The Walt Disney Company is celebrating a huge milestone this year with its 100th anniversary, which is a bit ironic considering their performance recently. To commemorate a century of storytelling, CEO Bob Iger reemphasizes the company’s focus on providing audiences with quality shows in an address to employees. Since, you know, that hasn’t really been working out.
2023 hasn’t gone quite as Disney expected with just one box office hit and several disappointments. The House of Mouse also had a wave of layoffs involving several thousand positions amid a massive “corporate restructuring”. This isn’t really how a company wants to celebrate its centennial year.
In his message at Disney’s Town Hall on Tuesday, Iger says that the company is committed to quality over quantity as the company switches from a “fixing” period to “one of building again.” We’ll wait and see how this shakes out, and whether its an actual commitment or just more corporate doublespeak.
“I talk about optimism being an extraordinarily important trait of a leader, because no one wants to follow a pessimist. But I also believe that hopeless optimism doesn’t do anybody any good,” Iger said during the company Town Hall.
“I have, I think, real reason — and we have real reason as Disney — to be optimists, and it starts with the fact that we’re Disney. And Disney, as you know, is a brand unto itself, but it’s also an umbrella company that houses many assets and many great brands. So, reason to be optimistic No. 1 is that.”
Iger shared that he knew he would face many challenges when he decided to return after stepping away from the role in 2020. Disney’s Chief said that returning to the post wasn’t easy but he hasn’t second-guessed his decision to come back.
The year has been marked by a series of poor performances from expected blockbusters like Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and Little Mermaid, while marquee films Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Marvels were massive box office bombs.
Wish, the studio’s most recent release, isn’t doing too well at the box office either adding to a streak of low-performers. To even things out a bit, Disney did have strong performances from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Pixar’s Elementals.
“We obviously want to build our studio back to making not only great films consistently, but [to] our preeminent status in the business,” Iger stated. Disney was a box office juggernaut in 2019, Iger’s last full year at the helm. The company raked in $11 billion in just a single year with Avengers: Endgame, Frozen II, Toy Story 4, The Lion King, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Disney previously said that it was streamlining its releases, especially with Marvel Studios, in a bid to focus on providing better content. The company also removed movies and TV shows from Disney+ in a conscious effort to cut costs. Both Iger and Feige stressed the importance of focusing on storytelling with their projects.
The quality of content may not be Disney’s only issue as it faces a string of underwhelming movies and shows. It may also be a case of content fatigue, especially with Marvel projects, as viewers are constantly bombarded by a stream of new titles.
Understandably, Disney needs to populate its streaming platform with new content but audiences may have already grown tired of the usual formula that made the company the entertainment giant that it is. The studio may want to look at innovative new content to propel the company into the next century.
Despite its current struggles, Disney is still in pretty great shape and is now focused on building the brand up again. It is safe to say that we will be seeing more years of storytelling from the House of Mouse.
