Bad Times Ahead for Bob

In the new book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios Disney CEO Bob Iger is a minor but important figure. The authors portray Iger as a canny dealmaker who knows how to keep talent happy and shareholders happier. If we look at Iger’s tenure as CEO from 2005 to 2020, we can see a string of major acquisitions that grew the amount of IP Disney had at its disposal. IP is uniquely valuable for Disney since it anchors not only a slate of movies and TV shows, but also the company’s theme parks and merchandising. Looking at box office receipts alone, we can see that Disney was an absolute powerhouse. Of the 53 movies that grossed over a billion dollars worldwide, you’ll see that a large chunk came from Disney. When Iger exited Disney in 2020, it was supposed to be as arguably the most successful executive in the company’s history since its namesake.

But then Iger screwed up the succession plan, and now he finds himself back at Disney, but in a far different media landscape than when he left. Disney had an awful 2022. If you ignore the COVID years (2020 and 2021), then 2023 will be the first time Disney failed to produce a movie that made over a billion worldwide at the box office since 2014. Moreover, Disney’s slate was riddled with flops including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Haunted Mansion, The Marvels, and Wish as well as movies that underperformed like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Little Mermaid. Their indisputable hit of 2023, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, came from James Gunn, who is now firmly ensconced at a competing company.1 

This year had some tough lessons for Iger, but looking at Disney’s upcoming plans and what Iger has said in recent interviews, it appears that he hasn’t learned a thing.

Sequels Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Disney’s misfortunes in 2023 weren’t a result of the studio taking on new risks. If anything, Disney has arguably been the safest studio in Hollywood, relying heavily on brand awareness and franchises to lure in viewers with what should be a “safe bet.” Even if you didn’t know anything about a Marvel superhero, you could trust the Marvel brand name…until you couldn’t. The notion that Marvel would continue to only produce hits was woefully naive, and outright foolish when they threw TV shows into the mix. Trying to prop up Disney+ with Marvel shows wasn’t a bad idea, but the refusal to give even a little on the movie side to accommodate these series made for an impossible producing task for the studio, and a daunting prospect for the casual viewer.

Of course, when The Marvels flopped, Iger’s answer wasn’t, “The film relied too heavily on Disney+ shows and not giving the MCU time to breathe.” He essentially threw director Nia DaCosta under the bus, saying “There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives [that are] really looking over what’s being done day after day after day.” This is just a guy lying to a room full of people. Marvel, perhaps more than any other studio, has executives heavily involved with the production. It’s ridiculous to say that the film flopped because DaCosta wasn’t minding the store (a story seeded in the trades despite being objectively false), and it needed more executives to…do what, exactly? Not release your third superhero movie of the year? Not make people feel like they needed to see WandaVision, Ms. Marvel, and Secret Invasion to feel up to date with the narrative? To not have a massive strike where you couldn’t have actors promoting the movie? Where exactly were the executives going to make The Marvels a hit, Bob?

Disney also made the unfortunate move, via Disney+, of training audiences to stay home. While all the studios tried to figure out release strategies for their slates as they launched streaming services during the pandemic, Disney has now taught its fans—specifically, parents—to sit out a theatrical release. It’s not that kids won’t go to a movie theater; plenty of kids went to see Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. But for Disney, parents now know that a home release is coming soon, whereas the three movies I just mentioned fully committed to a theatrical release. For parents, who need to buy tickets for themselves and their kids, plus a bunch of concessions, Disney+ becomes a more enticing option when everything Disney releases is a family film. A family can make time for Barbie or Mario or Spider-Man if they’re going to drop on different streaming services they may not subscribe to. But these families reliably have Disney+, and they’re willing to wait.

Against this backdrop, Disney should seriously rethink its strategy—and yet a couple weeks ago, Iger revealed that the studio was working on Frozen 3 and Frozen 4 back-to-back. This is in addition to Toy Story 5 and Zootopia 2 in the works with Inside Out 2 headed to theaters next summer. I don’t know if these movies will be good or not, but I do know that audiences seem to be burnt out on sequels, especially to franchises that are at least more than a decade old. Disney’s plans simply don’t match Iger’s rhetoric when he says:

Frozen 2 does not have a good story, and I guarantee you Bob Iger doesn’t care because the film made over a billion dollars. That’s why we’re getting two more Frozen movies.

At a time when people want stories that allow them easy entrance, Disney is making the walls of its garden even higher. Even a galaxy far, far away is becoming more insulated.

The Dave Filoni Problem

Early last week, Dave Filoni was named Lucasfilm’s Chief Creative Officer. Even in his own statement, Filoni acknowledged his role as more of a janitor of Lucasfilm properties, taking dreck like the Prequel Trilogy and turning it into the Clone Wars and Rebels—animated series with devoted followings among Star Wars fans although with less cultural saturation than the Star Wars movies proper. “In the past, in a lot of projects I would be brought into it, I would see it after it had already developed a good ways,” Filoni told Vanity Fair.

However, the success of the animated series as well as Filoni’s input into The Mandalorian raised his profile at Lucasfilm where they now want him guiding the Star Wars universe. However, Filoni’s vision for Star Wars tends to be one that’s rather insular and based around lore rather than strong storytelling. Given the heavy hand Filoni has had in the Star Wars TV series, and by his own admission, coming in after they already started, we can see some glaring weaknesses in The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Kenobi. A strong show like Andor feels more like the exception than the rule.

But let’s take subjective appraisals out of the equation, and try to look at general popularity. Streaming numbers are tricky, but if we want to believe Nielsen, then this table shows a severe drop-off for Ashoka, the latest entry to the Star Wars universe, written and created by Filoni for Disney+. Even fans that came to Ashoka immersed in the storylines and characters Filoni created out of Clone Wars and Rebels found themselves disappointed by what it had to offer. If anything, Ahsoka was a sign that Star Wars was now headed down the same path as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the studio demanded an accumulation of knowledge lore to keep up. Part of the appeal of Star Wars was that you needed to know little about particular plot lines, and the universe itself was massive with unexplored corners ripe for exciting new stories. Instead, Filoni remains wedded to his particular stories and characters, and I fear that limited mindset spells disaster for Star Wars.

Maybe I’m wrong, and as COO of Lucasfilm, Filoni will usher in an expansive new era where the studio finally gets back to making movies, and the TV shows won’t be so reliant on familiarity with other TV shows. However, looking at Filoni’s actions as a creator, he seems like someone who prefers to cater to die-hard fans. If Star Wars is only going to be a pat on the head for people who have done their homework, that’s not exactly a thriving property that invites new followers. Zeroing in on super-obsessive fans only gets you a hotel that was too expensive to exist.

The Brands Will Not Save You

Iger built the Disney empire as a mega-brand. Disney is so big that it becomes core to people’s identities, and then its subsidiaries becomes the stories that people (supposedly) can’t get enough of. In the 2010s, Disney had the unique problem that they were so flush with IP, they couldn’t greenlight other IP, which is why we didn’t get a TRON: Legacy sequel or National Treasure 3. Of course, the flip side to this problem is that when you’re only going to make The Biggest Sequels, you end up spending $300 million on Indiana Jones 5 or a live-action The Little Mermaid, and not enough people show up.

Iger can try to tinker with these various brands (fewer TV shows from Marvel, making Filoni oversee all of Star Wars’ creative output) on top of his other problems (I won’t get into the whole death of linear, and what that means for ABC and ESPN), but the issue remains that there was never any guarantee that people would go for every Disney thing just because they were attached to previously successful brands. Furthermore, those brands only become more insular the more they produce, especially if you’re asking an animation division like Pixar to produce more sequels.

The wiser course of action would be to diversify Disney’s output rather than simply creating more of the same. Disney works with talented filmmakers, but then forces them into the box of serving Disney brands, which means no one can do anything particularly interesting with the film they’re making. Did we get Justin Simien’s full vision on Haunted Mansion? Did Chloe Zhao get the creative freedom she deserved when making Eternals? Disney thinks it’s elevating these IP-friendly titles by hiring well-known directors—but more often than not, it’s the director who takes the hit when the film flops, rather than the studio that forced them to adhere to crushing parameters in a desperate attempt to hang onto the built-in audience. I also imagine it’s going to be even harder to recruit those talented filmmakers if you make a habit of saying, “The problem with our latest movie was that there weren’t enough executives bossing the director around.”

I write all of this not to save Bob Iger, because Bob Iger will be fine. He could flame out spectacularly, and he would still be wealthy and invited to fancy parties. What he’s fighting for is his legacy; what I care about is our culture. Disney, regardless of how you personally feel about it, is a cultural behemoth on a global scale. In the dystopian future of David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, entertainment is simply called “Disneys” because the company has pushed out anything other than itself. A Disney that makes bad superhero movies and bad Star Wars shows and bad animated musicals is one that tarnishes the larger landscape of the films we have available. When Disney swallowed 20th Century Fox, there was one less major studio, and it’s not like Disney stepped up to fill the void left by a company that was making exciting features like Widows, Bad Times at the El Royale, and Red Sparrow. Instead, they’ve used the now-renamed 20th Century Studios to largely send material onto Hulu regardless of whether or not it could have found theatrical success (I suspect that Prey and No One Will Save You would have been hits had they been given a chance).

Iger left Disney in 2020 feeling triumphant, but 2023 has seen him scrambling. His comments seem increasingly tone deaf and divorced from reality, which isn’t what you want if you built your reputation on doing deals and relationships with talent. Disney isn’t a sinking ship, but it does seem adrift right now, with Iger struggling to steer it back to success. He seems to think that recapturing the success of the 2010s is just to smash the brand button harder, and blame others for when things don’t work out. Iger will be personally fine when that strategy doesn’t work out, but the rest of us will end up paying the price.