Has Disney become a shadow of its former self?

[bigslab]

indeed

not really

[MrOracle]

Yes. And unfortunately, the wheels turn very slowly, because things in Hollywood are worked out years in advance.

Bob Iger is a far-left Democrat who fancied himself a big player in the party, and he was vying for the ambassadorship to China, which he planned to be his stepping stone for his run for President of the US. As Disney CEO, he specifically pushed the far left agenda at every level and spent a decade loading up Disney with far left activists, and protecting them. That's why Disney is in the mess they are in.

His replacement, Bob Chapek, has been CEO on paper since the beginning of 2020, but Iger, who had finally retired at the end of 2019, convinced the Board that, due to COVID, he needed to come back, and he spent the next 2 years undermining Chapek and protecting the woke agenda. He is finally gone, but the damage lives on.

Chapek is a moderate, and he knows that wokeness is the death of profit and of business overall, and he wants to rid Disney of wokeness, but after more than a decade of Iger, wokeness is everywhere, and there are still those on the board who support it, though the Florida issues finally broke a majority of the board up to the reality of the situation.

But there are hundreds of existing contracts for projects, made with woke creators, that can't all simply be canceled. People in upper positions have contracts with certain guarantees, and their deputies are just as woke. Iger can't just fire everyone because the company must continue on. But that means that woke projects will continue to be released, doing more damage, until the board is willing to suffer some deep losses to cut out the cancer.

Florida taught the board a lesson, but they still don't fully appreciate what it's going to cost them. And they have been able to convince themselves that the losses from their woke projects were due to COVID or other factors, but Spider-Man and Top Gun make that narrative much harder to sell. But the wheels turn slowly, and lots more damage will happen before things get better - if they do.

Kathleen Kennedy had a contract renewal just after The Force Awakens made 2 billion dollars, and it included automatic renewal if certain, relatively low thresholds were met, which is why her contract was renewed (without even an official announcement) despite the complete destruction of everything she has touched at Lucasfilm. Hell, toy companies refuse to bid on Star Wars toys, because they don't sell. Who would have ever thought that would be possible? The single most successful and profitable line of toys in history no longer sell... what does that tell you? And her woke script for Indy 5 was so awful that shooting was suspended for a YEAR after 6 weeks of filming so that the script could be completely rewritten, because it was so awful. That's $100M flushed and a thousand people's lives disrupted.

Then there is Pixar, which is rudderless. John Lassiter, who was the vision behind Pixar, got #MeTooed because he liked to hug people and some activists wanted to score victim points. He's now at SkyDance - with half of Pixar's talent, and just released their first movie.

People are trying to put the blame for all this onto Chapek, but this is all the legacy of Iger, and the wheels turn slowly...

[Avicenna]

Excellent synopsis of the problem

[Avicenna]

Yes, because it doesn't respect its guests and isn't following its fiduciary duty to its shareholders- it's pursuing a different agenda, as @MrOracle has ably pointed out.

[Avicenna]

Thanks for the MHO

[Smoothing]

I am watching Disney now. They have banging movies.

[exitseven]

go woke, go broke.