Disney is looking to rebound from a difficult year by making less stuff, and by making better quality stuff.
2023 was supposed to be a year of celebration for Disney, with its 100th anniversary celebrations topped off by the release of its latest animated feature, Wish.
Yet even though the company is hardly in deep trouble, it’s not been the year it anticipated. One huge box office hit in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3, lots of disappointments, the outrage over it spending billions to delete so much from Disney+, the laying off of thousands of employees… it’s been a bit of a list, really.
Bob Iger was supposed to sort this out, returning to the job he previously retired from, to head up Disney’s return to form. It hasn’t panned out that way yet, and Iger has been addressing this at an employee town hall session for its employees.
He’s aware of what’s gone wrong.
“In assessing some of our performance recently”, he told the assembled throng, “one of the reasons I believe it’s fallen off a bit is that we were making too much”.
The remedy? “I think when it comes to creativity, quality is critical, of course, and quantity in many ways can destroy quality. Storytelling, obviously, is the core of what we do as a company”.
Read more: Disney 100 | The birthday celebration that’s gone a bit sour
He told employees that he’d spent much of 2023 fixing things, the subtle implication being that his predecessor – the defenestrated Bob Chapek – broke things. He also argued that the fixing was pretty much done, and the building was back underway. Which is where he wanted to be.
There was no Q&A at the event though, although Iger did address much of what’s been troubling the company over the last year or two.
There’s a full report over at Deadline (we weren’t invited to the event itself, primarily because we don’t work for Disney). Now we wait and see if Iger can be as good as his word…
