Acquired
01:41:07 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:41:07] S1: Yep. Incredible. [01:41:09] S0: They actually went so far as to hire actors to play each of the roles Yes. And put them in full costumes so they could film them for inspiration, just so the animators could watch and see the natural motions so it would look as lifelike as possible to sell the illusion. This is so much different than animating a cartoon mouse. The massive investment in all the little details just to make the viewer buy in emotionally to these characters. My favorite one of these little tidbits is that the actress who played Snow White even wore a hair helmet since the drawn character's proportions were actually pretty different than a real life woman so that they could kinda get a sense from watching the test footage how the character moved around in the world. [01:41:53] S1: Yeah. I mean, you made the point a few minutes ago, Ben, that Walt Disney wasn't doing this because he was some capitalist. I think he really did recognize the incredible flywheel business model that he had sort of accidentally created and leaned into it. But, like, that's not gonna motivate him to film a whole live action version in costume just so that they can make sure they get the spirit right. Like, this is art that they're creating. An obsession with quality. Absolutely. So the movie finally premieres in Hollywood on 12/21/1937. And, I mean, it's one of the greatest films ever made. The Academy Awards creates a special Oscar for Snow White, a special [01:42:37] S0: award. Because they didn't think it could be eligible for best picture. [01:42:40] S1: Right. Right.
01:42:40 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:42:40] S1: Right. Right. [01:42:41] S0: Right. Movie, and I don't wanna bury the lead, it was the highest grossing film not only of the year, but ever. Ever. It did $8,000,000 of rental revenue on a $1,500,000 production cost. And, the category was so new and different that they were like, instead of being eligible to be nominated for best picture, let's just create a special new category for it. [01:43:02] S1: So the the the Oscar statue that they give Walt and Disney for Snow White is the only one that's ever been made. It is a large Oscar. It is Snow White and then seven little Oscars below it. [01:43:15] S0: Walt personally would go on to win more Academy Awards than anyone in history. [01:43:20] S1: Yes. [01:43:20] S0: Walt has 26 Academy Awards. The next highest is 13. [01:43:25] S1: Yes. I mean, the audience reception was incredible. Like you said, Ben, it was the highest gross seeking film ever made of of any kind, animated or otherwise, in history to that point. The critics' reception is equally glowing. Time magazine writes prophetically that Snow White is an authentic masterpiece to be shown in theaters and beloved by new generations long after the current crop of Hollywood stars, writers, and directors are sleeping where no prince's kiss can wake them. Of course, foreshadowing the Disney vault. Snow White is alive and well today as my two young daughters will attest.
01:43:25 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[01:43:25] S1: Yes. I mean, the audience reception was incredible. Like you said, Ben, it was the highest gross seeking film ever made of of any kind, animated or otherwise, in history to that point. The critics' reception is equally glowing. Time magazine writes prophetically that Snow White is an authentic masterpiece to be shown in theaters and beloved by new generations long after the current crop of Hollywood stars, writers, and directors are sleeping where no prince's kiss can wake them. Of course, foreshadowing the Disney vault. Snow White is alive and well today as my two young daughters will attest. [01:44:06] S0: Yeah. The an interesting thing about this story, I'm curious since you have daughters who watch it, David, is it's kinda dark, And Walt did meaningfully change the Brothers Grimm story Yes. That he sort of adapted it from. It's very interesting that all of these early Disney's cartoon movies, animations are adapted fairy tales or adapted existing lore that Disney sort of changes, the film was not really made as a children's movie. No. Yes. It was animated, but it's dark.
01:44:06 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:44:06] S0: Yeah. The an interesting thing about this story, I'm curious since you have daughters who watch it, David, is it's kinda dark, And Walt did meaningfully change the Brothers Grimm story Yes. That he sort of adapted it from. It's very interesting that all of these early Disney's cartoon movies, animations are adapted fairy tales or adapted existing lore that Disney sort of changes, the film was not really made as a children's movie. No. Yes. It was animated, but it's dark. [01:44:37] S1: No. And in fact, a lot of those decisions, like giving each of the seven dwarves personalities, in part were motivated to soften the darkness of the fairy tale. And Walt would always say that he didn't make movies for children, but, of course, he wanted children to be able to watch them too. But some of the decisions were actually made with the flywheel in mind, and the dwarves' personalities is one of these. They wanted to sell a lot of seven dwarves merchandise. And what better way to do that than to give them all distinct personalities? [01:45:15] S0: That is true. When you go to Disneyland, there's a lot of people walking around with, like, dopey and crumsy. [01:45:18] S1: Exactly. Exactly. So as we said, the movie itself, extremely profitable. It does $8,000,000 in film rental revenue against the 1 and a half million dollar production cost just in its first theatrical run. [01:45:34] S0: Which dramatically changes the studio's financial position.
01:45:34 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[01:45:34] S0: Which dramatically changes the studio's financial position. [01:45:38] S1: Yes. Yes. Now it is a bit of a misconception that the profits from Snow White, the film itself, would end up paying for the new Burbank studio that Walt's about to construct. That's not entirely true. I think most of the film profits from Snow White went to repay all the loans to Bank of America.
01:46:00 · Ben Gilbert
[01:46:00] S0: Yes. So listeners, it's worth diving into a little bit of the complexity of how each of the parties in the value chain of making and distributing movies work. There's the studio, like Disney, who makes the actual movie. There's a distributor, like United Artists or RKO, who does a lot of stuff. They take the finished film. They create all the prints that'll go to theaters. They have the Salesforce that sells the film to theaters. They plan the film's marketing. They also ship the films and handle all of the billing and payments. And then, of course, there's the theater or the exhibitor as they're called. And so Disney has this 1944 annual report for employees that David actually found when we were in the archives. We were flipping through annual reports, and you were like, what is this? There there's two reports for 1944. What's going on here? And they actually had a different one for employees than for shareholders. The annual report for employees has this great graphic that says, where does the money come from? And it has a breakdown of if for a dollar getting spent at the box office, what are the splits? And so 65% actually gets retained at the exhibitor or the theater. 13% goes to the distributor, and 22% goes to the studio. And so when we've been saying rentals, here's the interesting thing about that. The distributor and the studio come together, and they actually rent their collectively owned film Yes. To the exhibitor. So this $8,000,000 is actually even higher than you think it is. The gross box office would be significantly higher than $8,000,000, like two and a half x or something. And that 8,000,000 is the 13% plus the 22%.