After the success of Phase 4, Feige is not at all vulnerable. Do you think Disney's board of directors would give up on the chance to make more Marvels, Quantumanias, or Secret Invasions?
In all seriousness, it might be time for Feige to move on. Despite the puff pieces, Kevin Feige was never the singular architect behind the MCU's success. He contributed to be sure. But as much credit should go to the Russo Brothers, Whedon, Favreau, Markus and McFeely, and many others. Feige has been doing this for nearly 20 years. He might be burning out.
If you have any knowledge of Hollywood history, you would understand that what Feige accomplished is unprecedented and breathtaking. No other Hollywood studio has been able to come close, and they’ve all tried. Marvels stumbles came when Feige stepped back, and that has been rectified.
Trying to give the directors equal credit to Feige reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how Marvel works. It is a producer-driven franchise. The directors have been chosen for their unobtrusiveness, malleability, and willingness to work within Feige’s system. That’s why so many are new directors and very few (only Gunn and Raimi excepted) have anything like a distinctive directorial voice.
Feige’s nemesis is Perlmutter. I’d love to here a defense of his creative track record.
There are various methods of running a business. On one pole is the streamlined business, and the other pole is the conglomerate business. Apple under Steve Jobs (though, increasingly less under Tim Cook) is an example of a streamlined business. Each product in a streamlined business reinforces the other. They work together. Siemens, 3M, and GE are examples of the conglomerate form of business. These firms might own completely unrelated businesses in order to maximize shareholder value. There are advantages and disadvantages to each type.
At different points one style of business might become more stylish than the other. For a time in the 1980s conglomerates were all the rage. That's how Coca Cola ended up owning Columbia Pictures... That's a weird footnote in history. Then a period of divestment will follow.
I'm not always in favor of divestment and streamlining. Having diverse businesses can help ensure the health of the parent business. However, creative businesses are somewhat different. When they become buried within layers upon layers of reporting structure, this can sometimes stifle creativity. Creatives won't be able to talk to the CEO and board of directors because they're off in some remote division way down the chain.
The Walt Disney Company is massive. And I think there's reasons to consider shrinking the size of the firm. Not for short term gain (though, it would unlock shareholder value), but because it would bring the creatives closer to the CEO and board of director. There was a time when Walt Disney Imagineering reported directly to the CEO and not to the Chairman of Parks and... DPEP. Shrinking the business would lead to renewed discipline and focus.
I don’t need a history of Hollywood mergers and acquisitions- I’m very familiar. Disney is not a Coca-Cola style conglomerate. It is a vertically integrated entertainment company in which one division feeds another and the overall organization allows for the efficient exploitation of IPs at every level. No one is worried about losing divisions for sentimental reasons. The justifiable fear is that components will be sold off for short term gain despite the fact that it hurts the company’s long term ability to fully profit off successful content.
The idea that Peltz wants to streamline operations to increase creativity is utterly laughable. Nothing in his history indicates any such desire. He wants to dramatically limit creativity by restricting output to an even more tightly controlled group of IPs very narrowly defined - to minimize risk. The idea that he wants to open up creative pathways is pure fan projection. Peltz is not a blank slate.
The studios could be shrunk dramatically. No doubt about that. I don't see Peltz harming the parks though. He's basically said that he views the parks as the only valuable part of the business. Everything else is imploding or losing money. He's also said he views the parks as dilapidated (which admittedly, they are) and in need of investment to compete with Universal.
He said this in boilerplate PR designed to appeal to fans, just like the cloying pictures of Peltz in the parks. It was an utterly transparent lie. His more detailed proposals make clear he wants to dramatically limit any spending in the parks. Again, Peltz has a history, and nothing in it indicates any actual belief in the parks.
The Disneyland expansion is going to be cemented with a contract. Disney can't get out of it, or else they would be failing to maintain their side of the contract with Anaheim.
It strikes me as naive to believe that Disney could not severely limit or cancel this expansion if they were motivated to do so.
Hmm, maybe you're a Searchlight fan. I don't care about Searchlight one iota. Who cares if they sell it?
Searchlight just won a major Oscar. It’s the division producing the kind of unique, adventurous, non-IP content posters on these boards (many in this thread) claim to want. Eliminating it would be a huge blow to Disney creatively.
This is actually a good thing. If a product is garbage, it's better to never let it see the light of day. It's better to take the financial loss than ever ship something mediocre. Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Pixar should represent excellence every single time. Period.
This has already been addressed by a poster, but this take is divorced from reality. Product is being shelved for financial reasons… and because of management egos. Coyote vs Acme tested incredibly well - about the same as the franchise-launching Deadpool.
The larger issue is that, as many have said in this thread, Peltz and Iger and other execs are not creative. They hire people who are. The last thing anyone should want is non-creative execs meddling to the degree that they kill completed films out of personal pique or judgements they are unqualified to make. Shelving projects in this way will dramatically limit the creative personnel willing to work for Disney.
This is what Iger has already said he's doing. This is his strategy. So, you're worried that Peltz is going to follow Iger's strategy?
Nowhere has Iger said he’s killing original animated IPs. His tenure has been very strong in that regard. Like any beleaguered CEO he is turning more to sequels like Frozen 4 or Toy Story 5, but that’s not instead of originals. And he certainly isn’t gutting Disney Animation or Pixar as Peltz would or as Universal is doing to Dreamworks.
I think we need to accept that the great streaming boom of the late 2010s/early 2020s is over. Experimental and wacky stuff might not get made as much, because the free money is over. A lot of interesting and cool stuff got made over the last decade. And a lot of bizarre garbage was also made. Hollywood is going to be more disciplined moving forward.
Peak TV is over, yes. That doesn’t mean all innovation is dead. In fact, in a moment when room for creativity is contracting, it seems particularly unwise to welcome executives who will limit it even more. IPs can still provide a space for new, even risky storytelling.
I also wasn’t simply talking about TV. Peltz would limit creativity in film as well - hence the Black Panther example. I invite you to examine the creative track record of Peltz, Perlmutter, and Rasulo.
All of my examples were off the top of my head. The key point is that things can get exponentially worse. The idea that Disney is currently at some sort of nadir is incredible hyperbole.
