Bob Iger wished his colleagues “smooth waters ahead” as he stepped down in 2021 after 15 years at Disney’s helm. They proved anything but.
Eleven months later, he was summoned out of retirement. Iger, who had been lauded for transforming a rusty Hollywood tug into a gleaming flotilla of new media entities during his first stint in charge, was given a second stint to steer the company back on course.
The seas have yet to calm. Now pirates are looking to clamber aboard, as the renowned activist investor Nelson Peltz fights to shake up its board. The entertainment giant has “woefully underperformed”, according to Trian Partners, Peltz’s firm.
Iger’s return, by his own admission, has been “much more challenging” than anticipated. The company was sucked into America’s culture wars shortly before he took the top job again. And while Iger seems to have bested the Florida governor and failed presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis after his attack on Disney’s supposedly “woke” culture – for now – Disney’s business troubles remain.
From lackluster trading at the box office to an expensive bid to dominate streaming, the fleet he amassed for Disney – Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and most of 21st Century Fox – remains under fire. The group’s once-lucrative broadcast television arm is in decline, and the sports network ESPN faces an uncertain future.
“He’s got a lot to do,” said Jessica Reif Ehrlich, an analyst at Bank of America. “His focus is righting the ship and getting Disney to a very profitable place, in an environment that’s very different than it was when he left the company.”
Iger has tried to ease the storm: cutting 7,000 jobs to curb Wall Street’s alarm over costs, reorganizing the ranks and moving to reduce costs by about $7.5bn. While he claims such moves mean Disney can now “move beyond this period of fixing and begin building our businesses again”, his critics remain unpersuaded.
Even the once-reliable machine at the heart of Disney’s empire – making the movies and shows that lure fans to theaters, streaming platforms, resorts and stores – has stuttered. Iger has identified the revitalisation of the company’s production studios as his No 1 priority.
The future relevance of cinemas remains an open question for the movie industry, but Disney’s struggle to draw big crowds is “very Disney-specific”, according to Ehrlich. “Look at Barbie and Oppenheimer,” she said, referring to last summer’s breakout blockbusters. “People went to the movies.” Barbie was distributed by Warner Bros, Oppenheimer by Universal, which overtook Disney as the highest-grossing studio at the box office last year for the first time since 2015. Disney, meanwhile, released a series of high-profile flops, like The Marvels. Only Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 graced the global top five.
Taking on Netflix, Disney ramped up production in the hope that Marvel superheroes and Star Wars spin-offs, prequels, sequels and remakes would turbocharge its own streaming service. While its streaming service Disney+ built a core base of 112.6 million subscribers in less than four years – second only to Netflix, which finished last year with 260m – it concedes that the quantity of output diluted quality, and investors balked at the platform’s multibillion-dollar bill.
Enough is enough, according to Peltz. He joined forces with Ike Perlmutter, who remains one of Disney’s largest individual shareholders after selling Marvel for $4bn in 2009. Perlmutter – no friend of Iger’s – was fired as chair of the Marvel Entertainment comic-publishing business last spring.
Together, Trian and Perlmutter hold shares in Disney worth some $2.5bn. In the year to last May, they asked no fewer than 24 times for Peltz to be given a seat on its board, according to the company. Disney, with a market value north of $170bn, repeatedly rebuffed the pair.
The stage is set for a showdown in the spring, when Trian plans to put its proposal to overhaul of Disney’s board directly to shareholders. Last month, it stunned insiders by enlisting a veteran of the Magic Kingdom to challenge Disney’s insiders. Jay Rasulo, who resigned as chief financial officer in 2015, and was once deemed a potential successor to Iger, now claims: “The Disney I know and love has lost its way.”
Disney, which has its own slate of board candidates, last week bluntly rejected the idea of Peltz or Rasulo joining instead. Peltz has “not actually presented a single strategic idea” for the company during his two-year quest, it claimed, suggesting he “seemed oblivious” to transformations across the media industry. The sector has “radically changed” since Rasulo’s exit, it added, questioning his ability to “work constructively” with Iger.
Trian promptly hit back, proposing five goals for the company – like improving the profitability of Disney+ and its theme parks, and commissioning a review of its studios designed to reclaim pole position at the box office – and blasting its leadership. “It is time to restore the magic at Disney,” said Peltz.
Disney declined to comment on the latest attack, although sources within the company maintain Peltz has yet to present a detailed plan. Trian, for its part, insists it will have “much more to say” in time. The firm declined to elaborate when contacted this week.
Central to Peltz’s campaign is a concern that, whether or not he wins a board seat, will continue to dominate Disney: that the company “finally complete a successful CEO succession”.
Iger, who delayed his first exit as CEO at least three times, made way for Bob Chapek to take the helm in February 2020. But since Chapek was cast overboard in November 2022, and Iger given a two-year contract to return, the board has already extended his second stint until 2026.
While Iger has claimed he will definitely step down in 2026, few see this as certain. He is “committed to finishing the job so this company is strongly positioned when my successor takes the helm”, he assured investors in a recent letter. As the waves continue to lap Disney’s fleet, its captain is going nowhere in a hurry.
