News Robert Iger Returns

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Gavin said:
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Bob Iger returns as Disney CEO, replacing Bob Chapek after a brief, tumultuous tenure

Bob Iger is back as CEO of Disney. Bob Chapek, who replaced Iger in 2020, is out after a brutal earnings report that sowed further doubt about his leadership.
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Time to do my happy church dance!

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This was NOT on my bingo card. Holy moly. I wasn’t the biggest fan of everything Iger did, but I’m shocked and thrilled that the board recognized that Chapek’s money-hungry way of running the company isn’t the best path forward.
 
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3 things I wonder ....

  1. Will this mean whatever planned layoff and cost cutting things Chapek put into place stops
  2. Will this change the parks reservation system and the new micromanaging being placed on the cast members at the parks.
  3. Is this to set up rehiring Peter Rice for the CEO position in 2 years, as Chapek felt threatened by him and fired him.
 
So for conspiracy theory bingo, who else has Eisner making a return in some fashion (BoD vs. CEO)?

Realistically, I think as Disney tends to continue to be the standard-bearer for most things parks do in their operations (heck, it seems most park admin staff seem to have taken the Disney management courses), maybe we'll see parks once again focus primarily on guest experiences over immediate profits... Which as had been previously understood brings long-term profits from a growing satisfied customer base
 
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IMO, Chapek was bad all around for Disney because he wanted to add as much possible spending as little as possible. This goes beyond the parks too. Quality of movies were dipping, quality of their TV was dipping, projects at parks were haphazard.

Yes you can say Igor didn’t do a huge amount of “additions” to he parks but he did small year to year things in order to add GE/Pandora in one comprehensive move at a time.

Additionally I think the failure that is the SW hotel is something that doomed Chapek along with the guest complaints.
 
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warfelg said:
Additionally I think the failure that is the SW hotel is something that doomed Chapek along with the guest complaints.
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Also how he half assed budget cut park additions:

Galaxy's Edge, was supposed to have a lot more than what it got even now, but due to budget cuts got cancelled, and then he turned it around and put them in the hotel behind a pay wall.

Avengers Campus opening with a D ticket in that Spiderman Ride and not having the Avengers ride they announced, and now that ride being something that looks like a clone of Ride of the Resistance .
 
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Let's not forget the detailed review of their latest cruise product (via Jake at Bright Sun Film on YouTube) that more or less called it out for being less magical than their original ships - seems to fit a theme here.
 
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Jonesta6 said:
Let's not forget the detailed review of their latest cruise product (via Jake at Bright Sun Film on YouTube) that more or less called it out for being less magical than their original ships - seems to fit a theme here.
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This because they just bought an unfinished cruise ship meant for that company? Or the issues with the Wish?
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Yeah, a lot of blame is being put unfairly on Chapek. Orlando's Galaxy Edge cuts? Iger. Galactic Starcruiser? Iger. That awful Spiderman ride in California? Iger. This disaster of an Epcot overhaul? Iger. Moving Imagineering to FL, essentially putting the entire division into a shredder? Iger.

I totally think Chapek was a disaster—it's incredible how politically/interpersonally inept he seemed to be for instance—but Iger got the ball rolling on a lot of these recent, notable, parks and media blunders. Maybe Iger's return makes things better around the edges and improves Disney's reputation a bit, but overall, the 5 year outlook for the company still looks mighty grim to me right now—especially for the domestic parks.
 
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Disney just needs another dynamic duo at the helm to run things. Only time they were ever universally good was when you had a well balanced sharing of the top roles that worked closely together. Walt & Roy as well as Mike & Frank. Iger was fine when he was essentially just righting the ship after Mike went nuclear but once he kinda had the freedom to make his calls as to where to take the company, his calls weren't great. Buying all those IPs, sure wonderful sounds good. Executing those newly acquired IPs, not as good.

They need that good cop bad cop creative/business duo again as a form of checks and balances. Too creative shit gets wacky, too business-y shit ends up where we are now. You go something like bring in Chris Meledandri (which would be a HARD ask) and keep someone in house as President / COO or you start moving Feige up the ranks to get him ready for something like CEO (or just fire Kennedy and let Feige have both studios but that is a separate itch of mine) while you bring in a new face like Naveen Chopra to get some perspective business wise. I like Naveen, he shares the "we need to slash the bloat" mentality like Chapek, but he seems more conscious of where to do it without compromising the "invest in the future" mentality.

Either way they go, I think they need someone from outside the Disney tree to come in. The status quo has been too established there and anyone who rises up through the business side without an external counterpart isn't going to change things much. The path they have been on the past 10 years has been unchanged and is starting to clash with what the consumers want. Pushing a political and progressive message, using flashy IPs, and simply saturating the shit out of the market worked great through the 2010s but isn't going to cut it the next 10 years. People are starting to really want quality. Hell, look at the wild success of Top Gun: Maverick. It is the first time in a long time an IP like that had been used for good and actual creativity and effort had been put into a project. Audiences are going to want more and more of that.
 
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Supposedly, the Disney Board reached out to Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs while Chapek was still CEO to test the waters on whether they'd be willing to return to run Disney. Chapek would have had to sign off on the acquisition of their company, so that was a no go at the time.

If they were to bring them back into Disney, you'd have a duo that would probably do a pretty good job.
 
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They need to step back from media creation and do a creative reset for a short time. I don't want to say clear house since we are talking about people here, but their current staff of writers and creative visionaries haven't been cutting it. If that is what they are doing and are funneling money to the infinite money glitch that is the theme parks, I support that decision. Though this could be them saying "on strike? fine say bye to your money".
 
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