Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, finally broke his silence about the recent string of box office disasters his company has produced via Marvel Studios, going on to state he believes the reason the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “The Marvels,” flopped like a beached whale at the box office. I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why this movie didn’t do well. People are sick of the whole “girl power” feminist narrative that woke media continues to push. Especially in comic book movies. These are films where the primary demographic is male. Believe it or not, they like to see men superheroes doing cool stuff and fighting bad guys.
But it’s not just that. The depth of woke messaging contained in Disney’s other offerings are also playing a role in low theater ticket sales. Folks are sort of boycotting the entertainment giant, and that is spreading over to the Marvel movies. Whenever a studio opts to go woke and focus on that instead of good storytelling, the project is going to fail.
via The Daily Wire:
“The Marvels” earned just $47 million domestically over opening weekend, making it the lowest-ever opening for a Marvel movie. The low numbers have been blamed on general superhero fatigue and fallout from the recent actors and writers strikes, which affected promotional plans. Iger said prioritizing quantity over quality was also a major factor.
“Quality needs attention. … It doesn’t happen by accident. Quantity, in our case, diluted quality,” the media exec said on Wednesday at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York, per NBC News. He also mentioned how “The Marvels” was filmed during the COVID pandemic, which meant less oversight.
“There wasn’t as much supervision on the set … where we have executives there really looking over what’s being done,” Iger said.
Iger was formerly the CEO of Disney from 2005 until 2020. He was replaced by Bob Chapek and then reinstated to his position in November 2022 when Chapek got fired. Iger says he’ll “definitely” leave the role in 2026 when his contract is up.
“I was disappointed in what I was seeing in the transition period and while I was out,” he went on to say in a critique of Chapek’s performance, in a piece published by Variety. “I worked hard at distancing myself from it.”
Iger said he’s been “fixing a lot of problems that the company has had, and dealing with a lot of challenges,” which he claims “were brought on by decisions that were made by my predecessor.” The exec also said some of Disney’s issues “are just basically the result of a tremendous amount of disruption in the world and in our business.”
He then stated that the folks at his company have to have a more “realistic” view of the earning potential of a film as viewing habits among audience members is shifting around, especially as streaming services are taking over. He made a comment about sequels after someone noted that Walt Disney himself hated them.
“I don’t want to apologize for making sequels,” he added, confessing that “we’ve made too many” and “we have to have a reason to make it beyond commerce.”
“We will only greenlight a sequel if we believe the story the creators want to tell is worth telling,” Iger remarked while going on to confirm there would be a fifth film in the “Toy Story” franchise.
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