>>106039259The thing is, losing Harry Potter broke them.
They pitched JK Rowling a simple Toy Story Mania with wands attraction, and she told them fuck no and gave them her list of restrictions, like no meet n greets, no name brand sodas, narrow streets and alleyways, etc. And Disney went, "No, that's retarded, no one would ever put those concepts in a park, it would never work."
Then Universal swept in, agreed to all of them, and Harry Potter saved their parks and was heralded as the best thing to happen to the industry.
So Disney is fucking panicking now, because now Universal as something that people are going just to them to see. So this i where the executive level incompetence comes in, around this time Avatar becomes the highest grossing movie of all time and they snap up the rights as fast as they can, not realizing that it'll be a turkey.
They panicked, and if they had just waited a couple more years they could've gone all in on Marvel (except for Spidey, Avengers, FF, X-Men, etc.) or Star Wars.