Disney has had a hard time of it at the box office recently. Even after the post-Covid slump in movie theater attendance is taken into account, with audiences getting used to staying at home to watch a flick rather than go out, its lineup has performed painfully poorly at the box office.
Particularly, the company’s latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “The Marvels,” appears to have been little more than an extremely expensive boondoggle, and its latest animated film, “Wish,” looks like it is somehow doing even worse.
Why is that happening? Disney CEO Bob Iger recently gave his thoughts, blaming the poor performance on a few factors, not least of which was poor quality, which he has argued that Disney sacrificed in the past few years as it attempted to push out more and more content for its streaming service.
“Quality needs attention. … It doesn’t happen by accident. Quantity, in our case, diluted quality,” Iger said, according to NBC News. Continuing, Iger added that the movie was shot during the Covid pandemic and “There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives there really looking over what’s being done day after day after day,”
where we have executives there really looking over what’s being done.”
Continuing, Iger, who returned to Disney after former CEO Bog Chapek led it into the rocky shoals of the culture war and created many more problems for the company by doing so, said that his main focus is turning Disney back around and refocusing it on the creativity that made it successful in the past. “I would say, right now, my No. 1 priority is to help the studio turn around creatively,” he said.
Iger also noted that while he does not “want to apologize for making sequels,” he does think that Disney has “made too many” sequels in the past few years and that he thinks “we have to have a reason to make it beyond commerce.”
But while Iger argued that the company’s focus on sequels, acceptance of lower than expected quality films, and lack of creativity is to blame, the Disney 10-K, an annual SEC filing, hinted that something else might be to blame as former Disney fans tune out of its content: its entrance into the culture wars spats that have divided and frustrated much of the nation.
That document noted, “Generally, our revenues and profitability are adversely impacted when our entertainment offerings and products, as well as our methods to make our offerings and products available to consumers, do not achieve sufficient consumer acceptance.”
Continuing, the 10-K added, “Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”
Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing, commenting on Disney’s issues, said, “But I think the biggest problem that they have, and I know this from many, many incredibly gifted people within Disney, with whom I’ve I’ve spoken over the last year. They fired everyone who knows how to engage in traditional storytelling without all of this work nonsense in it. They created such a bubble over there, that even if Bob Iger does say, Bob Iger, if Bob Iger came out today and said, we’re not even going to release the crap, we’re going to take the hit. And then, starting on a day, three years from today, we’re going to relaunch Disney. He, he doesn’t have the team to do it.“
Boreing added, “Disney has engaged in the greatest act of brand suicide that has probably ever happened. in recorded history, the most beloved brand, the most goodwill with the most important people, parents, on behalf of the most, the most vulnerable people, children, we, we trust Disney for three consecutive generations. We as adults trust Disney with our children. Disney helps shape the worldview of every single adult in this country. We trusted them so much that we gave them tax breaks all over the all the goodwill that came their way because they were so unique. And they created the greatest content library ever assembled in all of human history. And then they squandered it.”
Watch Boreing here:
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