Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted this week that the quality of entertainment content produced by the House of Mouse has declined.
During an earnings call Tuesday, Iger said that the company, and particularly Marvel Studios, would be cutting back on the number of films and series it produces in order to focus on the quality of its projects after several of Marvel’s recent projects were poorly received by audiences and critics alike.
“I’ve been working hard with the studio to reduce output and focus more on quality,” Iger said of Marvel Studios during the earnings call. For a studio that was producing a billion-dollar box office hit seemingly every other month, it was a stunning admission that the quality of the films has greatly declined.
Disney’s stock dropped 8% on Tuesday after the company reported its quarterly earnings this week, making Iger’s announcement all the more notable. Implicit in his comment is the reality that the high-budget and low-quality films that the studio continues to put out are costing the company at the box office.
The list of Disney’s box office flops for 2023 alone included projects that had the studio’s largest production budgets. Marvel Studios’s The Marvels failed to recoup $237 million of its $455 million budget, marking the biggest flop of the year. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny lost the studio $143 million, slightly more than the $131 million hit that the studio took for the animated feature film Wish.
Since Iger, who returned as CEO in 2022 after a brief retirement, is willing to reassess the quality of the products created by the world’s most famous entertainment company, he might want to look at the underlying philosophy of diversity, equity, and inclusion that has become enmeshed within the company’s film production ethos.
As part of its “Stories Matter” initiative, the Walt Disney Company currently partners with a slew of left-wing activist organizations that advise the company as it seeks to expand its “cultural competency” in the stories that it tells. Partner organizations include the pro-illegal immigration outfit Define American and GLAAD, an LGBT organization that opposes efforts to remove pornographic books from public schools and advocates studios to adopt a quota for LGBT characters.
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These organizations have been afforded undue influence in the stories and films that Disney tells and produces, while the culture of the company has shifted so far to the left that Disney felt compelled to feud with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) over a Florida law that prevented schools from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity prior to third grade.
If he really wants Marvel Studios and other Disney production houses to produce quality content, Iger should publicly state that the creation of films and series will not be subjected to the political influence of leftist employees, nor will it take its marching orders from organizations such as GLAAD and Define American which seek to turn filmmaking into a platform to advance a political agenda.