The CEO of Disney, Bob Iger, has attributed some of their films not doing well to their increased number of TV shows. In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber at the Sun Valley Conference, Iger shared that the studio offered more streaming content than what the audience expected.
“There have been some disappointments. We would have liked some of our more recent releases to perform better,” Iger said. “It’s reflective not as a problem from a personnel perspective, but I think in our zeal to basically grow our content significantly to serve mostly our streaming offerings, we ended up taxing our people way beyond — in terms of their time and their focus — way beyond where they had been.”
This comes after the disappointing box office runs of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the studio’s latest release, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
“Marvel’s a great example of that. They had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention. That is, I think, more of the cause than anything,” Iger added.
On the animation front, Lightyear and Elemental too also didn’t fare well at the box office. “There were three Pixar releases in a row that went direct to streaming, in part because of — mostly because of COVID,” Iger said. “And I think that may have created an expectation in the audience that they’re going to eventually be on streaming and probably quickly, and there wasn’t an urgency. And then I think there was some, I think you’d have to agree that there were some creative misses, as well.”
