The Disney Thread | Iger will be with us until 2026

[Porthos]

40 minutes ago, AJG said:

 

To know it wasn't even close makes it worse. I feel like how non-Succession fans felt after being barraged by forced discussion of a show they've never heard of.

 

Um....  Maaaaaaybe the fact that Disney made such a stink and had such a full court press is WHY it wasn't close.  

 

They spent a ton of money on PR on this and treated it almost like a political election campaign.  What makes you think that the PR dollars didn't move the needle.

[cannastop]

2 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

Um....  Maaaaaaybe the fact that Disney made such a stink and had such a full court press is WHY it wasn't close.  

 

They spent a ton of money on PR on this and treated it almost like a political election campaign.  What makes you think that the PR dollars didn't move the needle.

yeah the activists were spending millions of dollars too.

[cannastop]

I feel like the ceiling for Disney's animated originals might be $500m WW going forward, based on Elemental's performance. Always a chance to be proven wrong though.

[MysteryMovieMogul]

Oh, so Peltz losing is why this exists? Makes a lot more sense now.

 

[cannastop]

Disney stock is 3% down today after this news. I'm going to guess that's the few people who thought Peltz would be elected dumping their shares.

[MysteryMovieMogul]

9 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Disney stock is 3% down today after this news. I'm going to guess that's the few people who thought Peltz would be elected dumping their shares.

They lost and are doing whatever last ditch efforts they can. It's sad, really, but it'll be interesting to see how Disney proceeds in the next year. There's a large percentage of folks with a little too much power who want Disney to go back to making films about straight, white characters, although princess movies are okay as long as the main character is saved by a prince at the end.

[Porthos]

11 minutes ago, cannastop said:

Disney stock is 3% down today after this news. I'm going to guess that's the few people who thought Peltz would be elected dumping their shares.

 

More "buy the rumor, sell the news" syndrome at play, IMO.  See it often in the leadup to Apple products, for instance.

[Porthos]

21 minutes ago, Porthos said:

 

More "buy the rumor, sell the news" syndrome at play, IMO.  See it often in the leadup to Apple products, for instance.

 

I should also add that this is also known as "profit taking", or at least is a form of it.

 

Now I am in fact a financial idiot, but this is how I understand it.  Let's say someone bought Disney stock at, oh, $100.  Let's say that person also expected the stock to rise during the proxy fight.  When the news breaks, or perhaps  right before it, the stock will be at a relative recent high, let's say $130, so you sell those shares and take your profit.

 

If enough people do this, this drives down the stock price slightly as while lots of trader bros will be selling, more folks will be jumping in to help counteract that.

 

The danger here is if the news ISN'T  what is expected.  That can lead to other folks selling off, causing a mini panic, or way way waaaaay more folks buying in, causing the stock to soar higher than expected (and thus while still making a profit, lose out on what you might have gotten).

 

Play this game long enough and traders will buy and sell a company's stock at various points, attempting to buy low and sell high.

 

In other words, it's not folks looking for long term investment driving this movement, but the folks trying to play the game, as it were.

 

...

 

Probably.

 

As I said, I'm a financial idiot, and the above scenario might not be the exact thing in play.  But given how much attention was on this fight, and how many people had skin in the game, it makes sense.  On of the "tells" will be how quickly the stock recovers as either other people buy in at an approaching low or those profit takers buy back in, starting the buy low/sell high cycle all over again.

Edited April 3 by Porthos

[dudalb]

SO Nicola Peltz will not be a Disney Princess anytime soon.

People want one reason for Peltz's fsiluare when, as usual, there are many:

A. You can't beat something with nothing, and Peltz's record was not that impressive.

B. He use of bigotry backfired

C. His attack on THe BP Franchise was dumb, attacking a franchise that has been as sucessful as BP has been...eventhe sequel, though not a cash cow like the first, made a lot of profit for Disney.]

D>The attack on Feige was ill timed. Yes, Feige, has slipped up, but he is still the most sucessful producer the town has seen in a number of years.

To a degree i reminds me of one of the great proxy battles in Hollywood History;the 1958 MGM Proxy fighs; Louis P. Meyar, who had forced out a number of years earlier as head of MGM, staged a Proxy battle in which he did not peresonally run, but ran a couple of candiates who were pretty much his puppets. It failed.

[filmlover]

 

I mean, where's the lie?

[JWR]

If for nothing else, Peltz managed to help Iger regain a modicum of good PR.

[PlatnumRoyce]

28 minutes ago, filmlover said:

 

I mean, where's the lie?

Why are you endorsing Iger's statement that Disney is going to make less content that alienates politically conservative/reactionary consumers? Is posting cathartic content about Iger dunking on the phrase "woke" really more important than evaluating the meat of the statement and what it implies for what content is actually going to be made in the future?

 

Quote

"The bottom line is that infusing messaging as a sort of a number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we're up to...[G]enerally speaking, we need to be an entertainment first company … And understanding that look, we're trying to reach a very, very diverse audience. And on one hand in order to do that, what you do, the stories you tell, have to really reflect the audience that you're trying to reach, but that audience because they are so diverse, really, first and foremost, they want to be entertained, and sometimes they can't be turned off by certain things. And we just have to be more sensitive to the interest of a broad audience. It's not easy, you know, so that he can't please everybody all the time, right?"

The entire comment is very defensive around the idea that Disney is a "values/messaging" first company instead of an entertainment first one. Disney's playing defense here not offense. 

 

This just feels in keeping with the two step Iger's been doing on these subjects for months and he's genuinely talented at this stuff.

Edited April 4 by PlatnumRoyce

[Torontofan]

Issue isn't anything about woke

 

It's just uninteresting and boring content and then add a diverse character thinking minority audiences are a hivemind and will flock to a film as a result .

 

As a minority I can say many fellow minorities find Disney style boring now.

[filmlover]

18 minutes ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

Why are you endorsing Iger's statement that Disney is going to make less content that alienates politically conservative/reactionary consumers? Is clowning on the phrase "woke" really more important?

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's obviously a broad, PR-ready statement that could be interpreted a number of different ways.

 

And lol like "politically conservative/reactionary consumers" actually represent a huge portion of the moviegoing audience these days anyway. They checked out on Hollywood completely a while ago claiming they're full of a bunch of evil hypocrites (even though the face of their political party currently was an obnoxious celebrity who would attend movie premieres and awards shows and such until he decided to shift career gears). Even on the rare occasion the industry makes a blatant piece of MAGA pandering (ex: The 15:17 to Paris), that crowd still doesn't bother to show up, proving that they're just as cheap as everyone else. Don't take the numbers for Sound of Freedom (which largely drew a crowd that wouldn't be caught dead watching either Barbie or Oppenheimer) as a sign of anything but a fluke that won't be easily duplicated.

Edited April 4 by filmlover

[WittyUsername]

15 minutes ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

Why are you endorsing Iger's statement that Disney is going to make less content that alienates politically conservative/reactionary consumers? Is posting cathartic content about Iger dunking on the phrase "woke" really more important than evaluating the meat of the statement and what it implies for what content is actually going to be made in the future?

 

The entire comment is very defensive around the idea that Disney is a "values/messaging" first company instead of an entertainment first one. Disney's playing defense here not offense. 

 

This just feels in keeping with the two step Iger's been doing on these subjects for months and he's genuinely talented at this stuff.

Let’s be real, Disney has never cared about  spreading a message, contrary to what the conservative fear-mongers have claimed. They’ve only ever cared about making money. Their attempts at diversity have generally been pretty mild, but we live in a really stupid era where simply showing two people of the same gender holding hands is enough to inspire outrage. 

[PlatnumRoyce]

2 minutes ago, filmlover said:

That's obviously a broad, PR-ready statement that could be interpreted a number of different ways.

 

And lol like "politically conservative/reactionary consumers" actually represent a huge portion of the moviegoing audience these days anyway. They checked out on Hollywood completely a while ago claiming. Even on the rare occasion the industry makes a blatant piece of MAGA pandering (ex: The 15:17 to Paris), that crowd still doesn't bother to show up, proving that they're just as cheap as everyone else. Don't take the numbers for Sound of Freedom (which largely drew a crowd that wouldn't be caught dead watching either Barbie or Oppenheimer) as a sign of anything but a fluke that won't be easily duplicated.

I mean, this is just shitposting about politics not engaging with the content in an interesting way. 

 

Quote

That's obviously a broad, PR-ready statement that could be interpreted a number of different ways.

and your read was just to turn your brain off and shitpost about a shiny political headline.  

 

Iger's public statement is clearly a "broad PR-ready statement" but you knew that when you jumped on the "woke" line too so I'm not sure where that leaves us. The interesting thing is trying to figure out what it means in practice. After winning the board vote, I read this as not pivoting from the messaging Iger's been making on this sort of subject since he's come back to Disney. The fact the PR statement said they're going to make less content that "turns off"  general audiences [in a political context] indicates that's a relevant group for Disney not just people who were never customers to begin with. 

[filmlover]

Also, because Disney's image specializes in family entertainment (although even the parks and resorts long ago branched out into becoming more friendly to target markets beyond families with small children), that makes them the easiest of targets for these fear-mongers who like to pretend that they care about the children and their futures.

 

Can't imagine what it must be like to live in fear all the time of things that don't actually impact yourself, but it must be a really lame existence. 

[PlatnumRoyce]

6 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

Let’s be real, Disney has never cared about  spreading a message, contrary to what the conservative fear-mongers have claimed. They’ve only ever cared about making money. Their attempts at diversity have generally been pretty mild, but we live in a really stupid era where simply showing two people of the same gender holding hands is enough to inspire outrage. 

I don't agree this is "being real." Secondary goals are also real goals and secondary goals matter. It's just trivially easy to see people reiterate this is a goal and that's clearly in keeping with people's actions. Just look at how Iger previously framed his rejection of the idea that Disney prioritizes "the message"/messaging over entertainment (""I like being able to entertain if you can infuse it with positive messages and have a good impact on the world. Fantastic. But that should not be the objective. When I came back, what I have really tried to do is to return to our roots)." Denying something is "the objective" doesn't mean denying it's "an objective" that shapes actions. 

 

No one's going to get this reference, but I think the old tv show Unreal did a great job at capturing conveying the mix of cynicism and genuine moral lobbying in its main character's actions. than the generic "corporations only pretend to care" stuff does. At the end of the day money wins but people also generally want to act with moral purpose. 

 

Quote

in a really stupid era where simply showing two people of the same gender holding hands is enough to inspire outrage. 

By the same logic, if LGBTQ representation didn't matter to Disney executives, it would have never been restored because that took a pressure campaign that concluded with an explicit claim by Disney they'd do better in the future. Marvel Studios plausibly almost lost Kevin Fiege over Perlmutter's refusal to consider female leads (and a hesitancy to approve black panther). Arguing this is purely about expected future profit obviously doesn't capture everything in executive decision making. 

 

 

[Torontofan]

28 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

Let’s be real, Disney has never cared about  spreading a message, contrary to what the conservative fear-mongers have claimed. They’ve only ever cared about making money. Their attempts at diversity have generally been pretty mild, but we live in a really stupid era where simply showing two people of the same gender holding hands is enough to inspire outrage. 

I think they made a calculation that many of thier franchises had loyal fanbases and thought expanding them to audience who normally didnt watch or be into such films would equal a lot more money 

 

They then made films with massive budgets like they where 4 quad films but in fact they weren't wide appealing and likely worked with smaller budgets.

 

It was a marketing and financial fail then some agenda imo.

 

[MysteryMovieMogul]

1 hour ago, WittyUsername said:

Let’s be real, Disney has never cared about  spreading a message, contrary to what the conservative fear-mongers have claimed. They’ve only ever cared about making money. Their attempts at diversity have generally been pretty mild, but we live in a really stupid era where simply showing two people of the same gender holding hands is enough to inspire outrage. 

Strange World wasn't an amazing film by any means, but I'm not naïve enough to believe much of the outrage wasn't related to the unambiguously gay son.