The Disney Thread | Iger will be with us until 2026

[SpiderByte]

Well guess we have it then.

[MightyDargon]

The chance of Perlmutter being the thing to end Iger was always remote.

This doesn't change the fact that Disney sucks at governing MCU CGI/budgets though, even if they've had plenty of other successes.

[cannastop]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:44 PM, HowSway said:

Why is there even a board seat battle when the stock is up 36% ytd? Might not like Iger, but he has done well by the shareholders

Honestly I get why. Disney's movie division is pretty fucked. Streaming is a money sink. TV Networks in general are on the decline. Their only real highly performing part to them is the parks, which I guess if the parks carried Disney through the 70s and 80s, they can do so now...

Do I think Peltz has any good ideas to fix these issues? Of course not.

[PlatnumRoyce]

1 hour ago, SpiderByte said:

Well guess we have it then.

Do we? It's not like leaking alleged vote counts right before a vote is independent from attempts to influence the results. It's a good source but what's the raw claim here? Backrock and price are supporting disney which counteracts commitments counted last week? 

 

Quote

The WSJ article did not indicate how big a lead Disney’s 12-member board slate reportedly has over Peltz at this juncture. According to the Journal’s report, with about 20% of shares voted as of late last week, Peltz had been leading the race to replace incumbent Disney board member Maria Elena Lagomasino (while Trian‘s other nominee, ex-Disney CFO Jay Rasulo, was trailing).

 

 

Edited April 2 by PlatnumRoyce

[SpiderByte]

If even when Peltz was leading he still only got one seat, I can't imagine his lead was that big.

[ZeroHour]

It's a good sign for Disney (who almost certainly leaked this story), but without knowing the makeup of the outstanding votes or the size of the current board's lead, it isn't safe to say this is completely over. With over half the vote in though, there's also the question of how much is really left. Retail shareholders are probably the least likely to vote and Disney has a lot of them.

[dudalb]

Peltz messed up IMHO by dragging politics into this. His badmouthing a franchise that has done as well as BP has was not a brilliant idea/ If he had stuck to last year's performance he would be in a stronger position.

Not to mention his own record is not all that brilliant.

[dudalb]

Vanguard just backed Disney. That is pretyt major.

[cannastop]

11 minutes ago, dudalb said:

Vanguard just backed Disney. That is pretyt major.

Also BlackRock, T. Rowe Price, and Norway's sovereign wealth fund according to an article I saw on CNBC. So right now I am thinking Peltz won't prevail 

[dudalb]

2 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Also BlackRock, T. Rowe Price, and Norway's sovereign wealth fund according to an article I saw on CNBC. So right now I am thinking Peltz won't prevail 

His whole making it political was a stupid move.

[SpiderByte]

1 hour ago, dudalb said:

Vanguard just backed Disney. That is pretyt major.

Yep, that feels like the nail. At least till next year.

 

I do think it does mean we get concrete movement on Igers succession in the next year, since that's obviously his biggest weakness: his last successor didnt work out, and now they need to start over with a new one.

[thajdikt]

I don´t know who will win but I never understand how going after Black Panther and Feige by name would go over well? Black Panther is the most successful solo MCU franchise (not counting Spidey since it´s Sony). It dips in to a place other MCU movies can´t and probably never will be. A 2B+ franchise from just two movies. Feige is the man behind the biggest movie  franchise ever that has earned Disney 25B+ just at the box office. Sure MCU is struggling atm and who knows where it´s future lies but going with comments like that and the "why do we need a all black cast" just seems like a bad strategy, but hey if he wins who am I to question his strategy. Just felt like he gave a perfect layup for a Disney defense when he went after those.

[filmlover]

15 minutes ago, thajdikt said:

I don´t know who will win but I never understand how going after Black Panther and Feige by name would go over well?

Because clowns like him (and there are a depressingly not insignificant amount of them out there) have no shame announcing their bigotry to the world. Simple as that.

[Porthos]

1 minute ago, thajdikt said:

I don´t know who will win but I never understand how going after Black Panther and Feige by name would go over well? Black Panther is the most successful solo MCU franchise (not counting Spidey since it´s Sony). It dips in to a place other MCU movies can´t and probably never will be. A 2B+ franchise from just two movies. Feige is the man behind the biggest movie  franchise ever that has earned Disney 25B+ just at the box office. Sure MCU is struggling atm and who knows where it´s future lies but going with comments like that and the "why do we need a all black cast" just seems like a bad strategy, but hey if he wins who am I to question his strategy. Just felt like he gave a perfect layup for a Disney defense when he went after those.

 

 

[Porthos]

57 minutes ago, thajdikt said:

I don´t know who will win but I never understand how going after Black Panther and Feige by name would go over well? Black Panther is the most successful solo MCU franchise (not counting Spidey since it´s Sony). It dips in to a place other MCU movies can´t and probably never will be. A 2B+ franchise from just two movies. Feige is the man behind the biggest movie  franchise ever that has earned Disney 25B+ just at the box office. Sure MCU is struggling atm and who knows where it´s future lies but going with comments like that and the "why do we need a all black cast" just seems like a bad strategy, but hey if he wins who am I to question his strategy. Just felt like he gave a perfect layup for a Disney defense when he went after those.

 

26 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

 

 

Okay, not entirely fair.  But not entirely unfair, either.

 

Alright, without going into politics too much (and I have to go into it somewhat), one of trends in self-consumption of media is epistemic closure where folks wall themselves off from, let's call them "competing points of view", and regularly consume a diet of news and opinion tailored to one's tastes.  This can lead to a feedback loop of accelerated/hardened views where... well I'll spare the thread from analogies, but the last decade or so of social trends in the US are full of them

 

On the right, so called anti-diversity, anti-"woke", anti-liberal social politics has been running rampant.  Most nakedly bigoted, some less so.  Again, I'll spare the thread from them.

 

But if one is constantly marinating in a Culturally Right Wing Bubble, then knowing when to shut the fuck up (or at least when to play the nuance/dog whistle card) becomes... less clear.  Or you feel more comfortable in revealing who you really are.  Or have become.

 

So let's take Peltz's statements.  He wouldn't have nearly gotten into as much trouble if he channeled South Park and stopped at the "why do we need all women films"/so-called "forced diversity" critique.  It would have been just as bad.  Sadly, he probably would have been able to get away with it.  If he threw the LGBTQ+ community under the bus (or more accurately, actively shoved them into oncoming traffic) even more so.  Would have been nakedly partisan, but...  Well we live in very partisan times right now.

 

But.  He.  Couldn't. Stop.

 

That's part of the whole problems with sealing one's self into a bubble.  You have no idea how it's going to sound outside of the bubble.  Like, take attacking by implication Black Panther.  Folks who have observed the overall temperament of places like Twitter over the last couple of years wouldn't be surprised to see Some Big Name Oligarch spouting off about all-Black casts.  It fits right in with a whole host of grievance-based politics that have been getting more prominent ever since the mid to late '00s.

 

That he just happened to attack one of *THE* most successful films of the last six years?  Well, this is one of the things that can happen when one seals oneself off.

 

Can make similar observations about his attacks on Kevin Feige.  But long post is long, so I'll spare the thread.

 

In the end, Peltz either forgot who he was talking to, didn't care who he was talking to, or was spouting off about how unfair to white males anti-good business diversity in entertainment [allegedly] is. 

 

He tried to play the "keep politics out of movie making" card.  Instead, he played the "keep *MY* [socio-]politics in *MY* movies" card.

 

Why?

 

Once again:

 

 

=======

 

39 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Because clowns like him (and there are a depressingly not insignificant amount of them out there) have no shame announcing their bigotry to the world. Simple as that.

That too.  But I wanted to explore a bit How We Got Here.

Edited April 3 by Porthos
rephrased the South Park analogy a bit

[Porthos]

One last thing.

 

The scary/unsettling/irritating thing isn't that Peltz felt comfortable enough saying inanely bigoted stuff like he did.

 

The scary/unsettling/irritating thing is... enough major shareholders are/were willing to overlook such things and back him anyway.

 

In the end, I have no idea how much it actually cost him.  Maybe he was "always" going to lose.  But the fact that the CalPERSs  of the world still said "Wellll, Iger doesn't have a succession plan in place so let's shake things up/bring in new views!" isn't exactly great news, either.

 

Or rather, no matter how lopsided it eventually is, it shouldn't have been that close.  

[WorkingonaName]

Pletz is right about Feige. 

[Porthos]

6 minutes ago, WorkingonaName said:

Pletz is right about Feige. 

 

This is exactly what I mean, BTW.  

 

If Peltz has said something milquetoast like "Feige is getting overworked/overextended" or "Feige should get back to what he does best and stay focused on a few projects" or similar mealy mouthed things where folks could have applied their own internal thoughts after hearing a dog whistle or three, he would have been in a better position.

 

But he didn't.

 

Peltz attacked literally THE MOST SUCCESSFUL STUDIO HEAD IN HOLLYWOOD OF THE LAST FIFTY YEARS.

 

That... That wasn't wise.  IMNSHO.

 

You may feel differently, natch.  But put me in Team Unwise.

Edited April 3 by Porthos

[SpiderByte]

30 minutes ago, WorkingonaName said:

Pletz is right about Feige. 

Even with the stumbles in 2023 Feige is still the highest grossing producer around. And let's be real, we all know a good amount of this is Perlmutter wanting payback, and he wanted Feige gone in 2015.

 

That Peltz complained about Black Panther, a franchise with major critical, awards, and financial success, shows he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. The last time he talked about making a franchise more white it was casting his daughter as the female lead in The Last Airbender. 

Edited April 3 by SpiderByte

[WittyUsername]

Nelson Peltz is an out touch rich old guy who was backing another out of touch rich old guy who had a personal grievance against Kevin Feige.