News Bob Iger is back! Chapek is out!!

[DCBaker]

"Disney's board reached out to Bob Iger on Friday, without any other serious candidates in mind to replace Bob Chapek as CEO, CNBC’s David Faber reported Monday, citing sources.

The board’s outreach to Iger and discussion to replace Chapek came after surging concerns crested following Disney’s most recent quarterly earnings report, according to Faber’s sources.

While some internal candidates were identified that might be able to take the job over time, the board didn’t want to put someone new in that position given all various pressures on the company, Faber reported."

Disney blindsided Chapek with CEO decision after reaching out to Iger on Friday

Disney's board reached out Bob Iger on Friday over concerns about the company's soft earnings report this month.

www.cnbc.com

 

[OrlandoRising]

For the people thinking this move will lead to Iger jettisoning Genie+ and ILL and other revenue-generating parks changes -- you are dreaming. There is no reason Disney would ditch those revenue streams at a time when other segments of the company were piling up scary enough results that the CEO got fired.

I certainly understand the Chapek hate, but have some perspective and do not equate Iger being back to "everything I wanted to happen in the parks will happen now!"

 

[Disstevefan1]

Bob Chapek always seemed like he absolutely hated the products his company produced. Not holding my breath that Iger is going to somehow make WDW affordable again though.

Iger is back because of ESG concerns. This will do nothing to help WDW.

 

[kingdead]

Yes, those are wins. Unfortunately she's done more harm than good. The current state of the franchise shows that. They have no directions for theatrical star wars. Whatever props she gets for ep7 is all undone with how terribly 8 and 9 were handled. Only 1 movie had a smooth production and that was 8. And we all know how that went. More productions have been scrapped than finished. It's been more bad than good in my opinion. Now is a good time to start fresh. They have nothing official coming to theaters, so they won't need to publicly cancel anything. But if Iger wouldn't do it then, I don't see it changing now.

I think that Iger had more of a hand in how those movies were (poorly) made than is commonly known. However, his ability to delegate and his personal demeanor and power mean that no one will blame him for IP mismanagement. Chapek was the one who managed to blatantly mess with talent.

 

[HMF]

Remember folks. We have simply gone from worse back to bad.

 

[MisterPenguin]

In the end, this is all that matters:

View attachment 679870

Stock is soaring

Oh my...

 

[Laketravis]

Oh my..

The board suits are patting each other on the back.

 

[SpectreJordan]

I get why the Board chose Iger in a pinch but I do not understand why they're giving him another chance to identify a successor. He extended his stay for years for different reasons and most of was explained as overseeing acquisitions, but I don't know how one looks past that it took years and years to identify a successor and that Chapek was his selection.

Chapek was open about tightening the pursestrings and obviously that wasn't the direction the Board wanted to go, so I guess our best guess for the future is someone the opposite of Chapek? Early Eisner years?

Something like the early Eisner years would probably be the best-case scenario. The animation department is doing really well, but they really need to focus on the live action side. Lucasfilm & especially Walt Disney Pictures need a kick in the butt; Pictures needs to produce more stuff along the lines of Pirates & less like the remakes. Marvel is carrying that side of things almost singlehandedly.

 

[FigmentFan82]

Will they? Iger killed a lot of gossip and inside dirt being published. Why would he not do it again?

Don't need his permission to write about public events

 

[JIMINYCR]

Just saw the news and although I saw it coming I was surprised it happened now. Not a fan of Chapek but I thought his steps although not popular and caused fan fury, they were at some level responses to Igers steps before he left. I really question if Iger should have been tapped to replace Chapek since I he has to take some blame for what he set up. At this point Dis might have been served better by going outside of the company to find a new person in charge. Maybe they thought they didn’t have the time to do so but letting Iger in won’t help. I’m very surprised Iger took the bait and got hauled back into the boat.

 

[fotofx]

The board suits are patting each other on the back.

Still way below the 30 day.. Just stopped the bleeding for now..

 

[FigmentFan82]

Wrap your head around this - Chapek is the only sympathetic character in this whole mess.

lol, farthest thing from it

 

[Frank the Tank]

I don't think they'll scrap Genie+. They make money off of that. And as far as I can tell, it unfortunately doesn't seem like attendance has been negatively impacted by their swindling schemes.

I assume the leadership swap has more to do with the movie/tv/streaming financial situation than the parks. If anything, I expect them to continue the way the parks are being handled, and very likely push the limits even farther to help cover losses elsewhere in the company. That's how Iger covered costs of his acquisitions, FP+ and Shanghai's out of control budget.

Agreed - I follow the financial side closely and even in virtually every negative story about Disney's streaming issues over the past few months, it's noted that Genie+ specifically is delivering a high level of profits to the company. That ain't getting turned off and, if anything, it's getting turned *up* with more dynamic pricing in high demand periods. For better or worse, Genie+ and overall theme park revenue is one of the few things that Wall Street actually *likes* about Disney right now. Everyone needs to let that sink in to reign in whatever expectations they have built up in their minds here.

Bob Iger is being brought in for the entertainment side of the house. The single greatest challenge for Disney is how to (a) invest in streaming at a level that continues to grow subscribers but not be complete financial sinkhole and also (b) manage the decline of basic cable subscriber revenue at ESPN and ABC (which despite being over-the-air also generates a lot of cable subscriber re-transmission fees) that everyone knows is going to die at some point and needs to be transitioned to streaming... but can't be killed off too quickly because those linear TV networks are still *very* profitable at the exact same time that streaming is incurring massive losses. It's a vexing problem that's facing every single legacy media company with a large linear TV business.

The movie side of the house is also an issue, although as much as there have been a few high profile busts like Lightyear, I don't think it's as acute at Disney because they had already transitioned to focusing on purely large budget IP-driven blockbusters over the past decade, anyway, which are the types of movies that are still drawing audiences back to the theater. Sure, some people want to point out some exceptions like The Lost City or Ticket to Paradise as "smaller" movies that have done well at the box office in the pandemic era, but it used to be up until the early-2010s that there were 25 to 30 of those types of movies (smaller movies driven with a couple of big stars) that were being churned out every year with that level of success and now we can only count them on one hand annually. The pandemic era has really exacerbated what had already been occurring pre-pandemic: audiences will pay to go watch in the theater either (a) huge IP-driven blockbusters or (b) horror movies (where there's something different about watching a scary movie with a large audience), but very little else (with the successes outside of those two categories being the exceptions as opposed to the rule). Disney is actually in better shape for that universe than most with the IP that they own on paper, although as always, it's a matter of executing on it (e.g. Warner owns great IP with DC Comics, but their execution over the past decade has ranged from Oscar-worthy films like The Joker to complete and utter banal trash).

 

[EPCOT-O.G.]

Stock is soaring

This just tells us we should stop watching CNBC and start taking investment advice from Adam The Woo

 

[The Colonel]

Will he call off the lay-offs and hiring freeze and break up the task force? Will he roll back the price increases? Will maintenance be improved? It means nothing to anyone but investors.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Remember folks. We have simply gone from worse back to bad.

 

[EPCOT-O.G.]

For the people thinking this move will lead to Iger jettisoning Genie+ and ILL and other revenue-generating parks changes -- you are dreaming. There is no reason Disney would ditch those revenue streams at a time when other segments of the company were piling up scary enough results that the CEO got fired.

I certainly understand the Chapek hate, but have some perspective and do not equate Iger being back to "everything I wanted to happen in the parks will happen now!"

Notice these folks never explain how these new costs affected demand, or how they’d make up for the loss of hundreds of millions of revenue

 

[The Colonel]

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Literally.

 

[plutofan15]

And just a week ago Bob was among us in NYC celebrating service anniversaries.

 

[MisterPenguin]

The board suits are patting each other on the back.

<whisper> Hello, HR?