Bob Iger is Back!!!

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, still has a leading edge, according to nearly a dozen industry players, corporate rivals and Disney sources who spoke with Variety. She is the chieftain of television at the company, and the Emmy haul puts her at the top of the class (Iger sat with Walden at the awards ceremony in Los Angeles). A savvy executive with decades of talent relations under her belt, Walden is seen as the closest spiritual successor to Iger — an executive who projects a placid kind of perfection and prioritizes creative output. “Dana is smart, and all-in for this opportunity,” says one powerful show-business figure close to her. But Walden shouldn’t start rearranging the furniture in Iger’s executive suite. Walden has limited experience with parks, cruises and Disney’s valuable franchise businesses in film.

Then there’s Josh D’Amaro, the clean-cut Disney parks head. He isn’t as well-known as Walden but has the kind of operational experience that could appeal to board members and shareholders. Sources noted the plug D’Amaro gave himself at August’s D23 fan convention. While announcing a new “Villain Land” coming to Walt Disney World, the magic mirror from Snow White name-checked him personally onstage before hyping attractions that will go inside the lairs of Ursula (“The Little Mermaid”) and Maleficent (“Sleeping Beauty”). Others note his similar lack of experience facing Wall Street, but concede that it takes creative chops to program parks content and manage Disney’s vaunted Imagineers.

“Anyone beyond Dana or Josh is probably a stretch,” says one top talent dealmaker. Yet others would not immediately discount Alan Bergman, Walden’s co-chairman of entertainment (who sat at Iger’s other arm during the Emmys). His movie studio is back on track in 2024, and his portfolio includes Disney’s most coveted brands — Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar.

Source: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/bob- ... 236150806/

IMO, Walden, Bergman, and Josh should be co-CEOs of Disney like Wells (before his death) and Eisner were back in the 80's.

[PatchofBlue]

Disney Names James Gorman Chairman of the Board, New CEO Expected to Be Named in 2026
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/busin ... 236040047/

“James Gorman is an esteemed leader who has become an invaluable voice on the Disney Board since joining earlier this year, and I am extremely pleased that he has agreed to assume the role of Chairman upon my departure. Drawing on his vast experience, James is expertly guiding the extensive search process for a new CEO, which remains a top priority for the Board,” said Parker in a statement. “As I prepare to leave the Board to focus on other areas of my work, I am proud of Disney’s renewed position of strength and excited for the company’s future, and I want to thank my fellow directors, Bob Iger and his exemplary management team for their continued strong leadership and dedication.”

“The Disney Board has benefited tremendously from James Gorman’s expertise and guidance, and we are lucky to have him as our next Chairman – particularly as the Board continues to move forward with the succession process,” Iger added. “I’m extremely grateful to Mark Parker for his many years of Board service and leadership, which have been so valuable to this company and its shareholders, and to me as CEO.”

[Sotiris]

The race as it currently stands seems to be narrowing on an executive from Disney’s creative ranks, which means the co-chairs of Disney Entertainment — Dana Walden and Alan Bergman — have the early lead. Walden, who clearly has the leading position, would be Disney’s first female CEO in its 101-year history.

If you’re looking for an executive on the creative side, it’s hard to find one more accomplished than Walden. [...] While she clearly has creative chops, that’s only one part of Disney. Unlike D’Amaro, Walden doesn’t have any experience overseeing Parks or Resorts, which comprise the Experiences segment of Disney that pulled in 36% of the company’s revenues and 71% of its profits last quarter. That may be an obstacle but not an insurmountable one with the right team. On the other hand, Walden’s advocates note that she has brought her division into profit per Iger’s directive since he returned to the CEO suite, which Parks has not. Critics note a lack of deal-making experience, though her advocates note that she was deeply involved, along with Bergman, in strike negotiations last year.
She also lacks experience in the film industry.

Disney will always be a movie company first and foremost, and that’s the realm where Bergman lives. [...] However, arguably it was the creative and executive leadership at each of those brands that drove the brilliance of those movies, including Kevin Feige at Marvel, Pete Docter at Pixar and Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm. This makes Bergman far less of a creative leader than Walden. Much like Walden, Bergman also doesn’t have any experience on the Parks and Resorts side. And just as Walden hasn’t spent time on the movies side, Bergman hasn’t spent much time on the TV side. And while many in Hollywood are quick to sing Walden’s praises in awards speeches and profiles, that’s notably not as often the case when it comes to Bergman.

Josh D’Amaro, current chairman of Disney Experiences, has been a rising star at Disney since 1998. [...] But the foundation of Disney, as Iger has said many times, is the creativity and the content. That comes from entertainment and puts D’Amaro at a disadvantage. Succession-watchers at Disney noted that he conspicuously showed up to the D23 showcase this year with celebrities like John Stamos, Darren Criss and Billy Crystal, perhaps in a bid to emphasize his talent relationships. D’Amaro could streamline and expedite things that would have taken much longer under previous regimes, such as drawing up parks attraction plans drawn up before a movie comes out. But it’s unclear how creative D’Amaro actually is.

ESPN head Jimmy Pitaro has two big advantages in the CEO race: He understands the tricky and vital business of live sports, and he’s had Disney experience outside of his current niche. [...] While Pitaro may have an edge over Walden and Bergman when it comes to consumer experience, like D’Amaro, he lacks creative chops. [...] And Pitaro may suffer from an affliction far too common in corporate America — he’s too good at his current job. Given that there are few major sports networks and even fewer that are as ubiquitous as ESPN, it may be easier to fill Walden or Bergman’s roles than Pitaro’s. It’s also unclear if Pitaro even wants the Disney CEO gig. [...] He doesn’t seem to be campaigning for the role in the same way as others in the corporation.

Source: https://www.thewrap.com/inside-disneys- ... -analysis/

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Just have Walden and Bergman as co-CEO’s like Eisner and Wells.

It’s that simple.

[blackcauldron85]

(I don't know what other thread to put this in.)

Disney Poised to Announce Massive AI Initiative
https://www.thewrap.com/disney-ai-initiative/

[Sotiris]

The press seems to be supporting Disney's AI initiative.

AI in Animation Is Not an All-or-Nothing Proposition
https://variety.com/vip/ai-in-animation ... 236188313/

Training AI Models Can Aid Animation, Has Ethical and Legal Questions
https://variety.com/vip/training-ai-mod ... 236262337/

Is It Still Disney Magic if It’s AI?
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/disn ... s-5982a925

[DisneyJedi]

Why's this talk of AI translating to "Well, that can't be good..."?

[Sotiris]

The Wall Street Veteran Leading Disney’s Search for Iger’s Replacement
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/jame ... o-c1196c8b

Inside Disney’s Race to Replace Bob Iger
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/busin ... 236048452/

The Latest Offshore Betting Odds for the Next Disney CEO
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/busin ... 236200276/

[Sotiris]

Disney Establishes Group to Oversee AI, Mixed Reality Adoption in ‘Responsible’ Way Across the Company
https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/d ... 236197936/

[Sotiris]

Disney Expands CEO Search to Outside Candidates Including EA’s Andrew Wilson
https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/disne ... 236207653/

[Sotiris]

Nelson Peltz Blames “Index Funds” For Losing Disney Proxy Battle
https://deadline.com/2024/11/nelson-pel ... 236175329/

Bob Iger Says Disney EMEA & APAC Content Investments “Slowing” But Will Continue On “Selective” Basis
https://deadline.com/2024/11/bob-iger-d ... 236176539/

Bob Iger on Disney M&A Under Trump: “We Don’t Really Need More Assets Right Now”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/busin ... 236061942/

Disney CEO Bob Iger to Sell Up to $41M in Stock
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/busin ... 236062150/

Disney Stock Rises Post-Earnings as Wall Street Reacts to Longer-Term Guidance
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/busin ... 236061800/

[Sotiris]

‘Politics is bad for business.’ Why Disney’s Bob Iger is trying to avoid hot buttons
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... in-or-lose

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

‘Politics is bad for business.’ Why Disney’s Bob Iger is trying to avoid hot buttons
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... in-or-lose

Can’t access the article without a subscription.

Can someone copy and paste the whole article in this thread so I can see what the whole article said?

[PatchofBlue]

A lot of it is just assembling statements we've already heard before.

The salient points:

And Iger signed off on the settlement of a high-profile defamation lawsuit brought last spring by President-elect Donald Trump, amid howls from journalists that the owner of ABC News had caved to political pressure.

Disney agreed to pay $1 million for Trump’s legal fees and donate another $15 million for Trump’s future presidential library.

Trump sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos last spring after the journalist asserted during an on-air interview that a civil court jury had found Trump “liable for rape” in a case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. Instead, New York jurors determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse.”

Some First Amendment experts believed ABC had a winning case, in part, because of a high hurdle for public officials to prove defamation.

The network “might well have prevailed if they had hung in there,” prominent journalist Margaret Sullivan wrote in a Substack opinion piece. “Instead, this outcome encourages Trump in his attacks on the press — and he needs no encouragement.”

Disney declined to comment for this story or make Iger available for an interview.

_________

DeSantis seized on Disney’s shifting stance and branded the company as “woke.”

In conservative circles, the pejorative label stuck.

“When you assign a private entity to a political team, then very quickly people will begin to view things in that light,” said Michael Binder, a University of North Florida political science professor who studied the Disney-DeSantis dispute.

Iger, who returned as chief executive two years ago to replace Chapek, recognized the existential threat.

“Our primary mission needs to be to entertain,” Iger said during the company’s 2023 investor meeting. “It should not be agenda-driven.”

Iger increasingly has stressed the importance of steering the company away from overt political messaging.

“The stories you tell have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach but that audience, because they are so diverse ... can be turned off by certain things,” Iger said during an April appearance on CNBC. “We just have to be more sensitive to the interests of a broad audience. It’s not easy.”

_________

Disney’s nearly two-year fight with DeSantis was bruising.

“DeSantis was using Disney as a political foil to make a case for his run for presidency,” said Binder, the director of University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab. “That was not something that we had seen before: Governors and elected officials outwardly attacking private companies, particularly a Republican going after a company.”

University researchers found DeSantis’ “woke” campaign against Disney had gained traction, at least among conservatives — despite the fact that Disney has long been one of Florida’s largest employers and a pillar of its tourism economy.

In a public opinion poll in early 2023 of Florida registered voters, the Public Opinion Research Lab found that only about 27% of Republicans in the state had a “favorable” view of Disney. Meanwhile, 76% of the Democrats polled were fans of the Mouse House.

“There was a huge split, and that’s not great for a company that’s trying to market to everybody,” Binder said.

__________

Disney settled with Florida, but the DeSantis episode brought into stark relief the hazards of promoting the company’s values to a global audience during polarizing times.

“Disney provides a product: entertainment,” said Charles Elson, a former director at the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “It shouldn’t be about politics.”

Besides, Elson said, it becomes messy and costly for companies to extricate themselves after taking a political stand.

“When you get into politics, you are making a statement,” Elson said. “And when you get out, that also becomes a statement.”

_________

Disney is trying to walk — but not cross — the line. During its meeting with shareholders earlier this year, Iger said he believes Disney has “a responsibility to do good in the world.”

“The Disney company can have a positive impact on the world ... fostering acceptance and understanding of ... people of all different types,” Iger told CNBC last spring. “But we need to be an entertainment-first company.”

Anyways, this is just more of Disney and larger journalism revealing their ... maybe not even cowardice, but certainly their deference to the dollar. They rode the diversity train for as long as it was popular, but the moment audience's interests changed, so did their loyalties. There is something there that I absolutely think is worth lamenting.

Gratefully, we'll probably continue to see Disney doing things like centering films on historically marginalized racial groups (of course, only non-franchise films, and we can only guess at how often we'll be seeing those in the future). But race-swapping will probably go away, at least for headlining characters. Queer representation, meanwhile, will likely disappear and/or be relegated strictly to subtext.

I swear, I'm not wanting to be Debbie-Downer, but I also believe that for progress to happen, one has to be honest about the plate they're being handed and the obstacles they're facing. There is certainly work to be done.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

A lot of it is just assembling statements we've already heard before.

The salient points:

And Iger signed off on the settlement of a high-profile defamation lawsuit brought last spring by President-elect Donald Trump, amid howls from journalists that the owner of ABC News had caved to political pressure.

Disney agreed to pay $1 million for Trump’s legal fees and donate another $15 million for Trump’s future presidential library.

Trump sued ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos last spring after the journalist asserted during an on-air interview that a civil court jury had found Trump “liable for rape” in a case brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. Instead, New York jurors determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse.”

Some First Amendment experts believed ABC had a winning case, in part, because of a high hurdle for public officials to prove defamation.

The network “might well have prevailed if they had hung in there,” prominent journalist Margaret Sullivan wrote in a Substack opinion piece. “Instead, this outcome encourages Trump in his attacks on the press — and he needs no encouragement.”

Disney declined to comment for this story or make Iger available for an interview.

_________

DeSantis seized on Disney’s shifting stance and branded the company as “woke.”

In conservative circles, the pejorative label stuck.

“When you assign a private entity to a political team, then very quickly people will begin to view things in that light,” said Michael Binder, a University of North Florida political science professor who studied the Disney-DeSantis dispute.

Iger, who returned as chief executive two years ago to replace Chapek, recognized the existential threat.

“Our primary mission needs to be to entertain,” Iger said during the company’s 2023 investor meeting. “It should not be agenda-driven.”

Iger increasingly has stressed the importance of steering the company away from overt political messaging.

“The stories you tell have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach but that audience, because they are so diverse ... can be turned off by certain things,” Iger said during an April appearance on CNBC. “We just have to be more sensitive to the interests of a broad audience. It’s not easy.”

_________

Disney’s nearly two-year fight with DeSantis was bruising.

“DeSantis was using Disney as a political foil to make a case for his run for presidency,” said Binder, the director of University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab. “That was not something that we had seen before: Governors and elected officials outwardly attacking private companies, particularly a Republican going after a company.”

University researchers found DeSantis’ “woke” campaign against Disney had gained traction, at least among conservatives — despite the fact that Disney has long been one of Florida’s largest employers and a pillar of its tourism economy.

In a public opinion poll in early 2023 of Florida registered voters, the Public Opinion Research Lab found that only about 27% of Republicans in the state had a “favorable” view of Disney. Meanwhile, 76% of the Democrats polled were fans of the Mouse House.

“There was a huge split, and that’s not great for a company that’s trying to market to everybody,” Binder said.

__________

Disney settled with Florida, but the DeSantis episode brought into stark relief the hazards of promoting the company’s values to a global audience during polarizing times.

“Disney provides a product: entertainment,” said Charles Elson, a former director at the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “It shouldn’t be about politics.”

Besides, Elson said, it becomes messy and costly for companies to extricate themselves after taking a political stand.

“When you get into politics, you are making a statement,” Elson said. “And when you get out, that also becomes a statement.”

_________

Disney is trying to walk — but not cross — the line. During its meeting with shareholders earlier this year, Iger said he believes Disney has “a responsibility to do good in the world.”

“The Disney company can have a positive impact on the world ... fostering acceptance and understanding of ... people of all different types,” Iger told CNBC last spring. “But we need to be an entertainment-first company.”

Anyways, this is just more of Disney and larger journalism revealing their ... maybe not even cowardice, but certainly their deference to the dollar. They rode the diversity train for as long as it was popular, but the moment audience's interests changed, so did their loyalties. There is something there that I absolutely think is worth lamenting.

Gratefully, we'll probably continue to see Disney doing things like centering films on historically marginalized racial groups (of course, only non-franchise films, and we can only guess at how often we'll be seeing those in the future). But race-swapping will probably go away, at least for headlining characters. Queer representation, meanwhile, will likely disappear and/or be relegated strictly to subtext.

I swear, I'm not wanting to be Debbie-Downer, but I also believe that for progress to happen, one has to be honest about the plate they're being handed and the obstacles they're facing. There is certainly work to be done.

If they really did plan on making queer representation go away or be relegated to sub-text, how come they didn’t cut out Billy Maximoff’s LGBTQ elements from Agatha All Along and allowed Marvel Studios to have LGBTQ representation with Eternals, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, along with The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, Big Shot, Love, Victor, All of Us Strangers, etc? And how come shows like Daredevil: Born Again and IronHeart won’t have transgender representation cut out from those two shows most likely?

Seems that they think LGBTQ representation is allowed in live-action Disney fare and not animated fare because animated fare is associated with kids and parents don’t want kids to learn about transsexual stuff because parents are horrified seeing women turn into men and men turn into women.

[Disney's Divinity]

Personally, I don't buy this whole argument that Disney "rode diversity" anyway. They've had a mixture of films with White characters and films featuring other races since the '90s. That won't change, Moana's sequel is hitting a billion after all. The only thing I expect them to shy away from are racebending main characters in remakes, that's all. They hadn't had substantial LGBT representation anyway aside from Ethan in Strange World who felt secondary to Searcher and the grandfather. And it's not as if every film would feature LGBT anyway--why would it? There will always be space and time between films that do.

[PatchofBlue]

If they really did plan on making queer representation go away or be relegated to sub-text, how come they didn’t cut out Billy Maximoff’s LGBTQ elements from Agatha All Along and allowed Marvel Studios to have LGBTQ representation with Eternals, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, along with The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, Big Shot, Love, Victor, All of Us Strangers, etc? And how come shows like Daredevil: Born Again and IronHeart won’t have transgender representation cut out from those two shows most likely?

Seems that they think LGBTQ representation is allowed in live-action Disney fare and not animated fare because animated fare is associated with kids and parents don’t want kids to learn about transsexual stuff because parents are horrified seeing women turn into men and men turn into women.

I think you've already circled in on the answer. The public has always had a weirdly fluid definition of "Disney" that sometimes includes their subsidiaries like Marvel and Star Wars and sometimes doesn't, but at least when parents tend to talk about "dISneY goNe ToO woKE," it's usually in reference to the animated movies they put on for their kids to babysit them while they go and get dinner cooked. Those are the films that they fear are going to bibbidi bobbidi boo their kids into homosexuals.

There's always been an attempt to straddle both crowds, but Disney through most of the 2010s, their most recent high period, made some bolder attempts to use their platform to advance marginalized groups. Not just in the inclusion of diverse cultures onscreen, but in more earnest attempts to represent them with nuance and deliberation and bring about real change in the discourse.

And to be clear, I don't always think that was handled gracefully on Disney's part. It was this kind of attitude that always got us low-hanging commentary of their animated films, like how the 2019 remake promised that Jasmine wasn't going to be a passive little flower like she was in the animated film, and I've gone on record multiple times here about how irritating I found that kind of thing.

But there was at least a baby in that bathwater--an underlying possibility that these films had not only an opportunity to advance social causes, but a responsibility to do so. That's very much in line with how I view not just Disney specifically, but storytelling as a whole. While I was at university, I actually had the opportunity to watch a screening of COCO that was immediately followed up with a panel that included Lee Unkrich. During the question-and-answer session, a girl in the crowd who was of Hispanic heritage stood up and actually thanked Unkrich for creating a movie that so lovingly and respectfully represented her culture, and the other members of the crowd (who I assume were also Latin-American) applauded.

And Disney responding basically to complaints that they were bringing too much politics into the game with, "You know what--that was our bad! We should have known better than to try to heal the world. We'll go back to making Toy Story sequels," portends something very troubling. I don't think that we ought to be complacent. Maybe the bad-faith voices in the conversation will go back to sleep now that they defeated race-swapped Ariels and Buzz Lightyear's lesbian friends and leave the COCOs and Moanas alone, but living in the world that I do, I'm not convinced that this is guaranteed. If they see this as their victory, we can't be secure that they won't keep coming.

If twenty years down the road it turns out I was overreacting, I will happily eat crow with a side of mesquite. But I will be called a drama queen before I will be called an enabler. I'm not content to ignore the thunderclouds just because they're a little far off right now. When crises do get averted, it's because people take note and take action.

[Disney's Divinity]

Ironically, Coco always felt like one of the more criticized films that had diverse casts for trying to trademark a holiday. That and Pocahontas. Besides them, I only remember Maui in Moana receiving much blowback, but not at the same level.

I'm not sure what action needs to be taken though since diversity still seems largely on the plate with both the Moana and Encanto franchises around or how casual miviegoers can take action. Even with the remakes, even if they do eschew main character bends in future, there will still be bends of secondary characters like with remakes in the latter 2010s at least. The only thing to worry about for the moment are original films coming a little less often, unfortunately. The only way to help thar is to support original products through purchasing power.

[PatchofBlue]

I think action can look like a lot of things, many of which I think will reveal themselves over time. I wouldn't limit our options just to supporting subpar remakes, which I'd agree isn't necessarily helpful. If we're waiting for more viable avenues, I think we can also look to recent offerings that meet all the necessary criteria and make sure they're getting their due. (I was under the impression that we both liked Turning Red and Domee Shi?) And this is all, of course, just on the Disney side of things.

[D23ExpoVisitor25]

Ironically, Coco always felt like one of the more criticized films that had diverse casts for trying to trademark a holiday. That and Pocahontas. Besides them, I only remember Maui in Moana receiving much blowback, but not at the same level.

I'm not sure what action needs to be taken though since diversity still seems largely on the plate with both the Moana and Encanto franchises around or how casual miviegoers can take action. Even with the remakes, even if they do eschew main character bends in future, there will still be bends of secondary characters like with remakes in the latter 2010s at least. The only thing to worry about for the moment are original films coming a little less often, unfortunately. The only way to help thar is to support original products through purchasing power.

Which is why the success of Pixar’s Elio this coming June is crucial to make happen no matter how hard it is and no matter how big the cost may be.