Disney is quickly becoming what it was during the late nineties and early 2000’s…mismanaged and irrelevant. Bob Iger, whether the legacy media will admit it or not, has become Michael Eisner. I contend Bob Iger is worse than Michael Eisner ever was. Michael Eisner, before he was ousted, played the safe card by making sequels and content around established successes, that ultimately saw an audience dramatically wane. Bob Iger is doing much the same thing with repetitive sequels and reboots, but also adding a woke ingredient that’s hard for audiences to swallow. He thinks this is a recipe for success, when in fact the evidence, specifically the recent 1st quarter earnings report, has proven quite the opposite. But with the billions in operational losses and a stock that is tanking, Iger has decided to double down on that recipe with content that is laced with divisive content across all of Disney’s platforms.
Disney Continues to Have Financial Operating Losses
Disney’s 1st quarter earnings was a mixed bag for Disney, but didn’t shout any sort of confidence going forward. Disney plus lost 2.4 million subscribers, albeit from India’s HotStar subscriber base, but that still doesn’t portend well for a company that is bleeding money from over budgeted production of its Disney Plus shows and cinematic offerings. Disney had an operating loss of 1.05 billion dollars in their 1st quarter 0f 2023, plus a 1.47 billion operating loss in the 4th quarter of 2022. Most of that stems from producing 200-250 million budgeted flops that are not making a profit, which also includes almost all of their Disney Plus MCU phase 4 shows that flatlined with fans. Bob Iger’s answer to recouping those losses however, is to let go of 7000 employees, and slash their operating costs by 5 billion dollars. Is that really the answer? The answer should be to make quality product that stays true to established lore, and pays deference to the fanbase that support those franchises. These huge operating losses are not a good trend for Disney, and should raise red flags everywhere that your woke content is horrible and hasn’t been resonating with your core fanbase for quite some time. Disney’s content should be king, but instead, Disney is looking more like the court jester. But great content is apparently not in the cards for Iger who wants to stay woke and continue going broke.
Related: Loss in Confidence
The Answer is More Control to the Wokesters
Disney’s financial woes were all self inflicted by Bob Iger himself. Once he went down the woke rabbit hole, Disney’s future was very predictable. When you ignore, ridicule, and denigrate the majority of your fan base, eventually the chickens come home to roost. And Disney’s financial troubles are just evidence of this. All you have to do is watch anything from the MCU, Star Wars, Pixar, or Disney Plus in the last 2 years, and you will find a plethora of inappropriate LGBTQ or CRT themes in their children’s programs, or an MCU movie or Disney Plus TV show that has race and gender swapped their characters, and relegated white male characters to non existence or the butt of a joke. If Disney wants to fix their financial problems, they need to start there. But that’s not going to happen, because as Bob Iger plainly stated in the 1st quarterly earnings call, he’s going to give us more of the same, and give those content creators who have been destroying Disney’s brand, even more power. According to Iger, the restructuring is:
“aimed at returning greater authority to our creative leaders and making them accountable for how their content performs financially.”
Disney Used to be the Gold Standard of Storytelling
It was only a few short years ago that Disney was on top of the world bringing in an embarrassing amount of profits. Why is that? This is just an educated guess, but I’m thinking it was because they gave the fans and families what they wanted….entertainment through good storytelling. Bob Iger is not the answer to what’s ailing Disney, he’s the problem. Disney used to be the gold standard of storytelling that all others aspired to replicate. Not anymore, now their entertainment is a vehicle for political messaging that just keeps turning more and more fans away. If we needed any proof, just look at the hot mess the MCU just released Friday. ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ is a lesson in how not to make a movie. It’s disjointed, the CGI is an embarrassment, and once again preaches politics to the audience, and makes its titular white male character the cause of all that’s going wrong. Iger has yet another flop on his hands with no light at the end of a very long tunnel of the same boring and insulting crap.
