Bob Iger's Contract At Disney Extended Through 2026

Your most favorite CEO – Bob Iger – of your most favorite company – Disney – had his contract extended all the way through 2026, which, according to reports, was a unanimous decision by the board. Click through for the full story!

Whoever comes up with the funniest caption wins a prize*

Disney is not really having a good time at the moment. Disney shares went for almost $200 a little over two years ago, current stock price is $90, which is on the same level, more or less, as in 2016. Market value dropped from $281 billion in 2021, only two years ago, to $167 billion in July 2023, a loss of $114 billion.

Disney lost more than $600 million with their movies in 2023 alone and the year is not over yet. Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny may be one of the biggest flops in cinema history, not when it comes to total box office, relatively speaking Heaven’s Gate in the early 1980s sets the record for a high budget movie flop, but the amount of money lost will be staggering. The movie may not make $350 million worldwide, and the budget, including marketing is in the $450 million region, meaning the movie may lose $275 million. Which is more than for the epic financial flop that was John Carter, one of the worst for Disney. Indiana Jones has dropped to #3 at the box office after last weekend, and both Insidious The Red Door, the #2 movie, and Sound of Freedom, which reclaimed the top spot actually, make more money than Indy, even though both movies have a much lower theater count. And Tom Cruise will obliterate Indiana Jones with Mission Impossible opening this week.

Disney+ is losing subscribers in North America and worldwide (mostly in India, but the 300,000 lost subscribers in North America last quarter are not good either). And new reports have more bad news, since Warner’s streaming service Max, formerly known as HBO Max, now has more market share in the US than Disney+, for the first time ever. Disney+ lost quite a bit in 2023 thus far, and Max gained. Total viewership for Mandalorian season 3 was about 40% below season 2’s numbers, something that may have contributed here. In fact, market share in the US began to drop with the release of The Mandalorian season 3, which is somewhat surprising.

Disney+ is only #4 in North America now

Add the costly mistake that is the Star Wars hotel, which will close this September after only 18 months, the negative PR brought upon by the Disney+ purge (and they keep deleting content, it’s not over yet) and if you add all of this up you may wonder why the Disney board extended Iger’s contract unanimously. Sadly, there is no word about the fate of Kathleen Kennedy yet. There’s more and more smoke every day, but no proof of any actual fire. We will keep you posted!

If Iger wants to make his second tenure as CEO a successful one he absolutely has to clean house. Movie budgets need to get under control again. The choice of movies Disney makes, remakes, superhero movies and sequels, has to be examined, because there is hardly anything left Disney CAN remake (unless they remake things like The Black Hole, they already are remaking relatively recent animated movies like Moana) and superheroes seem to show some sign of weakness. And of course Iger has to clean house at Lucasfilm. Rigorously. Indiana Jones 5 is a financial disaster of epic proportions with a budget beyond any reason. Not the first time a Lucasfilm movie had inflated budgets because of Kathleen Kennedy’s management decisions.

There are certainly interesting times ahead for Bob Iger!

* Disclaimer: there will be no prize. Sorry! But you will get fame and win the internet for 15 minutes!

• The Disney Earnings Report
• New Starspeeder 3000 D23 Exclusive Revealed
• Disney Earnings Report For Q4/2023
• Weekend Fun: Disney Edition
• Disney Earnings Report - Disney+ Subscriber Numbers In The US Are Stagnating
• Disclosure Policy