Say you became CEO of Disney today, whats your move? Are you splitting off ESPN, getting out of streaming, doubling down on anything?
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If I were Iger, I'd double down harder and take Disney back to its origins. Layoffs yes, but I'd fire anyone who has been on recent projects that were slanted to showing Disney cares about different colored characters. These movies flopped (not because of inclusion) but because it was so forced that it made for a terrible movie. You've had movies like Lightyear (of which should have done well) bomb for having a gay kiss scenes in a children's movie and for poor story writing. The basics are getting fucked with: make good stories and profits will increase. They have an aresenal for their parks now (Simpsons, Marvel, etc) that they will need to deploy into the parks but that is a 10 year mission with insanely high Capex. I think that volume and interest from the parks could be paid for by selling their stake in Hulu and breaking off ESPN. Keep Disney + but raise the prices (that consumers will pay) given Disney goes back to the magic story telling. Disney really needs to bathe in this turbulence, sell off assets to invest in the next set of core assets capable of expanding its legacy (a marvel theme park would bring a surplus of new fans). It's a messy fix but one that actually can put them on a different level.
Agree on a lot of points.
I weigh whether they should continue with streaming or entirely break away from it and just license content. I don't know if Iger will let Disney+ fail while he is there, but if they dump Hulu in a sell they will have to license some of their "non-Disney" content anyway.
They went nose first into streaming, focusing on customers first and profits for another year. Not surprising at all when they start scratching their heads going hang on where's the money gone? Investors want a right side up business model and they can't give it with their limited content base. They've dug themselves in a hole that I think exiting streaming will plug, investing back into the parks and new content from 21st century acquisition, and try to steady the waters that way. Either way, the fanbase of Mickey and Cinderella is dwindling. They need something new that starts with a profit skew.
Very well said, +1 SB.
Bring back animated series for Marvel characters. There were some really great ones in the 90s - silver surfer stood out as a particularly fantastic bit of TV. They do a lot of disservice to the source material by trying to kludge long storylines into a few hours of blockbuster film, animation is a far better format (although probably not as lucrative)
I would go on a buying spree to horde as much evergreen IP as possible.
Disney is excellent at managing IP, and they should lean into that.
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