company has to balance between providing original content that will create new opportunities going forward, with relying on proven franchises from the past that have continually provided much-needed capital to fund such opportunities.

Look at Universal (Illumination) - they have now made 6 (!) films from the Despicable Me/Minions brand. That's more sequels/spinoffs from one brand than Disney has ever made with any of their properties. But it continues making big $$ worldwide, so they will continue doing it so they can fund hopefully the next big franchise in the future. And while they aren't all critically adored, they are still well-received enough that they haven't been at risk of diluting or hurting the brand.

Disney/Pixar are releasing two films this year - and neither of them are sequels. Pixar's summer movie is "Elemental" and is based on original material. Disney Animation's holiday movie is an original musical titled "Wish". Neither will make as much as a Toy Story or Frozen sequel, but hopefully they will be better quality than "Strange World" and will be successes along the same lines as Moana and Inside Out.

As long as Disney is making quality original material, I'm ok with the sequels - as long as they don't hurt the brand. For as much crap that Toy Story 4 got on this board, it made over $1 billion worldwide, won the Oscar for Best Animated Film and was 97% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 94% audience score... so yeah, you could say it was very well-received.