It seems that after landing more than a few solid blows on Disney's bank account, the people who now run the House that Walt Built are concluding that politics in entertainment is bad and that message-first storytelling isn't really something people will show up for. Given, everyone from audiences to this very website has been screaming that at them for close to a decade, but it's nice to finally see the message getting home.
Still, something seems off. The stink of wokeness is still emanating off of Disney like a landfill and the source is coming from Disney's board and Disney CEO Bob Iger himself.
As I wrote on Monday, Iger admitted that Disney's creators had focused too much on messaging and not enough on storytelling, creating an ever-widening gap between it and its would-be audience. Iger said he'd no longer allow this to take place, which is all well and good. To be sure, there's reason to be enthusiastic about an American company ditching the intrusion of radical leftist politics to embrace the goodness of American values and politics-free entertainment.
However, there were some concerning moments. As Bonchie wrote on Monday, just before the release of my article signaling Disney's turnaround, Iger was busy blaming the recent failure of "The Marvels," now the lowest-grossing MCU film to ever release, more on a lack of polish than what the issue actually was: a nasty adherence to destructive feminism that taught the audience to stay away.
But for the sake of argument, let's chalk that up to Iger attempting to salvage what he could of that movie and his desire to not generate bad will with leftist figures and groups by not saying that woke politics killed the film.
The more concerning thing that makes one question whether Iger and Disney are serious about righting the ship is its total resistance to Nelson Peltz and Trian Management adding members to Disney's board.
As Brad Slager wrote on Friday, Iger and the Disney board are doing what they can to stop Trian from gaining any power over Disney. They're even attempting to push two members onto the board who come from companies that have taken notably woke measures in the recent past:
Since Peltz made it known this week he intended to gain at least three seats on the board, the company has fought back. It instituted rules changes to limit the ability of nominating names for the board, as well as appointing two new figures - top executives from Morgan Stanley and Sky Broadcasting. Those nominations will be voted on by shareholders in the coming months, and this is when Peltz hopes to sway support.
Why this is concerning is pretty self-evident, but it gets worse.
As I've covered previously, Peltz's firm makes its money off of going into businesses that are failing and turning them around so that they're profitable once again. As Peltz himself said, he'd rather these fights not get bloody and that the company works with him to get things back on track. Trian is very good at what it does, and compared to other investment firms, it's not ideologically driven, a quality that is highly lacking in today's corporate environment and desperately needed.
Peltz has been busy increasing Trian's holdings in Disney, amassing $2.5 billion in stock throughout the last summer, then being infused with even more thanks to former Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter giving Trian Fund Management sole voting power over his substantial shares. As of this writing, Trian now has $3 billion worth of stock in Disney.
With Disney and Iger's refusal to play ball with Trian, the war for Disney's soul has begun. Trian has issued a statement regarding its opening salvo, according to Business Wire:
"Since we gave Disney the opportunity to prove it could ‘right the ship’ last February, up to our re-engagement weeks ago, shareholders lost ~$70 billion of value. Disney's share price has underperformed proxy peers and the broader market over every relevant period during the last decade and over the tenure of each incumbent director. Investor confidence is low, key strategic questions loom, and even Disney's CEO is acknowledging that the Company's challenges are greater than previously believed. While James Gorman and Sir Jeremy Darroch represent an improvement from the status quo, the addition of these directors will not, in our view, restore investor confidence or address the root cause behind the significant value destruction and missteps that this Board has overseen. Trian intends to take our case for change directly to shareholders."
Disney has already responded by accusing Peltz of "Mindless, drum-beating activism," which is hysterical, given the fact that mindless drum-beating activism is what got Disney in this position in the first place.
But the bottom line here is that there should be no war. Iger should be welcoming Peltz and his team with open arms and together devising a strategy to pull the company out of the hole it dug itself and back into the good graces of the American people. According to Iger's admission that messaging has infected Disney too much, this would be a perfect time to team up with a company that has no interest in messaging.
The fact that Disney is so resistant is odd.
The skeptic in me sees a lot of what Iger is saying and doing as a way to put shareholders at ease and make them think Disney is righting the ship on its own without the guidance of Peltz and Trian. It makes me wonder if this is all an act meant to get shareholders to vote for Disney's choice of board members and not for Trian's so that they continue doing wrong by the American people once power is secured again, and the message pushing can continue unabated.
It could be just a mere resistance to another influence, but Disney has plenty of those. Why resist this one?
Food for thought.
