15 ms·

Bob Iger back as Disney CEO

221 points by dagmx 4y ago

Owen69 4y ago
[dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fastball 4y ago
Title should probably be changed to something like "Bob Iger Back as CEO of Disney, replacing Bob Chapek" because the current title has auto-dropped the exclamation point after "Disney Shocker!" and makes it sound like Bob Iger is a "Disney Shocker". Especially since the reason Iger left is that he just wanted to retire. Basically everyone at Disney wanted him to stay.
- dang 4y ago
  Fixed. Thanks!
rabuse 4y ago
This may hopefully improve the quality issues their parks have been facing while under Chapek's "penny pinching" ideology.
- tim-- 4y ago
  Bob Iger has had a lot of vanity projects over at Disney. The amount of debt that was put on after Disney acquired Fox (and not even all the parts they really wanted - Comcast got that!) is pretty high. A good overview can be found on this video essay: https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 Disney's long term debt for 2020 was $52.917B, a 38.78% increase from 2019. Disney's long term debt for 2019 was $38.129B, a 123.19% increase from 2018. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-te... Yes, Disney is slowly throwing money at the problem and reducing it's debt, but it's still a pretty high load. Still not as bad as Warner Bro's Discovery though. Warner Bros Discovery long term debt for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 was $48.612B, a 236.74% increase year-over-year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-discovery/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-di...
  - rabuse 4y ago
    Thanks for this.
  - divbzero 4y ago
    The acquisition of Fox assets dwarfs Disney’s previous acquisitions of content: 2019 $71.3 B for 21st Century Fox 2012 $4.1 B for Lucasfilm 2009 $4.2 B for Marvel 2006 $6.3 B for Pixar As well as Disney’s other billion dollar acquisitions: 2016 $2.9 B for BAMTech 2001 $2.9 B for Fox Family 1999 $1.8 B for Infoseek 1996 $19.0 B for Capital Cities/ABC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney Bob Iger must have been eager to bulk up before the launch of Disney+?
    - tim-- 4y ago
      Which is understandable. 21st Century Fox was a much larger company than any of the other three mentioned companies - with sales offices, distribution deals with other studios, physical movie studios, large television production units (especially that output content in the UK/AU). 21st Century Fox also owned the rights to hundreds of movies (Avatar, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dr. Seuss) and plenty of television (1/3 of Hulu, The Simpsons). They also had the movie rights to some of the Marvel characters. I don't know how much that was worth to Igor, but it seems that he really wants to get the family all back under one roof. It's interesting that you mention the ABC acquisition - in today's money that would cost $36.09 billion - just roughly half of the Fox acquisition.
  - mdasen 4y ago
    In terms of annual revenue, Disney has $83B against $29B for Paramount Global, $30B for Netflix, and $13B for Warner Bros Discovery. So Disney's debt is 0.6x revenue while Warner Bros Discovery's debt is 3.7x revenue. If Disney's debt is a problem, WBD is drowning. What did Comcast get other than the 39% of Sky that Fox owned? The Fox Sports RSN went to Sinclair. I can appreciate the issues around debt, but Disney also acquired a huge amount of IP and market control in entertainment in the deal. They've left the Fox broadcast networks without a TV studio for their content (and first-run is becoming less important in the era of streaming). They've gotten so many of the most important IP franchises out there. They've become by far the largest movie studio. In an era where entertainment is becoming vertically integrated from creation to streaming, it seems like Disney has locked down so much of the future. We see how others are struggling. Paramount is trying to make the most of Star Trek and is the smallest major movie studio. Warner Bros Discovery is an also-ran with HBO Max - and having trouble figuring out the way forward with HBO Max/Discovery+/(the canceled) CNN+. WBD is also struggling with many of their franchises fizzling out: the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts universe is mired by JK Rowling's problematic politics and Ezra Miller's many issues; they seem to be having trouble getting their DC properties to perform how they'd like having canceled Batgirl when it was almost finished and talking about refocusing the franchise. Sony is an independent studio, but lacks the integrated platform that the other 4 have. Comcast/NBCUniversal is still trying to figure out what Peacock is and having trouble even attracting free users. Iger talked about making the call to buy the IP needed to really create a vertically integrated company that would be able to support a streaming service without licensing lots of outside content. It started with Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel who gave Disney a huge amount of content and talent. Fox was expensive, but also gave Disney the rest of the Marvel universe (except Spiderman) along with so much more content and a huge amount of control of the box office and TV. Disney is in a very strong position relative to their competitors. I think Disney is going to look pretty good in a decade. The economies of scale of running a large streaming service seem likely to help Disney a lot (having many more customers paying for the same content and allowing you to afford more of it). That's not to say Paramount, WBD, and others can't compete, but it does seem like Disney owns so much more which lets them offer more and secures their position. People got Netflix because it offered more and it's hard to see how Paramount or WBD or NBCUniversal could offer as much as Disney could. Now, Disney will try and figure out what the minimum it can offer while keeping users is, but they have such a depth of content that it puts them in the driver's seat a bit.
- fasthands9 4y ago
  I dont have the historic knowledge of the parks change but I have been often in the last years as a friend of mine has employee passes. I found them to be exceptionally clean with friendly staff. Leagues ahead of other parks. By far the worst part of the experience was that it was too crowded. Raising prices or limiting annual pass holders would help solve this but I feel like that falls into the penny pinching category. Lower attendance cap would also help but would be surprised if they did that given it is capping your income.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Starting to charge for parking at the resorts, continuously increasing food prices, still requiring park reservations, and the virtual queue[0] are some of the biggest downsides of the past few years attributed to Chapek. 0: which was instated to prevent 4+ hour wait times for Rise of the Resistance
    - fasthands9 4y ago
      It just seems like these complains have a "Its too crowded no one goes there anymore" vibe. I feel like maybe the nickel and diming is not worth it - but fundamentally it seems like they need to lower the daily attendance and probably the easiest way to do that will keeping income stable is to raise ticket prices.
  - InTheArena 4y ago
    Gee, if only someone had an unbelievably massive amount of land in Florida, and Long Beach, with which to open a new gate. I mean other than universal
    - fasthands9 4y ago
      I do think this is the best option. Disneyland is cramped but it appears they will be given land to expand soon. I think they are worried a third US park would eat into the brand - but have always been a bit surprised they haven't tried to do one in Texas. There is a lot of land there that is cheap and geographically could serve different audience.
- dawnerd 4y ago
  I don’t think it will since a lot of these changes were started under Iger. Chapek became CEO at the worst possible time and had to deal with park shutdowns and staffing issues. Of course there were going to be service cutbacks. My visit last weekend was markedly better than the week prior etc.
ProAm 4y ago
its good its a change, but bad its the former CEO. That means this company is in real trouble. There will be a new CEO within 14 months.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  It's not a Jack Dorsey situation where they're just throwing old CEOs at the wall to see what sticks -- Iger ran Disney incredibly well and no one wanted him to leave. edit: see echelon's comment
  - ProAm 4y ago
    No Iger is awesome, but I dont want a CEO that doesnt want to be CEO. They could have planned better rather than doing a mulligan.
  - coolandsmartrr 4y ago
    True, it was Iger who spearheaded acquisition initiatives. In an age of increasing media production, consumers are more confused to pick what to consume. Iger consolidated many strong franchises (e.g. Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars) under Disney, and box-office charts are full of Disney-owned studios. For reference, link to echelon's comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688663
- thedorkknight 4y ago
  Why 14 specifically?
  - sjs382 4y ago
    14 months = start of 2024.
- BryantD 4y ago
  I’d say 24 months, given that the Board explicitly said it was a 2 year contract to give Iger time to train his successor.
- 4y ago
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Huh. I’m not terribly surprised - Bob Chapek’s leadership has been “less than ideal” from many different angles (political skirmishes, scattershot Marvel Phase 4, Disney+ still being unprofitable, theme park cost increases). Still surprising that something happened about it. However, maybe it isn’t. The stock is down 40% YTD, 10% over the last 5 years. Pretty mediocre. Not that it’s been a great year for any stock, but losing 2/5ths value is still an outlier. It’s not hard to see why. A $1.5 billion operating loss in the streaming division last quarter, despite 164M subscribers, is a major black eye. With $5.96/mo. being the average worth of a user, that means approximately $977 million monthly in streaming revenue, or $2.93 Billion per quarter - yet Disney is somehow spending $4.43 Billion per quarter to keep the streaming subscription ship afloat. If I’m an investor, I’m skeptical that Disney+ will ever obtain profitability. Raise prices, lose subscriptions. Make original content to keep people subscribed - but it costs money to make, eats profitability, and so far hasn’t been a huge subscription-saver. Thus the ad-based tier upcoming to try to fix the hole…
- make3 4y ago
  aren't literally every stock down?
  - Denvercoder9 4y ago
    Most defense stocks are up YTD.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    IBM is up 8% YTD, for one example. Kind of a shocker but good for them.
    - dmak 4y ago
      Were they not impacted by the pandemic?
      - tim-- 4y ago
        I suggest they got tens of extra multi-hundred million dollar contracts throughout the pandemic. https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6429705 https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6429705
themihai 4y ago
Hopefully Disney will cut the political sermon from the next movies. I've just watched "Eternals" and couldn't believe it's a Disney movie.
- cocacola1 4y ago
  Eternals was in production since 2018. Its filming was mostly complete by February 2020, when Chapek took over. It’s also Marvel and under Feige’s purview.
  - themihai 4y ago
    Disney bought Marvel in 2009 but you are right avout Chapek. It looks like the hope in Disney is lost!
    - cocacola1 4y ago
      Disney did buy Marvel, but as with Pixar and Lucasfilm, the heads of each seem to get a decent amount of leeway to operate as they want.
      - themihai 4y ago
        I really doubt that kind of stuff passes the cut without approval from Disney executives. Have you watched Eternals?
        cocacola1 4y ago
        I did. Not great, not terrible. Unlike, say, Love & Thunder, which was actually bad (especially after Ragnarok, which I enjoyed).
- SanjayMehta 4y ago
  We used to look forward to Disney releases but something happened around 2015 which made them sanctimonious and forgettable.
gsatic 4y ago
Iger has said Disney has built enough capacity to generate more entertainment than the world has cash to consume. The mega machine has become so efficient, they can produce a new marvel level movie everyday if they wanted too. But there aren't enough customers for it. So the question is, once your corporate mega machine has become this efficient what do you even do next?
- elzbardico 4y ago
  I don't care about Marvel. What I dream about is a steady stream of new, original science fiction movies, self-contained, without sequels.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Obviously they’ll start building customers. Soon the robots will out-shop you.
  - _carbyau_ 4y ago
    Buying a GPU is very much a competition vs bots...
- autotune 4y ago
  Hopefully release more movies on Disney+ that remain high quality. I just quit Netflix because their relative output is higher but quality is complete garbage. We need something better.
- karp773 4y ago
  Diversify. Not everyone is a fan of Marvel. But I would happily watch a new episode of Silicon Valley or Friends level show every day. I wish Mike Judge made a show about FTX and crypto. :) that would be hilarious.
  - hnthrowaway1099 4y ago
    Wow brilliant idea, Silicon Valley needs a reboot.
karp773 4y ago
It would be cool if he fixes ESPN sports streaming. I subscribed to watch some college sports. The content is there but impossible to find. The UI is beyond awful, it's incomprehensible.
okapidigital 4y ago
The board has been publicly praising Chapek- cable decline must be accelerating?
madrox 4y ago
I'm less shocked by this than I thought I would be. Chapek was a weird choice to begin with, and the way Iger transitioned out was very unlike him. I've always suspected there was a reason for it we never heard about. My personal theory has been he was trying to broker a merger between Apple and Disney the last couple years, but COVID and Chapek's management made that a bad deal.
- coolandsmartrr 4y ago
  I've always wondered why Chapek was picked. It seems that CEO often choose head of the most successful division as successors (e.g. Amazon's Jeff Bezos choosing then-AWS chief Andy Jassy as CEO). Meanwhile, Disney parks invested massively into the struggling initiative of digitization. Additionally, Chapek's timid personality did not seem as conducive in the people-centric entertainment industry.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Disney is known for having byzantine internal politics, which was likely kicked up a notch with the FOX acquisition. With so many executives all maneuvering it likely was the least painful option to pick him.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    Bob Iger was a tremendously successful CEO. CEO’s tend to have big time egos, and successful ones seem to not like the prospect of being outdone by their immediate successor. Perhaps it is similar to the phenomenon of presidential candidates picking lackluster VPs for their running mate? If you really want to think in a Machiavellian way, perhaps Iger hand picked Chapek to act as a fall guy so that market pressure would hit the stock during his watch and not spoil his own tenure. The most likely thing is that Chapek was simply seen as failing to maintain all the growth Iger managed to deliver and they want him back in order to try claw some of that stock price back.
- no_butterscotch 4y ago
  > My personal theory has been he was trying to broker a merger between Apple and Disney the last couple years, but COVID and Chapek's management made that a bad deal. History is muddled due to the last few years, I thought Iger got caught up in a "#metoo" situation. But that was probably someone else.
gobobbygo 4y ago
Disney needs a VR play. Steam would be a nice add to their portfolio.
- camdenlock 4y ago
  oh god no please don’t put this idea out into the universe
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  Thank Christ Valve is a private company.
- madrox 4y ago
  Disney has experimented with VR since the inception, and there’s reasons they haven’t made a play. There’s no home market, and the costs and throughput of doing it in the park don’t have the economics.
- lewisflude 4y ago
  One of my first experiences with VR was at Disneyquest in Florida in the late 90s/early 00s. It was absolutely wild. Some images/info here: https://www.roadtovr.com/end-of-an-era-disneyquest-first-vr-attraction-set-to-close/ https://www.roadtovr.com/end-of-an-era-disneyquest-first-vr-...
- BryantD 4y ago
  https://www.ilmxlab.com https://www.ilmxlab.com
anshumankmr 4y ago
There's no page on Bob Chapek anymore at Disney's website. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/leaders/bob-chapek/ https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/leaders/bob-chapek/
- incomingpain 4y ago
  It will take some time but his wiki page will also go down. They will erase him from history.
  - skrowl 4y ago
    Good. He was terrible for Disney and deserves to be forgotten.
dibt 4y ago
The stock has been under performing the S&P 500 since 2015, when Iger was CEO. There was a bit of out performance when Disney+ was released, but then resumed under performance. Chapek wasn't the only reason for this. I wouldn't want to own it. All content producers seem to be performing poorly.
fareesh 4y ago
Is it a requirement for the CEO to be a Robert
- iamtedd 4y ago
  That's only two of them. Previous to Iger, Eisner was a Michael. Two doesn't make a trend.
  - devoutsalsa 4y ago
    But the last three CEOs have been Robert!
    - krustyburger 4y ago
      head bobs in agreement
      - hyperdimension 4y ago
        That...was excellent.
ManuelKiessling 4y ago
> Iger has been noted for his kindness by David Geffen, who said: "I have never heard one person say a bad thing about him and I have never seen him be mean". I obviously cannot verify this, but I hope it's true because I like the idea that it's not unthinkable how someone can get to the top of the corporate world while also being a nice person.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anshumankmr 4y ago
  He was able to convince Steve Jobs to sell Pixar, Lucas to sell Star Wars, somehow get Marvel and Sony to co-produce Spider-Man (with the help of Kevin Feige), and also to buy 21st Century Fox from the Murdochs. That requires some skill and even empathy when required. For example, it had become very obvious Lucas wouldn't be able to direct his long desired sequel trilogy, so I am sure he must have used empathy as a part of his negotiation. Allegedly,he was able to get a handshake deal that they would use Lucas's script ideas for Ep VII (which they dropped once the deal was done)
  - abcd_f 4y ago
    > Lucas's script ideas for Ep VII (which they dropped once the deal was done) Oooh, you wouldn't have some sort of a link that elaborates on this?
    - anshumankmr 4y ago
      https://www.insider.com/george-lucas-felt-betrayed-disney-scrapped-star-wars-movie-ideas-2019-9 https://www.insider.com/george-lucas-felt-betrayed-disney-sc... https://ew.com/books/2019/09/24/bob-iger-george-lucas-felt-betrayed-disney-star-wars/ https://ew.com/books/2019/09/24/bob-iger-george-lucas-felt-b... That being said, since no one ever has seen that script except maybe some high level execs, it will be quite pointless to speculate on its quality.
      - 4y ago
bilsbie 4y ago
They should build a new theme park in Florida. It’s so crowded now there’s really no magic left. Just massive crowds everywhere.
- q1w2 4y ago
  Have the higher prices thinned out the crowds at all?
- esteth 4y ago
  I don't know if a fifth gate is the solution to overcrowding: Induced demand would likely mean that more people would go because it was less crowded until it reaches peak crowds again fairly shortly after opening. IMO they're struggling to open and maintain enough lasting attractions and park atmosphere areas in the existing parks, and they're making lots of money from inflating queue times and sending people to the shops so I don't really see what they'll do.
  - bilsbie 4y ago
    Can’t you use induced demand to argue against building anything ever?

221 points by dagmx 4y ago

Owen69 4y ago

[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fastball 4y ago

Title should probably be changed to something like "Bob Iger Back as CEO of Disney, replacing Bob Chapek" because the current title has auto-dropped the exclamation point after "Disney Shocker!" and makes it sound like Bob Iger is a "Disney Shocker". Especially since the reason Iger left is that he just wanted to retire. Basically everyone at Disney wanted him to stay.

dang 4y ago
Fixed. Thanks!

rabuse 4y ago

This may hopefully improve the quality issues their parks have been facing while under Chapek's "penny pinching" ideology.

tim-- 4y ago
Bob Iger has had a lot of vanity projects over at Disney. The amount of debt that was put on after Disney acquired Fox (and not even all the parts they really wanted - Comcast got that!) is pretty high. A good overview can be found on this video essay: https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 https://youtu.be/w-4k9c8LZU4?t=377 Disney's long term debt for 2020 was $52.917B, a 38.78% increase from 2019. Disney's long term debt for 2019 was $38.129B, a 123.19% increase from 2018. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/long-te... Yes, Disney is slowly throwing money at the problem and reducing it's debt, but it's still a pretty high load. Still not as bad as Warner Bro's Discovery though. Warner Bros Discovery long term debt for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 was $48.612B, a 236.74% increase year-over-year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-discovery/long-term-debt https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-di...
- rabuse 4y ago
  Thanks for this.
- divbzero 4y ago
  The acquisition of Fox assets dwarfs Disney’s previous acquisitions of content: 2019 $71.3 B for 21st Century Fox 2012 $4.1 B for Lucasfilm 2009 $4.2 B for Marvel 2006 $6.3 B for Pixar As well as Disney’s other billion dollar acquisitions: 2016 $2.9 B for BAMTech 2001 $2.9 B for Fox Family 1999 $1.8 B for Infoseek 1996 $19.0 B for Capital Cities/ABC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Disney Bob Iger must have been eager to bulk up before the launch of Disney+?
  - tim-- 4y ago
    Which is understandable. 21st Century Fox was a much larger company than any of the other three mentioned companies - with sales offices, distribution deals with other studios, physical movie studios, large television production units (especially that output content in the UK/AU). 21st Century Fox also owned the rights to hundreds of movies (Avatar, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dr. Seuss) and plenty of television (1/3 of Hulu, The Simpsons). They also had the movie rights to some of the Marvel characters. I don't know how much that was worth to Igor, but it seems that he really wants to get the family all back under one roof. It's interesting that you mention the ABC acquisition - in today's money that would cost $36.09 billion - just roughly half of the Fox acquisition.
- mdasen 4y ago
  In terms of annual revenue, Disney has $83B against $29B for Paramount Global, $30B for Netflix, and $13B for Warner Bros Discovery. So Disney's debt is 0.6x revenue while Warner Bros Discovery's debt is 3.7x revenue. If Disney's debt is a problem, WBD is drowning. What did Comcast get other than the 39% of Sky that Fox owned? The Fox Sports RSN went to Sinclair. I can appreciate the issues around debt, but Disney also acquired a huge amount of IP and market control in entertainment in the deal. They've left the Fox broadcast networks without a TV studio for their content (and first-run is becoming less important in the era of streaming). They've gotten so many of the most important IP franchises out there. They've become by far the largest movie studio. In an era where entertainment is becoming vertically integrated from creation to streaming, it seems like Disney has locked down so much of the future. We see how others are struggling. Paramount is trying to make the most of Star Trek and is the smallest major movie studio. Warner Bros Discovery is an also-ran with HBO Max - and having trouble figuring out the way forward with HBO Max/Discovery+/(the canceled) CNN+. WBD is also struggling with many of their franchises fizzling out: the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts universe is mired by JK Rowling's problematic politics and Ezra Miller's many issues; they seem to be having trouble getting their DC properties to perform how they'd like having canceled Batgirl when it was almost finished and talking about refocusing the franchise. Sony is an independent studio, but lacks the integrated platform that the other 4 have. Comcast/NBCUniversal is still trying to figure out what Peacock is and having trouble even attracting free users. Iger talked about making the call to buy the IP needed to really create a vertically integrated company that would be able to support a streaming service without licensing lots of outside content. It started with Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel who gave Disney a huge amount of content and talent. Fox was expensive, but also gave Disney the rest of the Marvel universe (except Spiderman) along with so much more content and a huge amount of control of the box office and TV. Disney is in a very strong position relative to their competitors. I think Disney is going to look pretty good in a decade. The economies of scale of running a large streaming service seem likely to help Disney a lot (having many more customers paying for the same content and allowing you to afford more of it). That's not to say Paramount, WBD, and others can't compete, but it does seem like Disney owns so much more which lets them offer more and secures their position. People got Netflix because it offered more and it's hard to see how Paramount or WBD or NBCUniversal could offer as much as Disney could. Now, Disney will try and figure out what the minimum it can offer while keeping users is, but they have such a depth of content that it puts them in the driver's seat a bit.
fasthands9 4y ago
I dont have the historic knowledge of the parks change but I have been often in the last years as a friend of mine has employee passes. I found them to be exceptionally clean with friendly staff. Leagues ahead of other parks. By far the worst part of the experience was that it was too crowded. Raising prices or limiting annual pass holders would help solve this but I feel like that falls into the penny pinching category. Lower attendance cap would also help but would be surprised if they did that given it is capping your income.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Starting to charge for parking at the resorts, continuously increasing food prices, still requiring park reservations, and the virtual queue[0] are some of the biggest downsides of the past few years attributed to Chapek. 0: which was instated to prevent 4+ hour wait times for Rise of the Resistance
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    It just seems like these complains have a "Its too crowded no one goes there anymore" vibe. I feel like maybe the nickel and diming is not worth it - but fundamentally it seems like they need to lower the daily attendance and probably the easiest way to do that will keeping income stable is to raise ticket prices.
- InTheArena 4y ago
  Gee, if only someone had an unbelievably massive amount of land in Florida, and Long Beach, with which to open a new gate. I mean other than universal
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    I do think this is the best option. Disneyland is cramped but it appears they will be given land to expand soon. I think they are worried a third US park would eat into the brand - but have always been a bit surprised they haven't tried to do one in Texas. There is a lot of land there that is cheap and geographically could serve different audience.
dawnerd 4y ago
I don’t think it will since a lot of these changes were started under Iger. Chapek became CEO at the worst possible time and had to deal with park shutdowns and staffing issues. Of course there were going to be service cutbacks. My visit last weekend was markedly better than the week prior etc.

ProAm 4y ago

its good its a change, but bad its the former CEO. That means this company is in real trouble. There will be a new CEO within 14 months.

KerrAvon 4y ago
It's not a Jack Dorsey situation where they're just throwing old CEOs at the wall to see what sticks -- Iger ran Disney incredibly well and no one wanted him to leave. edit: see echelon's comment
- ProAm 4y ago
  No Iger is awesome, but I dont want a CEO that doesnt want to be CEO. They could have planned better rather than doing a mulligan.
- coolandsmartrr 4y ago
  True, it was Iger who spearheaded acquisition initiatives. In an age of increasing media production, consumers are more confused to pick what to consume. Iger consolidated many strong franchises (e.g. Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars) under Disney, and box-office charts are full of Disney-owned studios. For reference, link to echelon's comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688663
thedorkknight 4y ago
Why 14 specifically?
- sjs382 4y ago
  14 months = start of 2024.
BryantD 4y ago
I’d say 24 months, given that the Board explicitly said it was a 2 year contract to give Iger time to train his successor.
4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Huh. I’m not terribly surprised - Bob Chapek’s leadership has been “less than ideal” from many different angles (political skirmishes, scattershot Marvel Phase 4, Disney+ still being unprofitable, theme park cost increases). Still surprising that something happened about it. However, maybe it isn’t. The stock is down 40% YTD, 10% over the last 5 years. Pretty mediocre. Not that it’s been a great year for any stock, but losing 2/5ths value is still an outlier. It’s not hard to see why. A $1.5 billion operating loss in the streaming division last quarter, despite 164M subscribers, is a major black eye. With $5.96/mo. being the average worth of a user, that means approximately $977 million monthly in streaming revenue, or $2.93 Billion per quarter - yet Disney is somehow spending $4.43 Billion per quarter to keep the streaming subscription ship afloat. If I’m an investor, I’m skeptical that Disney+ will ever obtain profitability. Raise prices, lose subscriptions. Make original content to keep people subscribed - but it costs money to make, eats profitability, and so far hasn’t been a huge subscription-saver. Thus the ad-based tier upcoming to try to fix the hole…

make3 4y ago
aren't literally every stock down?
- Denvercoder9 4y ago
  Most defense stocks are up YTD.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  IBM is up 8% YTD, for one example. Kind of a shocker but good for them.
  - dmak 4y ago
    Were they not impacted by the pandemic?
    - tim-- 4y ago
      I suggest they got tens of extra multi-hundred million dollar contracts throughout the pandemic. https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6429705 https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6429705

themihai 4y ago

Hopefully Disney will cut the political sermon from the next movies. I've just watched "Eternals" and couldn't believe it's a Disney movie.

cocacola1 4y ago
Eternals was in production since 2018. Its filming was mostly complete by February 2020, when Chapek took over. It’s also Marvel and under Feige’s purview.
- themihai 4y ago
  Disney bought Marvel in 2009 but you are right avout Chapek. It looks like the hope in Disney is lost!
  - cocacola1 4y ago
    Disney did buy Marvel, but as with Pixar and Lucasfilm, the heads of each seem to get a decent amount of leeway to operate as they want.
    - themihai 4y ago
      I really doubt that kind of stuff passes the cut without approval from Disney executives. Have you watched Eternals?
      - cocacola1 4y ago
        I did. Not great, not terrible. Unlike, say, Love & Thunder, which was actually bad (especially after Ragnarok, which I enjoyed).
SanjayMehta 4y ago
We used to look forward to Disney releases but something happened around 2015 which made them sanctimonious and forgettable.

gsatic 4y ago

Iger has said Disney has built enough capacity to generate more entertainment than the world has cash to consume. The mega machine has become so efficient, they can produce a new marvel level movie everyday if they wanted too. But there aren't enough customers for it. So the question is, once your corporate mega machine has become this efficient what do you even do next?

elzbardico 4y ago
I don't care about Marvel. What I dream about is a steady stream of new, original science fiction movies, self-contained, without sequels.
coffeebeqn 4y ago
Obviously they’ll start building customers. Soon the robots will out-shop you.
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  Buying a GPU is very much a competition vs bots...
autotune 4y ago
Hopefully release more movies on Disney+ that remain high quality. I just quit Netflix because their relative output is higher but quality is complete garbage. We need something better.
karp773 4y ago
Diversify. Not everyone is a fan of Marvel. But I would happily watch a new episode of Silicon Valley or Friends level show every day. I wish Mike Judge made a show about FTX and crypto. :) that would be hilarious.
- hnthrowaway1099 4y ago
  Wow brilliant idea, Silicon Valley needs a reboot.

karp773 4y ago

It would be cool if he fixes ESPN sports streaming. I subscribed to watch some college sports. The content is there but impossible to find. The UI is beyond awful, it's incomprehensible.

okapidigital 4y ago

The board has been publicly praising Chapek- cable decline must be accelerating?

madrox 4y ago

I'm less shocked by this than I thought I would be. Chapek was a weird choice to begin with, and the way Iger transitioned out was very unlike him. I've always suspected there was a reason for it we never heard about. My personal theory has been he was trying to broker a merger between Apple and Disney the last couple years, but COVID and Chapek's management made that a bad deal.

coolandsmartrr 4y ago
I've always wondered why Chapek was picked. It seems that CEO often choose head of the most successful division as successors (e.g. Amazon's Jeff Bezos choosing then-AWS chief Andy Jassy as CEO). Meanwhile, Disney parks invested massively into the struggling initiative of digitization. Additionally, Chapek's timid personality did not seem as conducive in the people-centric entertainment industry.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Disney is known for having byzantine internal politics, which was likely kicked up a notch with the FOX acquisition. With so many executives all maneuvering it likely was the least painful option to pick him.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  Bob Iger was a tremendously successful CEO. CEO’s tend to have big time egos, and successful ones seem to not like the prospect of being outdone by their immediate successor. Perhaps it is similar to the phenomenon of presidential candidates picking lackluster VPs for their running mate? If you really want to think in a Machiavellian way, perhaps Iger hand picked Chapek to act as a fall guy so that market pressure would hit the stock during his watch and not spoil his own tenure. The most likely thing is that Chapek was simply seen as failing to maintain all the growth Iger managed to deliver and they want him back in order to try claw some of that stock price back.
no_butterscotch 4y ago
> My personal theory has been he was trying to broker a merger between Apple and Disney the last couple years, but COVID and Chapek's management made that a bad deal. History is muddled due to the last few years, I thought Iger got caught up in a "#metoo" situation. But that was probably someone else.

gobobbygo 4y ago

Disney needs a VR play. Steam would be a nice add to their portfolio.

camdenlock 4y ago
oh god no please don’t put this idea out into the universe
bobsmooth 4y ago
Thank Christ Valve is a private company.
madrox 4y ago
Disney has experimented with VR since the inception, and there’s reasons they haven’t made a play. There’s no home market, and the costs and throughput of doing it in the park don’t have the economics.
lewisflude 4y ago
One of my first experiences with VR was at Disneyquest in Florida in the late 90s/early 00s. It was absolutely wild. Some images/info here: https://www.roadtovr.com/end-of-an-era-disneyquest-first-vr-attraction-set-to-close/ https://www.roadtovr.com/end-of-an-era-disneyquest-first-vr-...
BryantD 4y ago
https://www.ilmxlab.com https://www.ilmxlab.com

anshumankmr 4y ago

There's no page on Bob Chapek anymore at Disney's website. https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/leaders/bob-chapek/ https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/leaders/bob-chapek/

incomingpain 4y ago
It will take some time but his wiki page will also go down. They will erase him from history.
- skrowl 4y ago
  Good. He was terrible for Disney and deserves to be forgotten.

dibt 4y ago

The stock has been under performing the S&P 500 since 2015, when Iger was CEO. There was a bit of out performance when Disney+ was released, but then resumed under performance. Chapek wasn't the only reason for this. I wouldn't want to own it. All content producers seem to be performing poorly.

fareesh 4y ago

Is it a requirement for the CEO to be a Robert

iamtedd 4y ago
That's only two of them. Previous to Iger, Eisner was a Michael. Two doesn't make a trend.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  But the last three CEOs have been Robert!
  - krustyburger 4y ago
    head bobs in agreement
    - hyperdimension 4y ago
      That...was excellent.

ManuelKiessling 4y ago

> Iger has been noted for his kindness by David Geffen, who said: "I have never heard one person say a bad thing about him and I have never seen him be mean". I obviously cannot verify this, but I hope it's true because I like the idea that it's not unthinkable how someone can get to the top of the corporate world while also being a nice person.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anshumankmr 4y ago
He was able to convince Steve Jobs to sell Pixar, Lucas to sell Star Wars, somehow get Marvel and Sony to co-produce Spider-Man (with the help of Kevin Feige), and also to buy 21st Century Fox from the Murdochs. That requires some skill and even empathy when required. For example, it had become very obvious Lucas wouldn't be able to direct his long desired sequel trilogy, so I am sure he must have used empathy as a part of his negotiation. Allegedly,he was able to get a handshake deal that they would use Lucas's script ideas for Ep VII (which they dropped once the deal was done)
- abcd_f 4y ago
  > Lucas's script ideas for Ep VII (which they dropped once the deal was done) Oooh, you wouldn't have some sort of a link that elaborates on this?
  - anshumankmr 4y ago
    https://www.insider.com/george-lucas-felt-betrayed-disney-scrapped-star-wars-movie-ideas-2019-9 https://www.insider.com/george-lucas-felt-betrayed-disney-sc... https://ew.com/books/2019/09/24/bob-iger-george-lucas-felt-betrayed-disney-star-wars/ https://ew.com/books/2019/09/24/bob-iger-george-lucas-felt-b... That being said, since no one ever has seen that script except maybe some high level execs, it will be quite pointless to speculate on its quality.
    - 4y ago

bilsbie 4y ago

They should build a new theme park in Florida. It’s so crowded now there’s really no magic left. Just massive crowds everywhere.

q1w2 4y ago
Have the higher prices thinned out the crowds at all?
esteth 4y ago
I don't know if a fifth gate is the solution to overcrowding: Induced demand would likely mean that more people would go because it was less crowded until it reaches peak crowds again fairly shortly after opening. IMO they're struggling to open and maintain enough lasting attractions and park atmosphere areas in the existing parks, and they're making lots of money from inflating queue times and sending people to the shops so I don't really see what they'll do.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  Can’t you use induced demand to argue against building anything ever?