
At this point, you are almost starting to feel bad for former Disney CEO Bob Chapek. Not really, but it almost seems people are beginning to pile on with the hate toward the man no longer in charge of Disney. Nearly everything that Chapek did has been erased from the Walt Disney Company. New CEO Bob Iger has seen to that.
Disney CEO Bob Iger eliminated the entire meta division, one of Chapek’s ideas. Iger also reinstated free parking at Walt Disney World Resort hotels and brought back Annual Pass sales. Iger had also used a series of layoffs to rid the company of anyone the least bit loyal to Chapek and reorganized the entire Walt Disney Company to bring it back to the profitability it had when Iger was the CEO the first time around.
During his tenure, Bob Chapek eliminated the Magical Express at Walt Disney World, got rid of the Fast Pass system in favor of Disney Genie Plus, which fans had to pay for, paused sales of Disney Theme Park annual passes, and eliminated the Disney Dining Plan at Walt Disney World. It’s no wonder that Disney Fans cheered the return of Bob Iger as Disney CEO.
And now, John Fithian, the CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), is taking his shots at the Chapek era at Disney.
Fithian told The Wrap:
Look, Bob Chapek was not our friend. I’ll just be honest. He did not believe in the theatrical model. It was all about Disney+ and their investors were saying it was all about Disney+, until they looked at the money and suddenly Wall Street said, ‘Uh, theatrical is important.’
To make Disney+ more profitable and attract more subscribers, Chapek decided to limit the theatrical release window of some of Disney’s biggest movies during the Pandemic and rush them onto the streaming platform as soon as possible. Disney only released Encanto (2021) for 30 days in theaters before rushing it onto Disney+ for a Christmas Eve release date.
Disney also released some movies simultaneously on Disney+ and in theaters, charging home viewers $30 for the films. Scarlett Johansson sued Disney over the release of her movie, Black Widow (2021), saying that Disney had breached her contract by releasing the movie on Disney+ while also releasing it in theaters. Her salary for the Marvel film was directly related to its box office revenues. The lawsuit was settled out of court.
Fithian hopes that the return of Bob Iger as CEO will prove to be a windfall for movie theaters, as it was during his first tenure with the Walt Disney Company. However, recently, Disney’s animated and Marvel movies have been flops. In 2022, Disney had the largest financial loser of the year in Strange World, and earlier this year, despite posting a huge opening weekend, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) tanked at the box office.
We will continue to update this story at Disney Fanatic.