparently. Sorry for the miss, Gen Z!

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https://t.co/iWmSXmUb6R

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

On Disney Part II, we referenced a particularly large number of videos and other visuals. Which... is tough on an audio podcast!

Today we're releasing Artifacts, a visual hub to browse and view, whether you've already listened to the episode or are listening now.

Enjoy!

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

Hilarious computer animation trick: what do you do when one character is too tall and they need to talk to each other?

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The full Pixar process, summarized neatly on the inside cover of their IPO S-1:

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When the Toy Story team was making the army men in 1994, it would have been very difficult to put the 'chutes inside their backpacks. So instead...

They just made two different variants! And used some clever "camera" work to switch between the two models, and hide when the swap occurred.

[Casey @casey_lau]

“Walt Disney built his company over his entire lifetime, from age 21 until he died in 1966. And if you look at the company's market cap today, compared to where it was in 1966, 99.95% of the value was created after Disney died.

There was just so much more running room with his concept than he had time on this earth to execute” - @AcquiredFM

[Acquired Podcast @AcquiredFM]

On our episode, we mentioned that there's some footage floating around of Toy Story scenes that have gone through the layout phase, but not full animation.

Here's one.

The characters are lifeless and just getting dragged around the screen. But even in low-fidelity, the team can still use it to get a sense of if the story's working enough to proceed through the rest of the pipeline.