Beauty and the Beast’s Biggest Target? Nostalgic Millennials

Disney hopes the live-action movie will revive consumer-products sales.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Confidential tip?

Send a tip to our reporters

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

By Christopher Palmeri and Matthew Townsend

March 16, 2017 at 9:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the March 20, 2017 issue of businessweek.

It’s half past noon on a Saturday, and a couple of dozen kids and their parents are gathered at the Disney Store in Sherman Oaks, Calif., for a Beauty and the Beast event. Music from the film plays, and kids are handed pieces of paper they can fold into the Chip Potts character. “Let me hear you roar like the Beast,” a Disney staffer urges. The audience roars along.

Walt Disney Co. needs to get everyone’s buy-in for the merchandising push planned around the March 17 release of the live-action Beauty and the Beast redo. Disney’s consumer-products division, the largest entertainment licensing operation in the world, has been on a tear in recent years, thanks to the billion-dollar bonanzas Frozen and Star Wars. Sales of products tied to those films, though, have cooled recently; and last quarter, which included the crucial Christmas season, the company’s merchandise revenue fell 23 percent, to $1.5 billion.