As Disney’s new-look management rewrites the narrative following ex-CEO Bob Chapek’s departure, a damaging claim has surfaced.
With Bob Chapek firmly out the door at Disney, the newly-restored CEO, Bob Iger has wasted no time in brandishing a list of ways in which his predecessor failed to match expectations.
Iger took to the media last week to decry Chapek’s handling of Disney+, the company’s streaming platform that was according to Iger, too central a focus for his predecessor. Iger also lamented the theme park price hikes that have earned the company so much negative publicity of late as well.
Whilst we can’t help but agree with the latter, there’s more than a touch of irony about the former. After all, Disney+ is Iger’s creation and the returning CEO only oversaw the streaming platform during its smooth launch during a global pandemic when we were all glued to our screens. When that time period eventually passed, Bob Chapek was left with the very tricky task of maintaining the platform’s forward momentum but in far more difficult circumstances.
With the endeavour proving to be something of a financial black hole, it’s no wonder that Iger is keen to lay all of that onto his former protege. A story has surfaced at The Wall Street Journal alleging that one of the reasons Chapek was outed was because he was premiering shows on The Disney Channel before quickly moving them over to Disney+ in order to effectively ‘hide’ further production costs for the streaming platform, which has incurred losses of $9bn since its 2019 launch.
Whether the story is a legitimate scoop or an attempt to smear Chapek doesn’t really matter at this point. Rightly or wrongly, the company brass have pinned the failings of Disney+ on Chapek, but from this point forwards it will be Iger who shoulders full responsibility for the costly endeavour that he bought to life.
It’s not the only issue Iger is facing either, with reports today been revealing that the company’s new animated feature, Strange World is set to lose nine figures during its cinema run. (You can catch our review here.) Iger certainly has his hands full and it will be interesting to see how he plans to rescue the company from its current woes.
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