Bob Iger Returns As Disney CEO - Slashdot
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Bob Iger Returns As Disney CEO
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Bob Iger Returns As Disney CEO (cnbc.com) 66
Posted by BeauHD
on Monday November 21, 2022 @05:40PM from the time-for-a-new-bob dept.The dramatic upheaval comes 11 months after Iger left Disney, and days after Chapek said he planned to cut costs at the company, which had been burdened by swelling costs at its streaming service, Disney+. Earlier this month, the company's earnings vastly underperformed Wall Street's expectations. Even its theme park business, which reported a surge in revenue, delivered less than what analysts had projected. Iger will help the company's board develop a new successor, Disney said in a release.
Shares of Disney have fallen about 37% so far this year. The stock hit a 52-week low Nov. 9. Iger has signed on to work as CEO for two years, Disney said Sunday, "with a mandate from the Board to set the strategic direction for renewed growth and to work closely with the Board in developing a successor to lead the Company at the completion of his term." "We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic," said Susan Arnold, Disney's board chair. She will remain in that role.
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If Bob Iger is as good at picking talent or scripts as he as at timing his departures and arrivals in his position, then Disney is in great hands. Look at all these percentages in the summary about Disney's recent decline - all of which are NOT contextualized by the performance of peer companies or even the overall market in the same time period. Warner Bros (HBO) is down 59% in the last year. Netflix is down 57%.
I have watched in my career and seen that some people have a talent for only being associated with successes. There is a lot that goes into that, and only a fraction of it is whether your contribution causes the effort to be a success... choosing what projects to join, and when to jump ship, and also manipulating the perception of blame or credit, are all big factors.
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It's probably not the case that Bob Iger wrote the songs that made Frozen a hit or chose Chadwick Boseman to play Black Panther, but it is the case that he bought Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm during his tenure. Disney paid a lot for Pixar, but it brought in Pixar leadership to run Disney's animation studios, which has resulted in big hits like Frozen and Zootopia. Iger bought Marvel when the only MCU movies released were Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton version). Iger bought Lucasfilm for twice the box office gross of the first Lucasfilm movie Disney released.
On top of the successful M&A during his tenure, everyone seems to have liked Iger. On the other hand, it seems like people didn't like Chapek. As I read this morning, his reports went and talked to the board and told them that they had no confidence in him. Chapek comes out of this looking bad, but so does the board that renewed his contract and then fired him a few months later.
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One thing is certain, during Iger's tenure Disney's output was doing very well. MCU was basically a license to print money, and even the second tier instalments like Deadpool made insane amounts of money for the costs of production and marketing. Now maybe Chapek came in just as the tide was turning, and he was the the guy unlucky enough to be at the helm when the tide went out, but there have been some major stumbles. Some of them, like the third Star Wars trilogy, pretty much happened under Iger's watch,
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By far the best Disney CEO in recent memory is Michael Eisner. He was essentially ousted because he did not get along with Steve Jobs at Pixar, and Bob Iger was brought in to get that deal done. But the movies under Eisner are some of the best known today as classics.
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Maybe if they reverse course and stop "going woke" they will stop "going broke".
C'mon, let's make real entertainment again that doesn't shove a social message down your throat.
Let's quit ruing old beloved movies (Star Wars, and apparently soon to come Indiana Jones)....keep those franchises in the spirit they gained popularity in.
And, rather than race or gender swap old movies...why not come up with NEW and original characters and heroes that are as diverse as you wish.
There's still room for the old wh
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Life is really weird sometimes, so Iger runs the company into the ground with agendas and politics, and only eleven months later they fire the guy brought in to clean up after him - and being back Iger. I guess Disney has not hit rock bottom, yet.
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Iger runs the company into the ground with agendas and politics
All that may be so but Chapek was even worse.
You could at least imagine Iger being competent enough to ditch stuff that was really costing Disney money.
Also Iger seems to at least appreciate things like Imagineering that made Disney the success it was, Chapek seems to hate innovation in any form.
I don't know if Iger can really turn anything around but at least there's a chance now. I wouldn't personally buy stock (had some in the distant past
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He's an accountant, of course he hates anything that cannot be directly valuated.
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It is unfair to blame Chapek for the fairly lousy content that has been released under his reign. I don't think I'm alone in feeling like the recent MCU movies (and TV series) haven't been up-to-snuff.
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Star Wars has certainly been an underperformer, and any success has been eked out in the TV shows, where they've actually found some people that actually like the franchise. I think everybody knew that End Game was the literal ending of an era, and from the closing credits onward a lot of people were asking themselves "Wow, that was amazing, how the fuck do you top that?" and the answer has largely been "We have no fucking idea." It's also just been a crazily unpredictable time for pretty much all entertain
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"You gotta do better, Disney!"
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...Iger runs the company into the ground...
If by "run the company into the ground" you mean the stock on the day he left was 6x what it was when he started, then yes, he did a great job of that.
But I guess you didn't like episodes 7, 8, and 9 and that's all that really matters, right?
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Hey! Don't let reality come in the way of a belief!
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He also bought a ton of successful companies, so the valuation of Disney had to follow. Basically whenever they feared a problem with the stocks, they bought a company to prop it up. You can only do that so long until you run out of big companies to merge with.
As someone else here said, Iger was good at managing the perception that he was good.
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What agendas and politics has Disney been involved in? I thought their business model was making bad movies and running theme parks.
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Disney is ALL about making money from you paying to see whatever crap they make by suckering you in with whatever new purchase they have. Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, they run them all into the ground until they have to go buy some more. We'll see how long they can go before everybody is sick of them. Pixar at least HAD new creative talent but Iger was the man who thought it was too good and spread that out all over the company to make everything suck less and Pixar slide down into their animation dept -- perh
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Well, yes. I agree with your sentiment, but that doesn't really answer my question. I'm still unaware of Diisney being political at all in fact I thought they avoided that stuff.
Apart from buying new copyright laws every few years of course.
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The Disney board brought in Chapek to put out Iger's fires, but then refused to give him any water to do so.
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Life is really weird sometimes, so Iger runs the company into the ground with agendas and politics, and only eleven months later they fire the guy brought in to clean up after him - and being back Iger. I guess Disney has not hit rock bottom, yet.
There is a real issue in Disney these days, and they showed no improvement with Chapek, perhaps becoming even worse.
But it does not start and end there. Somewhere along the line, these entertainment efforts became much more about lecturing and accommodating people who are very loud, but do not go to the movies they insist must conform to their ideology.
This is so strong, and persistent that the writing has fell off a cliff. While there are multiple and sundry examples, we might use one of their latest failures - She-Hulk, as an example. Not funny, not entertaining, and looking more like it was written be Ms Steinem's Gender studies class than people trained to write scripts.
In addition, they appear to have forgotten that in order to make money, you have to have people buy what you are selling. Ot claiming that the audience is misogynistic troll fanboys - committing the mortal crime of assuming the gender of the women who think they are producing poor entertainment.
The sad part is that it is quite possible to have inclusiveness in entertainment. You have to be able to tell a good story though. Job number one is scriptwriting skills, and directorial skill.
Job number two is respect the legacy. Job number 3 is respect the fans, not poke them with a stick just because they have a criticism.
Complaints are a gift, they really are. In what I do, if someone complains to me about something I'm involved in, I thank them and tell them I'll look into it. Then I do. I definitely do not throw insults at them and call them names. The stunning thing is just how well that works. I know that seems like a strange thing in today's world, but yeah, showing a little respect goes a long way.
And replacing a whole lot of people with competent ones will be a big first step.
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It's funny how the culture war taints everything. Once upon a time we used to blame bad writing for bad writing and bad film making for bad film making. Now every time a movie or show is poorly made I hear it's because of some nebulous and poorly defined agenda.
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The people making these poor videos do often express their agenda though.
Charlies Angel's was promoted and marketed as a feminist manifesto And while her claiming it wasn't after doing damage control - any interview with her there is always the M word tossed around. There are more - I just put this out there as a note.
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Are you kidding? We are still waiting for Disney to follow through on its promise of an openly gay character in an animated movie.
There have been some very, and I do mean very, mild bits of inclusion for LGBTQ people in some of the live action movies. Typically background characters and never very relevant to the plot.
I don't know why you think She Hulk was a failure. 85% approval on RT, generally positive critical reviews, decent viewership. Some people got very upset because the finale mocked their misogy
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We are still waiting for Disney to follow through on its promise of an openly gay character in an animated movie.
Wasn't Buzz's (work) partner a lesbian in the recent Lightyear movie? I have heard one of the characters in the upcoming "Strange World" movie is gay. Though maybe you are looking for an LGBTQ character in a good movie...
I don't know why you think She Hulk was a failure
A lawyer show written by people who admitted they didn't know how to write law scenes? Even on the very unreliable RottenTomat
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Yes, and they were on the screen for about 2 seconds.
Not really, there was very little legal stuff and most of it was just to set up stuff outside the courtroom.
Ignore the audience scores, the show has been review bombed heavily. The finale had a bunch of misogynists complaining that She Hulk didn't "earn" her powers, and stuff like that. Upset lots of real-world misogynists.
Andor I think is actually pretty good in parts. The first half of the season was badly paced, with a few episodes where basically noth
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by Bodhammer ( 559311 ) on Monday November 21, 2022 @05:56PM (#63069678)
Given production cycle times, doesn't that mean he was in charge when all this current trash was greenlit?-
The CEO of The Walt Disney Company has a head of the studios [thewaltdisneycompany.com] under him and that person greenlights movies and TV shows. It's a very big company with a very busy CEO.
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Previous leadership hugely failed. They alienated 80% of customers trying to defend mostly perceived affronts to 10% of the population. There is no better way to lose customers than that. But if you say this out loud, you get fired these days, and everyone thinks that's just great. It will be interesting to see Bob navigate these waters. He will be most successful by keeping his - and his employees' - mouth shut on irrelevant topics,
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Sorry, but it was really stupid for conservatives to get their panties in bunch over an African American mermaid and LGBTQ characters. It's not our fault you miss the damned 1800's so badly. Evolve, fuckers, or form your own Disney: "Medieval Studios, where we burn modernism at the stake!"
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One of the worst midterm performance of the opposing party in a long time. (9/11 was a situational fluke.) To see it as a victory is bias leaking out of your head.
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Lost the House, but lost it only by a handful of seats, kept the Senate, despite a mid-term which, if history was supposed to be any guide, the governing party should have been slaughtered. No one in the GOP is jumping up and down for joy right now.
As to Musk, I guess he has Twitter by the short hairs. It looks more to me like he's actively digging its grave whilst simultaneously killing it.
As to Disney, Iger was the man in charge when most of the decisions that are causing the problems were made, so they a
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Most of the whining comes from folks who would've never set foot on a Disney property in the first place. A Disney vacation is extremely expensive, so that rules out a lot of the flyover state dwellers from the get go. Then if you do have the money but have a huge problem with LGBTQ folks, neither of the two major parks are going to be your cup of tea because a substantial portion of their workforce are members of the LGBTQ community.
There used to be a park called "Holy Land" in Orlando, but it didn't sur
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But nobody cares about an African American mermaid or LGTQ+ characters. I never hear anyone saying this except the people on the left.
What I do hear complaints about is with Disney replacing or re-writing characters as LGTQ+ or race-swapping them. Why would a company race-swap a character instead of just making a new one? Next thing you're going to tell me is that they're gonna swap Black Panther with a blonde-haired blue-eyed guy and then nobody would care. Um, no. They'd just be alienating their audience.
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For the same reason all Hollywood produces anymore is sequels, remakes, and adaptations of works that were successful in other mediums, they've become insanely risk adverse.
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70% of the US population supports gay marriage. You conservatives are slowly losing the culture wars. Its almost like more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the true American way is that EVERYONE has the same set of rights and responsibilities, and the word everyone means e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e.
Disney is a mirror of US society. They make entertainment that sells, and being ahead of the curve in social progressiveness NEVER makes $$$$. They simply reflect the era.
Igert knows this. If you-
> 70% of the US population supports gay marriage. You conservatives are slowly losing the culture wars.
While that may be true, if Fox pundits or televangelists can get say a third of the US to boycott a company, such can still ruin their bottom line and stock price. Conservatives may be waning, but they can still do a lot of financial damage to their targets.
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Fox News is not going to get anyone to stop consuming any Disney media whatsoever. The people who televangelists could convince not to already think they're godless for their animal icons or whatever.
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Evangelicals have moved on from being freaked out by teddy-bears. Hell, they even eventually accepted Galileo. [newscientist.com]
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Interesting topic, but we're getting pretty far away from anything related to Bob Iger.
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You can support gay marriage and still dislike modern Disney. Of course Iger was CEO during some of the decision-making processes that lead to modern Disney so bringing him back may not make much of a difference.
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Previous leadership hugely failed. They alienated 80% of customers trying to defend mostly perceived affronts to 10% of the population. There is no better way to lose customers than that. But if you say this out loud, you get fired these days, and everyone thinks that's just great. It will be interesting to see Bob navigate these waters. He will be most successful by keeping his - and his employees' - mouth shut on irrelevant topics,
Disney isn't losing money because they're "too woke" or whatever. They're losing money because they made ridiculous loads of money off the backs off of Marvel, but then Infinity Wars finished and they haven't found a good followup.
And if you think their followup problem was due to "wokeness" recall that the two lynch pins are white men (Spiderman and Doctor Strange) while their two major hits (Black Panther movies) had black protagonists.
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People seemed more upset about the Pixar movie Buzz Lightyear, the Disney exec with two pansexual kids:
https://www.washingtonexaminer... [washingtonexaminer.com]
and general political activism on Disney's part.
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How can you say that it's not due to being "too woke", but then you basically say that these woke follow-up movies are bad, and that's why people aren't watching? Yeah, they're bad movies because of their woke writing.
Funny you bring up Spiderman because that IP is owned by Sony, not Disney. It's literally the one IP that they aren't allowed to mess with by contract, and it's been their highest performing film since they've gone woke....and by a huge margin. But being their only non-woke film is just a coin
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You think I said that? Because I don't think I said that.
Black Panther was a massive hit. Captain Marvel made over a billion dollars. Enternals was actually one of my favourite films but considered a flop. There's plenty of hits and duds among both the diverse and the "white dude" leads.
The current Marvel issue is nothing to do with wokeness, it's that they haven't found a nice coherent long term arc like they did with the infinity stones.
The reason the Spiderman IP is owned by Sony is that is he's always b
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"Disney isn't losing money because they're "too woke" or whatever."
You have no idea. People don't want their kids exposed to 1) sexual perversion or 2) sexual anything.
I know of at least one family that didn't let their kids see DC League of Super Pets because of a 1 1/2 second shot of 2 people who abandoned a dog because they were engaged, and the graphic showed 2 people of the same sex. That was the ONLY objectionable thing in that whole movie, yet those kids never saw it. One guy is going to use an
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Disney is not losing customers. Try getting a ticket for Mickey's Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom in Florida? Oh right, you can't, it's completely sold out. Disney+ has been adding subscribers like gangbusters [techcrunch.com].
Bob "paycheck" is simply getting the scapegoat treatment for the beating Disney took during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the fact that Disney's studios do have a tendency to drop a stinker [wikipedia.org] every once in awhile.
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Ok. Now make Mickey Mouse trans, turn Minnie into a lesbian, and race/gender swap the other characters. How much demand do you think there will be compared to pre-woke sales? Probably a lot less.
Nobody is going to Disney's woke Star Wars attractions. They're going for the classic stuff. Nobody is buying their woke toys and merchandise. None of what you are saying matters because we can see that revenue is down and their stock has dropped more than half in a year. All other stock is bouncing back, but Disney
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This stuff is only happening in your imagination. I just sat through the first two episodes of Disney's new Santa Clause series and so far it watches like someone decided to write a script about the supposed "War on Christmas". So far, there doesn't seem to be any LGBTQ+ characters, gender-swapped roles, or any of that "wokeness" ya'll have a problem with. It's just good ol' Tim Allen being an old man shaking his fist at a cloud for an hour or so.
It's sitting at a 71% approval rating on Google, whereas T
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So you're upset about a black girl playing a fictional creature? If you'd pull your head out of your ass and listen to the director she was chosen because of her singing skills, not her skin color.
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So if a white man was swapped to be the new black panther.....
Well that's different because [insert non-nonsensical argument here]
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It's most as if Hollywood has a past issue with black folks not being allowed to act with black characters being played by white actors instead.
You don't care about that though. As your second line assures us all, you've already come to the conclusion that anyone who dares disagree with you is wrong.
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Whataboutism.
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The previous head was hand picked by Iger because he thought that head's "hardheaded" approach to business would work for Disney. Iger is just as much to blame.
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That's a bit odd, innit?
It's not that they underperformed last year's (or last quarter's) sales and profits metrics. They underperformed some Wall Street whiz kid's expectations. Seems a bit arbitrary, and perhaps rife for the rigging.
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I'm not fond of pretty much anything Disney beyond a few films, and I certainly don't give a rat's ass about the C-suite occupants. But blaming the guy who's only been there 11 months seems rather "convenient" - what can a CEO do in so short a time to make or break a company? "Oh gee, shit happened that we had no control over - let's blame the CEO!". That kind of thinking seems to me at best capricious, and at worst magical.
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Firstly, I like his humility. From the letter he sent to employees. "It is with an incredible sense of gratitude and humility and, I must admit, a bit of amazement...
When I look at the creative success of our teams across our Studios, Disney General Entertainment, ESPN and International, the rapid growth of our streaming services, the phenomenal reimagining and rebound of our Parks, the continued great work of ABC News, and so many other achievements across our businesses, I am in awe of your accomplishments and I am excited to embark with you on many new endeavors....
allow me to express my deep gratitude for all that you do. Disney holds a special place in the hearts of people around the globe thanks to you, and your dedication to this company and its mission to bring joy to people through great storytelling is an inspiration to me every single day."
Note how there is no me in any of that. So refreshing to thank the people who do the work and getting to be so uncommon in CEO's. I also saw another blurb how he started as a low level studio guy. So he came from modest roots to.
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Micky has put his brass knuckles back on and is looking to kick some ass!
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A few years ago, our family had a Disney World vacation over a holiday. It was so, so expensive, but also so, so wonderful. We stayed on a monorail resort, ate super well, and had a great time. Iger was boss.
One of my siblings took their family the past year and it was horrible. Stupid fees for everything. Horrible lines. Horrible food. Disney tried to monetize everything. Chapek was boss.
I'm not going to comment on movies and shows, but WDW took a crazy downward spiral between our two visits, and all tha
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Dump the streaming service then. People largely hate being nickeled and dimed buy dozens of streaming services anyway.
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