Times are tough for Disney. With the group suffering the successive failures of The Marvels and Wish, CEO Bob Iger raised his voice in order to redress the situation. The latter notably admitted that the firm did not keep its promises regarding quality.
After the box office failures of The Marvels and Wish, Disney CEO Bob Iger stepped up to rectify the situation. Present in New York at the DealBook Summit organized by the New York Times, the big boss of the studio made some resounding declarations.
“Creators have lost sight of what their No. 1 goal should be. We need to entertain first. It’s not about sending political messages.”first attacked the boss of Mickey’s firm. “By wanting to embrace multiculturalism and multiplying series and films derived from its major franchises to the detriment of quality, Disney recognizes that it has taken the wrong path”explain Le Figaro.
“We entertained with values and made a positive impact on the world in different ways. Black Panther is a great example of that”continued Bob Iger. “I love being able to entertain with positive messages and have a good impact on the world. Fantastic! But that shouldn’t be the goal. When I came back, what I really tried to do was to return to our roots”he insisted.
Notable failures
These comments come after the dismal failure of the blockbuster The Marvels, which had the worst start of the saga at the box office. Internationally, the blockbuster only collected 180 million greenbacks for a budget estimated at 220 million dollars.
Same observation for Wish, the Disney of Christmas. The animated film cost the modest sum of 200 million and has so far only grossed 51 million worldwide. These two successive failures led Bob Iger to want to return to the roots of the firm: pure entertainment.
“In recent years, Disney has taken a series of positions in favor of diversity. The entertainment giant thus found itself at the heart of a political battle with Ron DeSantis. The conservative governor of Florida accused the Burbank firm of having become an agent of ‘woke capitalism’. And by wanting to impose ‘woke’ values on Americans, Disney has alienated part of the public”analyzes Caroline Sallé in Le Figaro.
Disney and “wokism”
“Criticized for its ‘wokism,’ the company was attacked on social media for including a homosexual kiss in Lightyear and a gay character in Strange World. ).The most reactionary public deplored that the Little Mermaid, in the last version of the film, was played by the black actress Halle Bailey.estimates Arnaud Leparmentier in the columns of World.
Furthermore, on the occasion of the group’s centenary, an IFOP survey presented the impact of the studio’s animated films and shows that the vast majority of French people (62%) are resistant to modifying classics for transition to live films. “Wanting to reconcile tradition and modernity, incapable of truly innovating, Disney annoys more and more and above all ends up boring”adds the journalist.
The next live-action Snow White film is also in the public’s crosshairs for all these reasons. “Their thoughts are so radical now. They change the stories, they change the thought process of the characters, they invent new ‘woke’ things and I’m just not attracted to that,” had hammered David Hand, son of the director of the 1937 Disney classic.
“I honestly find it a little insulting what they were able to do with some of these classic films. There’s no respect for what Disney did and what my father did. I think he and Walt would turn on each other in their graves.”
According to a ranking carried out in May 2023 by Axios-Harris, Disney is one of the most hated brands among Americans. “Too woke for some. Not radical enough for others”, comments Caroline Sallé. Thus, the financial losses of the big-eared firm make the group’s various shareholders cringe.
“Since we gave Disney the opportunity to prove it could right the ship last February, until our re-engagement a few weeks ago, shareholders have lost approximately $70 billion in value”said activist investor Nelson Peltz in a press release. “Disney is now worth only $170 billion on the stock market, half as much as two years ago”recalls Le Monde.
“Investor confidence is low, key strategic questions loom, and even Disney’s CEO acknowledges the company’s challenges are greater than previously thought”, he concluded. In any case, the big man at big D will have his work cut out to re-enchant the brand and once again infuse the magic of Disney of yesteryear.