Disney's been in a magical world of trouble over the last several years, ever since the company decided to pick a fight with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the culture war and go all-in on diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of its core programming at the expense of its longtime customers, traditional American families. New reports show that Bob Iger and the board are feeling the heat, especially regarding their costly Marvel and Star Wars content.
A string of movie failures hit Disney's bottom line in 2023 and 2024, most notably with "The Marvels," which opened as their worst-performing box office film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They also experienced flops within Pixar, with their latest, "Elemental," performing terribly at the box office.
Ratings on Disney+ shows have also been down across the board. The Star Wars franchise failed with "Ahsoka," a live-action callback to the kids' cartoon "Rebels." It performed disastrously with the worst ratings on the streaming app since "The Mandalorian" Season 1. Marvel fared no better with "Echo," confirmed as the lowest-viewed MCU show since Ms. Marvel debuted.
Disney CEO Bob Iger warned in March that changes would be coming. "You have to kill things you no longer believe in," he said, "and that's not easy in this business because either you've gotten started, you have some sunk costs, or it's a relationship with either your employees or with the creative community."
He also stated, "We've reduced output, particularly at Marvel. When you fix or when you address these issues with — in movies, you do three things. You get aggressive at making sure the films you're making can be even better. Sometimes, you kill projects you don't believe in. And, of course, you put new things in the pipeline that you do believe in, that you have much more confidence in, and we're doing all of that."
Since those proclamations, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that layoffs have occurred at Marvel Studios and Marvel Entertainment. Marvel laid off fifteen employees as it appears Disney is testing slashing its staff at these expensive companies, similar to what David Zaslav did with Warner Bros. last year.
Also troubling for Disney is a new Forbes exposé on the Star Wars franchise, which showed Disney had lost approximately $2.8 billion in purchasing the property from Lucasfilm in 2012. While it seemed they would make the $4 billion purchase price back easily, expensive production costs and a string of failures at the box office and on Disney+ have created a situation where Star Wars failed to pan out for the mouse after more than ten years of creating content.
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What's happening is obvious: families and fans are sick of being lectured to with the forced diversity content, including pushing the LGBTQ agenda into children's and teen programming. The culture war is starting to take its toll, as Disney repeatedly told Marvel and Star Wars fans that they aren't welcome if they don't like the direction in which the franchises are going.
Fans are finally listening and won't buy movie tickets or subscriptions to Disney's streaming platforms anymore. With this latest round of cuts, it will be interesting to see if Bob Iger will change course and dial back the woke programming or if Disney will continue doubling down on their losses.
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