The question is will he?

Between the absence of audience dollars, many a popular YouTube critic and entertainment analyst, and yours truly here at RedState, the amount of screaming at the top of our respective lungs made it pretty obvious what the problem at Disney was. 

Disney had gone woke and that's why it was going broke. 

It was an irrefutable fact, and while Disney acknowledged it with very sterile, corporatized language that danced around the issue in an SEC filing, Disney CEO Bob Iger went straight to the point and admitted to what's been killing Disney; message-first storytelling. 

According to CNBC, Iger admitted the fact during a summit in New York on Wednesday: 

"Creators lost sight of what their No. 1 objective needed to be," Iger said at the DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday. "We have to entertain first. It's not about messages."

Iger has recently pushed to improve the quality of Disney films in 2024 and beyond. He is cutting back the number of movies Disney makes to focus on making better films. Earlier this week, he told Disney employees at a town hall that creating hit movies is the best way the company can change perception for investors and employees.

Iger said Disney's prioritization of messaging over storytelling peaked "while [he] was gone" in 2022, alluding to the 11 months he left his job as Disney's executive chairman. Iger had been in charge of "creative endeavors" in 2020 and 2021, even while Bob Chapek ran the company as CEO.

"We have entertained with values and with having a positive impact on the world in many different ways. 'Black Panther' is a great example of that," Iger said. "I like being able to entertain if you can infuse it with positive messages and have a good impact on the world. Fantastic. But that should not be the objective. When I came back, what I have really tried to do is to return to our roots."

The message must have elicited some positive reaction from Disney's departed audience as Disney's stock slightly bumped up upon the admission and the stating of the goal to eliminate wokeness from the writing. 

(READ: Disney/Marvel's Biggest Reason as to Why It's Failing So Miserably)

The question is, can Iger right the ship as he's claiming he wants to? While it's fun to talk about, this might be easier said than done. Disney isn't just under pressure from woke investment firms, its own internal culture has made being a radical leftist a requirement for advancement, or even employment, in some cases according to a whistleblower. It's hard to get back on course when your crew is dead-set on steering the ship into icebergs. If Iger truly wants to do right by Walt and get back to Disney's roots, I can't imagine there won't be an Elon-style mass firing to seize power within the company.

Then again, Disney just laid off over 5,000 employees in a recent bloodletting. Among those let go was Marvel Studios VP Victoria Alonso, a person partly responsible for the hard-left turn that Marvel undertook. With Disney being such a massive company, it's possible that Iger has already made his move and Disney is shedding its old skin. 

It doesn't look pretty. The Marvels was clearly a whole different movie before the reshoots and an untold mountain of edits. The Frankenstein monster that came out as a result seemed to be Disney attempting to soften whatever message-infused blow was coming our way, but it didn't make a difference. The damage has been done to Marvel, and Brie Larson's presence wasn't going to make it any better. 

If Iger is being real, and if Nelson Peltz and Trian Management are already having an effect, then perhaps we're going to start seeing a Disney we recognize. Perhaps they'll ditch the woke nonsense in its movies, no more men in dresses and makeup at its parks, and perhaps we can actually get some decent stories and Imagineering out of the House that Walt Built again. 

But Disney is a big ship that's going to require a lot of time and deft maneuvering to get it slowly back on course. If Iger corrects his mistakes (I'm not letting him put this all on his predecessor, Chapek) then perhaps history will look at him a bit kinder, and he'll be the man who almost ruined Disney but brought it back. 

If not, then perhaps Peltz will find a way and he'll drag Iger kicking and screaming along if he absolutely has to. Time will tell, but time against Disney as more and more of the audience abandons the Mouse out of frustration.

Or, perhaps it's more accurate to say the Mouse abandoned them, and there was little choice for parents and audiences to take their dollars elsewhere. If Iger believes what he's saying, then that's exactly what's happening, and Disney has a lot of trust to win back and apologies to make.