We have been discussing the shareholder revolt in some companies over social and political agendas that are suppressing profits at companies like Disney and BudLight. Recently, Disney admitted that it was driving away consumers with its controversial positions and Disney CEO Bob Iger has indicated that he wants to return to selling products and not social reforms. With Disney films cratering and the company losing its position as the top grossing film company, shareholders are threatening to take action.
The problem for Iger is turning a massive company around after years of reinforcing this role as a corporate culture warrior, including layers of hires over the years reinforcing this culture. It also needs to address damaging public comments from Disney figures.
Last year, Disney had to deal with stars like Rachel Zegler trashing the story behind Snow White and promising a new feminist rewriting of the story. This followed an alleged move to replace the dwarves with “magical people.”
2024 will likely determine if even companies the size of Disney can be drawn back through shareholder actions in reshuffling boards. Iger may have been rescued by two whales recently. Just as shareholders appeared set to challenge Iger, ValueAct Capital and Blackwells Capital moved in to support Iger and to continue his policies.
In the meantime, critics have a new gripe after Kathleen Kennedy, the chief of Lucasfilm, who widely associated with the prior social agenda in films, selected director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy as the new director for the Star Wars franchise.
Obaid-Chinoy drew fire in 2015 over her comments that “I like to make men uncomfortable. I enjoy making men uncomfortable.” She recently stated “we’re in 2024 now, and it’s about time that we had a woman come forward to shape a story in a galaxy far, far away.”
The comments are reminiscent of those of Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, before the company went into a market dive.
Before the devastating boycott over the Mulvaney promotion, Heinerscheid was lionized by many for pledging to drop Bud Light’s “fratty reputation and embrace inclusivity.” Bud Light lost its top position among beers and, despite many insisting that the opposition would be short-lived, it has continued to suppress sales.
The question is whether the moves on the board this month followed assurances from Iger that he will address the increasingly polarizing view of the company. Reportedly losing a quarter of billion dollars on just two movies, Disney has been suggesting that it is moving away from pushing social and political messaging.
Disney recently seemed to acknowledge that it is facing its own Bud Light moment. In its annual SEC report, Disney acknowledges that “we face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products.” In an implied nod to Smith, the company observes that “the success of our businesses depends on our ability to consistently create compelling content,” and that “Generally, our revenues and profitability are adversely impacted when our entertainment offerings and products, as well as our methods to make our offerings and products available to consumers, do not achieve sufficient consumer acceptance. Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”
I hope Disney has run it into the ground. Won’t miss them a bit. Just one of many stupid entities.
They could start by making movies people want to watch. Some how, at some point, the entertainment industry discovered that the more F words your movie had the better it would sell.
The industry is on the ledge.
The super-hero franchise is dying because people are bored with high tech graphics (formerly called screen-savers) substituting for weak and wobbly story lines. Ditto with cartoon features done by geeks who can’t stitch together a story. So what did the movie geniuses replace it with? The same coming of age movies we all watched different versions of as teenagers, only without the excessive vulgarity needed to entertain a dumbed down audience.
I suggest they pay writers more and actors less. Like lovers, they cannot survive apart.
“I like to make men uncomfortable. I enjoy making men uncomfortable.”
Disrupt, topple, cause pain. That is the psychology of nihilism — the desire to destroy values. And that nihilistic psychology is the putrid essence of Leftist culture.
What Would Walt Do – WWWD?
– Freedom
– Self-Reliance
– Free Enterprise
– Merit
– No Governmental Interference
Wait! That’s what the American Founders and Framers did.
Whatever happened?
Who conjured “…fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” Karl Marx or his parasitic, dependent, leeching, wannabe doppelganger?
Disney, like AB, took a turn against their ardent customer base. . . . HUGE error in judgement.
“Selling products and not social reforms”? Since when is poisoning the minds of our youth “social reform”?
Here’s the thing.
The movie theater experience has lost its luster. It has priced itself out of the entertainment market. 50 years ago we had 4, and 6 screen theaters, and choosing which one was always a real problem . Now Looking at everything in the theater, I just pass on it all.
A big reason, is I refuse to be lectured to, and force fed some social shifting paradigm. As noted, the new Star Wars director has an agenda to make men uncomfortable. So cross all the movies of my list. I want entertainment. Not some radicals take on my world. Disney hiring a person that hates her customers, is what sank Bud lite. Its their money.
Actually, it is their shareholder’s money.
Point taken.
Massive losses are the perfect cover for massive layoffs.
Ah, narcissism. She has ‘being bored out of one’s mind by another trite, ignorant diatribe in the form of a franchise film written on the level of an 8th grade op-ed’ with someone ‘being uncomfortable’. Groan. 🙄 Insufferable, and Disney has begged for this for years. Turns out the people running it *are* the real princesses, and it’s past time their bubble of privilege pops and they discover exactly how NOT salient or relevant the average person who’s had all this shoved down their throats think they are. Watch Hollywood scramble to pretend none of it ever happened, in time.
Yes they will pretend it never happened in time, but not before alleging that conservatives invented this woke crap. Remember “defund the Police”?
@Andrew
I do, and you are likely correct. 🙄
Iger’s words recently and his actions are on 2 different paths. Kathleen Kennedy has been decried for years for her franchise destroying actions and yet Iger has not yet fired her. I once hoped Disney could turn this Ship around but there is a either a dead hand at the helm or there is a fight in the corridors leading to the helm while confusion reigns over how to turn the wheel. If Iger does not start dumping some weight from personnel he may find that he is going down with the ship. That large a ship will suck a lot down with them including some massive careers, pocketbooks and egos..
Star Wars survived on the love of young men and adventure. That was the core. But it had lessons to teach about growing up and learning from older hands and revered mentors and getting introduced to a complex and unforgiving universe. We all know that story because most of us lived it ourselves to a greater or lessor degree. Its magic drew others into its orbit. They hollowed out the core of the appeal and replaced with DEI. That means there is no core at all.
You touched on the solution. Losing large amounts of profit presents the perfect cover for massive layoffs.
That’s Darwin.
The coyote, rabbit paradigm
Rabbit explosion causes an increase of coyotes (increased food, causes in creased birthrate) until the rabbit numbers are so low, coyotes starve. Thats the way God devised Nature.
Same here. Profits cause hirings. But at the end, those that are hired do not produce enough to pay their own salaries, losses start occuring, payroll gets shrunk, those left produce more than they earn for the company, profits go up spawning more hiring.
Well said.
“Obaid-Chinoy drew fire in 2015 over her comments that “I like to make men uncomfortable. ”
just looking at her makes me uncomfortable
As a grandfather who spent many dollars over the decades on my own children and grand children on Disney goods, their transition to a company intent on grooming young children with inappropriate sexually focused story lines and products has stopped another penny ever going to Disney again. After watching Walt Disney while I grew up and seeing the trash they now put out is nauseating. What a sad destructive of a once great company.
The company lost its way, clearly. I think some of the blame goes to these elite colleges the company hired from. The colleges are run now run almost exclusively by left wing types who teach these left wing ideologies on to students. Students who attend these colleges, as many critics are reporting, become indoctrinated. It was just plain dumb of Disney executives – given that the brand markets to children- to jump out and defend teaching children about transgenderism in third grade. The left pushes the envelope on stuff like this, which alienates moderates and conservative, as we have seen. Disney should not have taken a position on the issue of teaching transgenderism in school. This type of stuff is offensive to many people. especially to the conservative Christian Community.
We are looking at this all wrong.
As we all know, go woke, go broke.
Normal people do not want DEI, or wokeness.
Let Disney continue with their woke nonsense. Let them continue to lose money all in the name of wokeness. At some point they will have to sell off parts of the company to make up for their losses. What was once a power house studio company will be a shell of its former self. They will, are already, becoming a Bud Light example to the business world.
Sit back and enjoy the show.
Just recently Claudine Gay was forced out at Harvard over similar culture war issues. She issued a definiant oped in the NYT and her punishment is that she will go back to being a full professor and retain her $900,000+ salary.
We haven’t reached peak Woke yet and the people who did this, and are doing this, to us are far from defeated.
It’s going to have to get worse before it gets better.
DeSantis wins again!
Disney still hasn’t learned their lesson. Instead of hiring someone who ‘I like to make men uncomfortable. I enjoy making men uncomfortable’, but instead hire someone who likes to make money for shareholders.
As a child of the 70’s it is sad how they have destroyed the once loved Star Wars series. The last three movies were so full of woke b.s. it has made me stay away. This new film will be boycotted too.
It appears to me that the shareholders can state that the product, in which they invested, has been willfully destroyed by social justice warriors and incompetent leadership and they have a right to claim damages- willfully brought – and destruction of a product with attendent feduciary recklessness and disregard. Just as prog/left politicians are destroying our culture and form of government because of their fanatical adherence of their jihadi-like religion of progressive socialism; those of WOKE theology have strapped a bomb to their backs and are destroying Disney in their insane desire to impose their will on the rest of us.
Disney needs to clean house Top to Bottom, get rid of the WOKE / DEI Crowd. Return to the values of their original success, they need a Walt Disney type to take control, bring back old staff out of retirement who made Disney what it was. Hire Non-Woke types. Go back to family values. Don’t listen to Walts granddaughter, who has shares in the company, she is part of the Woke Crowd. Also, Iger and his staff/board members need to go.