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It appears Disney CEO Bob Iger is keeping to his goal of setting right the immense losses of the Walt Disney Company with strategy changes.
It seems the dust is settling after a dramatic end to the year for the Walt Disney Company in 2022. When the final numbers came to, it was clear that Bob Chapek had made decisions that weren’t quite benefitting the Mouse House (despite his unfortunate nickname of Bob “Paycheck”), and for this and myriad other reasons, the board voted to oust Bob Chapek and bring back his predecessor, Bob Iger.
Bob Iger and Bob Chapek reportedly had tensions from the start of Chapek’s run.
The instituting of these changes is not new. For the Disney 100 celebration, Disney announced the return of a whole host of complimentary services that Disney Park Guests can avail of. This includes changes in what the Guests who pay for Disney Genie will have access to—unsurprising since Disney has repeatedly mentioned that they “believe” in their Disney Genie product.
However, the company’s newest change concerns their movie and television offerings. As reported by journalist Scott Gustin,
Disney is reportedly exploring the sale of more films and television series to its rivals in an effort to earn more cash from its library of content, according to Bloomberg @businessand @Lucas_Shaw
NEW: Disney is reportedly exploring the sale of more films and television series to its rivals in an effort to earn more cash from its library of content, according to Bloomberg @business and @Lucas_Shaw https://t.co/PHFv7s9Lex pic.twitter.com/tbjTqIneMv
— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) February 3, 2023
In his tweet, Gustin quotes a Bloomberg article that shares, “Disney is exploring more licensing of its films and television series to rival media outlets as pressure grows to curb the losses in its streaming TV business.”
The article details how this is a shift in strategy from the past few years when Disney kept most of its original programming on Disney+ and Hulu. This decision seems to be a blunder in retrospect, as it has resulted in the Mouse House losing out on billions in video sales and licensing deals with networks.
Gustin also took this analysis one step further, connecting it to the previous news that detailed Disney’s movie release schedule, wherein 16 more untitled movies were added to their 2024 and 2025 releases.
Disney sent their updated movie release schedule. Looking back at the schedule released in October, I'm counting at least 7 UNTITLED movies added to 2025 and 9 UNTITLED movies added to 2026.
Which UNTITLED movie are you most excited about?! pic.twitter.com/sMJnnaIrXM
— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) January 20, 2023
He shared, “If Disney is truly moving away from their focus on streaming and focusing on the box office, it’s probably no coincidence the most recent Disney movie schedule included at least 16 new “untitled” films.”
While it remains to be seen what the official strategy will turn out to be as these talks were private and so Bloomberg’s sources remained anonymous, the next two years under Iger’s rule are certainly looking to be Iger cleaning up a large chunk of the mess that former Disney CEO Bob Chapek left behind in his wake.
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