News Bob Iger is back! Chapek is out!!

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Not sure who Daniel is.

Josh I hate to say will probably survive this and has probably already disappeared up Iger's Rear end

Daniel was the Stanford pencil pusher who has bandied as chapeks “eventual successor” already.

Completely the wrong type.

D’amaro won’t be fired…he’ll be pushed out in a year or two.

Watch that one play

 

[_caleb]

Wall Street and Hollywood bet everything on cinemas dying. They didn't,

yet

and have confounded expectations by being incredibly resilient in the post-pandemic environment. Iger is absolutely in denial - he's clinging to the previous groupthink-produced notion of a permanent, total shift away from movie theaters and towards streaming despite mounting evidence that that didn't happen. There's money at the cinema but the studios (outside of Paramount and, to a lesser extent, Universal) aren't grabbing it, instead continuing to dump feature films onto streaming services that are losing billions.

and why do you think the studios are spooked about the traditional model?

For feature films, streaming is a new post-cinema distribution model. Its essentially a replacement for DVDs.

Not sure you get it. See, there was this global pandemic…

Its a big deal, but the kind of change Hollywood has experienced periodically in the past, not the unprecedented revolution Wall Street and Hollywood convinced themselves was happening, burning billions in the process.

Agree to disagree, I guess. I’m not convinced this year’s flashes in the pan are any indication that the generations-long downward trend is going to turn around.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Streaming services are already dead. People only use them because A> they were forced to because of the pandemic and b> they needed something to replace cable. Roku is floundering and that's the canary in the coalmine.

You're seeing a backlash of people WANTING to socialize and not be stuck in their homes anymore. Streaming is TV and Movies are not TV. Movies are an EXPERIENCE in a public auditorium and, while you have a somewhat captive audience with TV/Cable/Streaming - the bit money is still in Movies.

Wrong.

Cable companies are losing customers.

The number of people subscribing to streamers keeps growing.

In the last quarter Disney's streamers gained 14 million subs. Netflix gained 2 million. Paramount, +3 million. Peacock, +3 million. WBD, +3 million.

 

[Ghost93]

I love you guys so much and you’re really nice but the Netflix Marvel series were not MCU.

Eh, their status is unknown. When the Marvel Netflix series first came out, they WERE promoted as being part of the MCU.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Jim Cramer--who was ready to dump Chapek a few days ago--was also out there posting his support for Trian's Nelson Peltz to get his seat on the board. Takeover attempt?

No…just angry shareholders and one ceo with an angle

But this “activist investor”…
…you don’t think this was out of nowhere, do you?

That’s not the game

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

Let me be clear here:

Chapek was the worst executive in Disneys history and it’s not close.

But Iger needs to do better.

What?!?!?

Yes. BETTER.

Period.

Start with a line of succession…then get the creative houses in order…then get the parks reinforced as they face a threat at Least in Orlando…get over the China thing - it’s not gonna hold…
Then exit gracefully once they are more stable

I'm curious what makes you think he's going to change. The guy strategically jumped ship right as the turd was about to hit the fan, and let Chapek take a face full of it. Now he's jumped back on board since he thinks the "worst" is over. I don't see any hints of lessons learned here myself.

I'm also not sure I buy his return being "temporary". Every person who was previously supposed to be his successor was thrown under the bus by his enormous ego. And he ended up picking a weakling that he knew would serve as his gormless fall guy, and was guaranteed to fail as a replacement.

I simply don't think people like Iger are capable of admitting mistakes and fixing problems they caused, nor putting suitable people in charge as their replacements. There's far too much ego and greed involved IMO.

 

[Skywise]

Oh, I don't disagree that the parks have a capacity problem; that's public enemy number one, but the immediate issues, such as the ones I mentioned and how Chapek was going to address them, are why he's an awful leader.

Iger left money on the table, but Chapek was actively downing the company. Though you're right in pointing out that it's definitely not for most of the reasons people are complaining about here, but I think I addressed some of them (I've since edited to and added to my post).

I'm not so sure Chapek was drowning the company. He was pushing the revenue of the ONE resource that was still profitable to prop up the other divisions that weren't.

If Andor/Lightyear/Rise of Skywalker/Solo/Soul/Turning Red/Wakanda Forever/ESPN/ABC had been profitable this wouldn't have been as critical/cannabilistic a business decision but Chapek pulled the levers he had at hand.

As much as I detest Chapek - he was a businessman at heart and trying to make the right decisions based on that. I can't see Iger doing better here.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Jim Cramer--who was ready to dump Chapek a few days ago--was also out there posting his support for Trian's Nelson Peltz to get his seat on the board. Takeover attempt?

Does he have $84B to attempt it?

 

[Skywise]

No…just angry shareholders and one ceo with an angle

But this “activist investor”…
…you don’t think this was out of nowhere, do you?

That’s not the game

So all of this for the board to save their own skin?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

This is NOT Vindication of iger’s promises on streaming…this is a “prove it” scenario

It wasn’t gonna make what they said it would. The streaming game is not high yield

 

[Indy_UK]

I'll never understand the anger at the underlings whether it's D'Amaro or McCarthy (or even Feige for some strange reason).

What exactly did McCarthy do that deserves her being fired?

What did D'Amaro ever do -- that wasn't determined by his boss -- that deserved him being fired? You wanted him to stand up to Chapek and tell him he refuses to enact Genie+? He'd be immediately fired.

Tell me what they did, which wasn't foisted upon them, that deserves being fired.

Its her blatant and rude comments about reducing food portion sizes would be a good thing for their bottom line, and visitors waistlines is a start.

 

[_caleb]

They were. The Invasion of New York from Avengers had taken place and was referenced, but only euphemistically, because these shows were totally serious. The widespread rebuilding it required is central to the conflict in Daredevil. Stan Lee showed up in each Netflix show - as a still image somewhere in the background. Both 's Daredevil and D'Onofrio's Kingpin are running around the modern films and series, the former in No Way Home and She-Hulk and the latter in Hawkeye.

Disney had no part in the development or production of the Netflix series. Thus, they were not MCU. Now, Disney is all about playing to the fanbase(s) and has added a few of those characters into MCU shows, but it’s still unclear whether these are actually those same characters or merely multiversal versions of those characters and oh, dear, why am I even trying to explain this?

 

[MisterPenguin]

If Andor/Lightyear/Rise of Skywalker/Solo/Soul/Turning Red/Wakanda Forever/ESPN/ABC had been profitable this wouldn't have been as critical/cannabilistic a business decision but Chapek pulled the levers he had at hand.

And how do you calculate how Andor or Wandavision wasn't profitable? Do you have a source for how much the lost the company?

 

[Skywise]

Does he have $84B to attempt it?

Cramer never invests his own money... That's the point of his shtick - he get you to invest yours and he bets accordingly.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

So all of this for the board to save their own skin?

Arnold and her patron Iger…If I had to guess?
They used a ringer. Now he’ll get his board preference.

It’s 100% normal and wall streets version of the Reichstag fire.

Roy Disney did it TWICE

 

[kingdead]

No…just angry shareholders and one ceo with an angle

But this “activist investor”…
…you don’t think this was out of nowhere, do you?

That’s not the game

Are the Apple prophecies coming true

 

[Skywise]

And how do you calculate how Andor or Wandavision wasn't profitable? Do you have a source for how much the lost the company?

It didn't gain them subscribers and viewership was low for both.

 

[MrPromey]

Yes but that person suggested SW was being streamed early due to “woke”. There was nothing “woke” about encanto except maybe that the family wasn’t white.

I hope by "that person" you don't mean me (who you responded to) because that's not what I was trying to say AT ALL.

I just said management didn't seem to have much faith in it.

A movie can be awful whether someone deems it "woke" or not.

Some people would like to suggest the only reason Lightyear was not a roaring success was because of a relationship between two characters.

Personally, I think it was just a crappy movie and I gave it the benefit of the doubt with a theater visit, even after seeing the Rotten Tomato score.

I hope this one is good. I don't want it to be bad but there is a pretty understood formula around marketing to make these movies profitable and the fact that Disney, the company who wrote the book on that, isn't doing it, suggests they're cutting their losses in advance for some reason.

I'm in no way trying to guess what that reason is.

 

[Casper Gutman]

yet

The combination of the pandemic and the rise of streaming was a shift perfectly designed to wipe away theaters. It didn't. If they came back from that, they aren't going to spontaneously die.

Not sure you get it. See, there was this global pandemic…

And then the movie theaters came back.

Agree to disagree, I guess. I’m not convinced this year’s flashes in the pan are any indication that the generations-long downward trend is going to turn around.

The point is its not one or two flashes in the pan, its repeated success for films across all genres and levels of production. No, we're not going back to the days of Gone With the Wind, but it seems we are going back to 2018 or so.

 

[Skywise]

Iger has made it clear that he sees inclusiveness and tolerance of all people as a human right. He’s not going to roll back things like the Splash redo. It seems like the parks just aren’t for you anymore.

Does he? Or did he sell that to you and Chapek was the one demanding a splash mountain redo?