Disney Has Quietly Killed Several Projects as it Tries to Turn Around Struggling Streamers, Slumping Box Office
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom confernece, Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted to having quashed several movies.
Disney simply no longer carries the heft it once did as an entertainment company. Outside of the pandemic-stricken 2020 and 2021 movie slates, 2023 was the first year since 2014 that Disney did not see a movie gross $1 billion in theaters, and despite cost-cutting measures and price increases its streaming services are still losing money. Disney CEO Bob Iger still has faith in his strategy to turn things around for the company, but he revealed this week that part of that strategy has been to use a tactic universally castigated when it’s been employed by Warner Bros. Discovery in the recent past: killing TV shows and movies in some stage of production.
- Iger revealed that Disney has nixed several projects it didn’t feel were “strong enough.”
- The CEO said that deciding to kill shows and movies was “not easy,” but was also “very important.”
- He also denied that franchise fatigue had set in around Marvel, and that viewers were simply craving high-quality titles again.
Investor concerns over Disney’s recent failures at the box office are part of the reason that Iger is facing another proxy fight from activist investor Nelson Peltz. When discussing improving his company’s film slate at the 2024 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference this week, Iger revealed that it Disney executives had shut down an unknown number of productions they felt would not produce the box office results they wanted.
“You have to kill things you no longer believe in, Iger said. “That’s not easy in this business because either you’ve gotten started, you have some sunk costs or it’s a relationship with either your employees or with the creative community. And it’s not an easy thing, but you got to make those tough calls. We’ve actually made those tough calls. We’ve not been that public about it, but we’ve killed a few projects already that we just didn’t feel were strong enough. That’s very, very important”
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made himself the target of industry scorn in 2022, when the company decided to mothball a live-action “Batgirl” movie that was nearly complete in favor of a $90 million tax write-down. In 2023, WBD repeated the practice with the animated “Coyote vs. Acme” movie, which was shopped to other media companies before WBD ultimately decided to make it a tax write-down instead. Iger is admitting to following highly similar tactics, though keeping a better lid on the titles his company has put the kibosh on in recent months. The biggest difference seems to be the tone of regret with which he has announced these cuts, rather than the brash defiance expressed by Zaslav when questioned about shutting down movies that were nearly complete.
Disney has made some public content removals from Disney+ and Hulu, but these were shows and movies that had already been released and deemed as underperformers. Viewers may never learn the names of the titles nixed by Disney before they could be released, unless the creators responsible for making them decide to go public.
No Such Thing as Marvel Fatigue?
Iger also discussed the struggles that Marvel films have been having in theaters recently. “The Marvels” is just the latest example; the film has made less than $210 million at the box office, and the last Marvel movie to make $1 billion in cinemas was 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which was produced and distributed in partnership with Sony.
Despite the difficulties this tentpole franchise has experienced of late, Iger has little time for the argument that audiences are suffering from superhero fatigue.
“A lot of people think it’s audience fatigue. It’s not audience fatigue,” he argued. “They want great films. And if you build it, great, they will come. And there are countless examples of that.”
He pointed to the fact that Disney has reduced its output of Marvel titles, both theatrically and on Disney+ as a way the company is shifting its ground on the franchise. He stressed that the studio is trying to improve the quality of Marvel titles instead of trying to simply keep churning out new shows and movies, and reiterated his faith in the Marvel team to deliver better quality going forward.
The success of the trailer for “Deadpool & Wolverine” has to be encouraging for Iger. Disney shared that in the first 24 hours after the release of the trailer, it had managed to accrue 365 million views. The film will see the popular Deadpool character officially enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and will also star Hugh Jackman as the gruff, beloved Wolverine.
It remains to be seen whether “Deadpool & Wolverine” will bring Disney back to cinematic success in 2024, but Iger is clearly bullish on his company’s movie slate in the next few years.
“I feel that we will return the studio to not only excellence creatively, but excellence in terms of the bottom line,” the CEO promised.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”