At Disney, one Bob has to clean up the rubble from the other Bob

Long before he achieved fame as Disney’s “God King,” Bob Iger began his career as a weather forecaster for a small TV station in Ithaca, New York. During the gray winters, the showers there are such a harsh mixture of snow, hail and rain that the residents have their own meteorological term for it: ‘Ithacation’.

“It’s only half a joke when I say that presenting the weather report has taught me an indispensable art: the gift of breaking bad news,” writes Iger in The Ride of a Lifetime (2019), his memoir about fifteen years at the helm of The Walt Disney Company.

That gift will come in handy for Robert Allen Iger (1951) on his surprising return as boss of the Californian firm, where, in addition to 223,000 employees, Mickey Mouse, Anna van Arendelle, Darth Vader and Homer Simpson are also on the payroll. A boardroom coup cost CEO Bob Chapek after 33 chaotic months.

The last straw was the unexpected loss of $ 1.5 billion from streaming service Disney +. What particularly struck Disney executives and investors was how unconcerned Chapek tried to disguise the bad numbers to stock market analysts. As the Disney stock plummeted, Chapek rhapsodized about the success of Mickey’s not-so-scary Halloween party. “He has to go, he’s confused,” commented CNBC commentator Jim Cramer.

Disney failed for ten years

In a staff memo, Iger immediately announced that he wants to shake up the pillows in the coming weeks. He had already had his first bad news conversation: Kareem Daniel, one of the highest omes after Chapek, had to leave the field because he would curtail the creative freedom of Disney’s studio bosses.

Iger was already facing hotter fires. When he first took office as CEO in 2005, Disney’s boardroom seemed just out of the snake pit Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the Indiana Jones film that, thanks to Iger’s hunger for takeover, is now owned by Disney. His predecessor Michael Eisner was in trouble with almost everyone.

With Apple boss and Pixar major shareholder Steve Jobs, for example, a ‘Shia Muslim’ with whom it was impossible to negotiate, Eisner thought. With Harvey Weinstein, because Eisner didn’t see any profit in his favorite project about a bunch of three peat-high hippies who transport a ring to a volcano, after which rival Warner with the Lord of the Ringstrilogy took off. And with Walt Disney’s cousin and animator Roy E. Disney, who had Eisner spy on him, as journalist James B. Stewart noted in his book DisneyWar (2005).

Iger realized in 2005 at the opening of Disneyland Hong Kong that Disney had failed for ten years. During the parade of Disney characters waving and blowing kisses, something caught his eye: where were the new heroes? Among retired celebrities such as Donald Duck and Snow White, Little Mermaid, Aladdin and other icons of the early 1990s also made their appearance, while recent Disney characters such as Emperor Kuzco or Lilo & Stitch were conspicuous by their absence. Also included were Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Nemo, all Pixar creations, whose films Disney alone distributed. “We could spend months analyzing what went wrong, but there you saw it, right in front of us,” Iger wrote.

Pick up litter

The man whose workday starts every morning at a quarter past four with a sweat session on his climbing machine managed to get Steve Jobs to sell Pixar to Disney in early 2006. Marvel followed in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012, after which Iger also plucked 21st Century Fox from Rupert Murdoch for $ 71 billion in 2018. It gave Disney countless hits, from Incredibles 2 (Pixar) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Lucas film) to Bohemian Rhapsody (21st Century Fox) and Avengers: Endgame (Marvel), including an expanding Disney+ offering to appease the fickle streaming customer.

Whether the son of a librarian and an advertising executive will succeed in solving Disney’s streaming problem – costly investments in series and films, meager subscription revenue – remains to be seen. However, unlike Chapek, Iger does not seem to fly through the political landscape like a Turbo McKwek. For example, this year Chapek incurred the wrath of his staff for failing to speak out against an anti-gay law in Disney World’s home base of Florida. When he later turned against the law, Florida’s Republican Governor DeSantis poured out vials of wrath on him.

In his first fifteen years as a Disney helmsman, Iger made few political chunks, which is no small feat for a company that desperately tries not to let the utopian world of Minnie, Goofy and Pluto be tarnished by reality. This goes so far that during theme park visits, Disney directors are expected to personally pick up all the litter they come across, just like their distant predecessor Walt Disney (1901-1966).

Oprah from door to door

As Disney CEO, Iger spoke out against anti-abortion laws and pro-gun laws. He served on an advisory board to President Trump for a blue Monday, until the administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. He said he was the most proud of all the films released under his reign Black Panther (2018), one of the first times in the somewhat snow-white Disney catalog that an African American played the hero role.

The Democrat briefly considered running for the 2020 presidential election, only his wife was firmly against it, and Iger doubted whether the party would support a businessman. “If he had run, I would be going door to door right now,” said his good friend Oprah Winfrey. “And I’d say, ‘Let me tell you about Bob Iger.'”