Disney CEO Bob Iger Defends Studio’s “Disappointing” Box Office Performance

Disney CEO Bob Iger is addressing criticisms surrounding the studio’s latest string of blockbuster movies. During the company’s most recent quarterly earnings call, Iger spoke about a few of Disney’s recent films underperforming at the box office, especially compared to the massive pre-COVID-19 pandemic grosses the company had in 2019. While Iger didn’t mention any of the films by name, he did acknowledge that some of these recent performances were “disappointing”, but cited Avatar: The Way of Water and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 as successes in the ever-changing landscape.

“Regarding our studio performance, let’s put things in perspective a little bit,” Iger said in part. “The studio has had a tremendous run over the last decade, perhaps the greatest run that any studio has ever had, with multiple billion dollar hits. And including, by the way, two that were relatively recent. One in particular, Avatar: The Way of Water, and we also had a pretty strong performance with Guardians of the Galaxy [Vol. 3], which has done, I think, approximately under $850 million at [the] global box office. That said, the performance of some of our recent films has definitely been disappointing, and we don’t take that lightly. As you’d expect, we’re very focused on improving the quality and the performance of the films that we’ve got coming up. It’s something that I’m working closely with the studio on. I’m personally committed to spending more time and attention on that as well.”

Will There Be Less Marvel and Star Wars Disney+ Series?

In addition to the conversation surrounding Disney’s box office, Iger made headlines last month for addressing the ever-growing number of original TV shows the company has made for Disney+. As some Star Wars and Marvel shows have debuted on the platform to lower viewership and less-positive ratings, Disney CEO Bob Iger hinted that the company might be scaling back on these original streaming projects.

“There have been some disappointments we would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better,” Iger explained in an interview with CNBC. “It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond — in terms of their time and their focus — way beyond where they had been… To try and make Disney+ worthwhile, we made decisions that hurt other parts of the business. That’s likely true at least in part, but it’s also something that isn’t unique to Disney. With blockbuster box office hauls depressed across the board, it’s hard not to imagine that part of the problem is that the studios are so eager for a return to “normal” that they haven’t figured out a way to monetize the shorter exclusivity windows and higher overall volume of content creation that have been hallmarks of the streaming era.”

“Marvel’s a great example of that,” Iger continued. “They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything.”

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