In this edition of cinema issues we are talking about Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney.

So for many Bob was THE Disney CEO he brought in Marvel and Star Wars and led Disney to many successes under his regime. A lot of the misses such as Disney + we blamed on Bob Chapek during his short tenure before Bob returned.

However as the man looks set to leave at the end of the year let’s look over how he leaves Disney as a company, it’s not good.

Lucasfilm has collapsed. Lucasfilm has not released a Star Wars film in 7 years, the last Indiana Jones film flopped. Star Wars this thing that Disney spent billions on has become a TV brand and even in the realm of streaming it is struggling to bring in big numbers. The Mandalorian and Grogu is on the horizon but the likelihood of that making past 700 million is unlikely as the Star Wars fandom is just too divided, due to executives who operated under Bob.

Marvel is trying to right the ship to not end up like Lucasfilm. However, in the last year all 3 films Marvel released at the cinema flopped and the Disney + offerings are not doing big numbers. Since Endgame back in 2019 Marvel has been in decline and has been haemorrhaging viewers and engagement. Whilst some of the terrible glut of phase 4 and phase 5 can be blamed on Chapek demanding content at all costs, Iger could have cancelled and scrapped projects when he came back but he didn’t. He allowed the brand harm.

Pixar is still capable of making money with films like Inside Out 2 but scattered around that are films like Lightyear and Elio. Films that flopped terribly and that show that Pixar is not the titan it used to be. Whilst Chapek did harm the brand by letting a lot of Pixar’s films go straight to streaming teaching audiences to stay home, Iger did not do enough to manage quality since his return.

Disney animation has not been able to get out Frozen 3 despite it being a guaranteed billion dollar film, with Frozen 2 coming out 7 years ago.

The live action remark strategy has been mixed with some hits and some misses and that is probably Iger’s shining light of his second tenure.

Crucially Iger has been the message CEO he has been the one to see Disney lean into DEI, Bob Chapek again gets a lot of criticism for this but it all started under Bob. He has since said things such as they are going to focus on storytelling over message yet this is not reflected in filmmaking output. What has been required is a much stronger hand at the executive level over production. As you can see from this article Iger hasn’t been that strong hand he has been a CEO representing managed decline of a brand.

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In this edition of Cinema Issues we will be talking about the death of movie stars.

Now I don’t mean literally, I mean in terms of career suicide. The basic premise going into this is the following as a movie star you need as many people as possible to turn up to your films, splitting the audience down political lines is stupid.

Celebrities don’t seem to realise that by making nearly everything political they alienate themselves from the audience. For example why did Florence Pugh the British Actress need to have a little rant about I.C.E, she didn’t she’s not even American and yet she did it to virtue signal. That’s all it’s ever been, it’s showing allegiance to whatever cause their agent tells them to.

Increasingly, studios need to crack down on this, actors need to be told to shut up whilst promoting a film and that if they run their mouth about hot button issues it will cost them work. There is a reason stars of old generally kept their mouths shut about this kind of thing, they aren’t politicians, they aren’t unionists, they aren’t even political agents, they are actors their job is to entertain the public and that is it.

Seeing Natalie Portman or Jenna Ortega run her mouth about politics just means more and more people aren’t going to show up for their next project. In an era where people don’t go to the cinema much anymore this is not helping matters.