A new report at Bloomberg (via The Wrap) has gone into the troubles facing Disney and its CEO Bob Iger.
The issues stem from Disney alienating a large consumer base that I'm not sure they'll ever get back. They’re in trouble. To the point where, sources say, company chief Iger is feeling “overwhelmed and exhausted.”
The studio has been facing box office flops, losing Disney+ subscribers and theme park attendance has dipped. Can they make a comeback? They have “The Marvels” coming up next month.
This year has been a bad one for the mouse house with unexpected cultural backlash, movies with ridiculous budgets garnering mixed reviews and unimpressive box office results. The sole exception seems to be James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” but the filmmaking recently left Disney to oversee Warner Bros’ DCU.
What’s been left are movies with $200-$300 million budgets, failing to ignite a large enough audience: “Lightyear,” “Strange World,” “Elemental,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Haunted Mansion” all underperformed.
Meanwhile, Disney’s streamer, Disney+, has reportedly been losing hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter, with subscribers fleeing the subscription service. This has all led to Disney’s stock price falling from $191 per share back in March 2021 to as low as $78.32 a share last Wednesday.
Back in June, an analysis of the company’s film sector revealed that Disney might have lost as much as $900 million on its 2022-2023 box-office flops, and that was before “The Haunted Mansion” was released (which could lose as much as $100 million dollars).
If you remember, Disney’s “Diversity Chief” suddenly left her position in June. Latondra Newton was in charge of diversifying content at the mouse house since 2017. Does her sudden departure have anything to do with Disney’s recent movie failures? I believe it’s much more than just her, but it signaled a major change in creative decision-making.
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.